Well, I was wondering how to change the settings of spells. I am not sure how to do this. What I mean is, instead of having psionic storm just do splash damage, I was wondering if it was able to teleport or things like that.
What I want to know is if it is possible to mix spells. I.E. Dark Swarm has the same properties as EMP Shockwave. Also, how do you change it so it only affects other players. I remember in Doom Dragoon where psionic storm only damaged enemies. I am not sure how to do any of this.
If you are confused by this let me know.
All I really need to know what to do is just the basics to get started. I think I'll be able to figure out the rest on my own.
Thanks to anyone that can help.
Okay, for very basic spell modifying, you can use Arsenal III and ICEcc. But this is very limited, in that all you can change is how the spell acts, like the area it affects, how the missile(if any) behaves as it flies through the air to the target, etc. For in-depth spell-editing, such as changing the effects of a spell, like turning mind-control into lockdown, you require knowledge of ASM (Assembly) coding, done with Stargraft, which edits the .exe file of Starcraft. But this code is neither easy to learn, nor can you write it quickly. It requires the user to locate various offsets of different spells, abilities, units, and sometimes graphics contained within the .exe file. So unless you're prepared to do 30+ hours of work on this, I'd suggest that you ask somebody else who has experience with it to do it for you.
Wow... I had a slight feeling that these were to be hardcoded in the .exe...
Anyways, I'd really like too learn. That way, I'll know just one more thing about modifications. =P
But, the thing is, how would I get started with editing things with the .exe?
Also, isn't ASM coding useless? I thought with patch 1.07 it covered ASM coding? Meh...
Talk to my friend, Disciple Of Adun, he's on
Warboards.org, and he not only updated StarEx to work with the current version of SC, he's also the ASM coder for our mod,
Starcraft: Reclamation.
I'm warning you, though. This is the kind of thing you take a class for, not something you can just pick up by looking it over (TRUST ME, I'VE TRIED).
Good 'ole Disciple. He's helped me once or twice already.
I just copied and pasted this thread on WarBoards. Maybe someone over there will be able to help me out.
And, trust me, I have a lot of time on my hands to start picking it up. All I need is the first few steps and once I get moving I'll be able to do it myself... Hopefully...
I'm posting this here so that both the people on StarEdit.net and WarBoards.org can benefit from this post.
Generally, the way a spell works is:
1. A "cast spell" button is clicked, and that causes an action to occur on the unit.
2. For most actions, the unit will be told to perform an order.
3. The order will run an animation in the iscript.
4. In the animation, in most cases, a weapon will be launched, which will explode with the effect of the spell.
So, if you've been thinking carefully, by now you would have realised there are actually four different places where you can change a spell.
1. Buttons and actions to cast spells are modified using StarGraft or MemGraft.
2. The least known method of editing of the four places is orders.dat which probably has some cool effects that no one knows about.
3. An scripts\iscript.bin can reprogram the spellcasting animation of a unit, and there's no reason why you can't use commands like useweapon in the spellcasting animation, enabling you to apply some huge effects.
4. Finally, most spells are weapons, which means we can edit them with weapons.dat, or like other weapons, we can change their flingy/sprite/images.dat entries, their iscripts or whatever we like.
To be able to know what to change and how to change it to get the effect you want is really what modding is all about, and as much as some people wish there were step-by-step tutorials on everything, there aren't, and so what effects you can make by changing one or more of these four things is really a question of experience.
Making Dark Swarm work like EMP shockwave...
Like every question, there's many ways to do this, some more simple than others. The most simple way would be to go to your weapons.dat editor, go to EMP shockwave, go Edit > Copy, then go to the Dark Swarm entry and go Edit > Paste. If you wanted to retain the Dark Swarm graphics, that will take more work, but it's definitely possible.
Psionic Storm hurting only enemies...
This could be the easiest question anyone has ever asked me. Go to psionic storm in your weapons.dat editor and change its damage type to "Line Splash." You might want to know that "Line Splash" has absolutely nothing to do with lines, and when you get deeper into modding you'll notice there are hundreds of things named wrong, and that's because we had to reverse engineer and guess what everything meant, and not every guess is 100% correct.
Psionic Storm teleporting...
Well... you could try changing it into Recall. I'm pretty sure that would work if you did it with the Edit > Copy, Edit > Paste method.
One other thing I would like to say is, I think it's very cool how you said you only need the basics and you can work out the rest for yourself. That's is definitely the way to go, so yay for you!
Once again BST has marveled us with his emense SC modding knowldge. *clap clap clap*. Hmm I gotta try this....