Reforged HD: Only <=8 lightning effects correctly rendered

[Luashine]

External URLs

Hive Discord in modding: https://discord.com/channels/178569180625240064/311662737015046144/1174875053385584731

Game Versions

1.36.0 (1.36.0.20144, 1.36.0.20171, 1.36.0.20200, 1.36.0.20210)

Summary

If showing more than 8 lightning effects, it causes them to not render (at all) even those before the limit of 8.

Description

Original issue troubleshooting, courtesy of P4RI4H:

Anyone familiar with lightning effects?

I am looping through a group and creating an anchor point dummy unit and have a target unit, i'm adding a lightning effect connecting this points. If I have >8 units in the group/table it only makes like 1 - 2 effects, the effects print, they're not null, and they are no where else to be seen on the map, but when the unit group is <=8 then all lightning effects seem to spawn and work as intended, I don't see anything wrong with my implementation, but maybe someone has experience with lightning effects?

This is how i'm getting my table of targets made.

// See "code 1"

For Loop Attempt

// See "code 2"

I even tried using ipairs to see if maybe my loop logic was flawed, but both seem to yield identical results.

// basically same as code 2 but ipairs

I need this to be able to work when the unit group is <= 10, and not <= 8

---

Response by me:

The code looks fine to me. For SD there are lighting (not lightning) bugs in the render engine when you have too many sources a game chunk turns darker. Thats too on the order of 8.
Try in SD rather than HD
Try to create a special effect for visualization instead
Try with a different lightning
Try hiding only the first 5 out of 10 lightnings and see if the latter show up

---

Author's response:

it's the 8 lightning limit on HD that was the problem.

sd it works perfectly

Additional Information

No response

Expected

Unlimited amount of lightning effects to render correctly

Actual

Inconsistent, broken rendering beyond 8

Reproduction steps

Code 1:

    local x, y = GetUnitX(caster), GetUnitY(caster)
    local group = CreateGroup()

    -- Get all units in the radius
    GroupEnumUnitsInRange(group, x, y, RADIUS, nil)
    targetUnits = {}
    for index = 0, BlzGroupGetSize(group) - 1 do
        local unit = BlzGroupUnitAt(group, index)
        if IsUnitEnemy(unit, GetOwningPlayer(caster)) then
            table.insert(targetUnits, unit)
        end
    end
    DestroyGroup(group)

Code 2:

for i = 1, #targetUnits do
    local target = targetUnits[i]
    local ax, ay = GetUnitX(target) + GetRandomReal(-200, 200), GetUnitY(target) + GetRandomReal(-200, 200)
    local tx, ty = GetUnitX(target), GetUnitY(target)

    -- Create anchor point
    local anchor = CreateUnit(Player(PLAYER_NEUTRAL_PASSIVE), FourCC('h000'), ax, ay, 0)
    table.insert(anchorPoints, {anchor = anchor, target = target, distanceThreshold = 300})

    -- Create lightning effect
    local lightning = AddLightningEx("LEAS", true, ax, ay, GetUnitFlyHeight(anchor) + 50, tx, ty, GetUnitFlyHeight(target) + 50)
    print("Lightning Effect Made")
    table.insert(lightningEffects, {effect = lightning, target = target})
end

Workaround

Play in SD mode. HD mode: none?

Screenshots, test maps, other material

Cannot attach directly in this field, wait a sec

[Luashine]

VIdeos: 1.2MB for both

HD:

lightning-hd-bug.mp4

SD:

lightning-sd-nobug.mp4