Creating units with a duration

This is a quick tutorial on how to create custom units so that they appear with a circular timer next to their health bar and the time remaining on the XP bar

If you are not sure to what I am referring to then look at these images and

The thing that we will need is modifier_kill

You can either apply it in KV using ApplyModifier or in Lua using AddNewModifier

It allows for more flexibility and allows for the proper creation of summoned timed units through Lua

KV example

Here is an example of it in KV; one spider spawns without the modifier_kill and the other one with it

Note: In this example there is no difference between applying modifier_kill or using the inbuilt Duration parameter of the SpawnUnit action block

"test_ability"
{
    // General        
    "BaseClass"                "ability_datadriven"
    "AbilityBehavior"                "DOTA_ABILITY_BEHAVIOR_NO_TARGET | DOTA_ABILITY_BEHAVIOR_IMMEDIATE"
    "AbilityType"                    "DOTA_ABILITY_TYPE_BASIC"
    // Time         
    "AbilityCooldown"                "0.0"
    // Cost        
    "AbilityManaCost"                "0"
    // Special        
    "AbilitySpecial"
    {
        "01"
        {
            "var_type"                    "FIELD_FLOAT"
            "duration"                    "10.0"
        }
    }
    "OnSpellStart"
    {
        "SpawnUnit"
        {
            "UnitName"    "npc_dota_broodmother_spiderling"
            "UnitCount"    "1"
            "SpawnRadius"    "200"
            "Target"        "CASTER"

            "OnSpawn"
            {
                "ApplyModifier"
                {
                    "ModifierName"    "modifier_kill"
                    "Target"        "TARGET"
                    "Duration"        "%duration"
                }
            }
        }
        "SpawnUnit"
        {
            "UnitName"    "npc_dota_broodmother_spiderling"
            "UnitCount"    "1"
            "SpawnRadius"    "200"
            "Target"        "CASTER"
        }
    }
}

and a short video along with it

Lua example

This is a really simple example on how to use it with Lua

this function will apply the modifier_kill modifier with a duration of 10 seconds after which the caster will die

function KillCaster( keys )
    local caster = keys.caster

    caster:AddNewModifier(caster, nil, "modifier_kill", {duration = 10})
end