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I've got most of the stuff in modding down (ie- Arsenal III, RetroGRP, IceCC ect)

However, there is one thing I have yet to figure out...

How would one add completely new buildings/units to a mod (for one I'm working on, I need several new buildings and units)? Its driving me nuts. Thanks...

Are you quite sure? I've seen it done before. I think the mod was called SC-Research...

What they did is replace an unused unit slot or hero. Then they used MemGraft to make it buildable.

Actually I think you can do it (not sure though)

If its possible then you'd probably do it by hex editing to change the unit max, spell max, iscript max, image max,etc, then edit units.dat, flingy.dat, images.dat, weapons.dat, flingy.dat, techdata.dat, portdata.dat, sfxdata.dat, orders.dat then adding new iscripts, add buttons for units with memgraft, etc


(to make a long story short its a ton of work and not worth it even if you could make it)

There's just too much to move around in memory to allow for any possible addition of new units. You'd have to change a bunch of offsets, some exe values, and such just to allow it to load an extended .dat file. I know, I tried it before.

So there is no chance for someone like me to make an absolutely new unit?
Ok.
Ill just edit a vulture

Well, sure you can't add a completely new unit entry, but you can be clever and make people THINK you did... See, Blizzard is sloppy. They leave a bunch of unused data entries, graphics, sounds, etc in their game data. That's why they worked so hard on the encryption for the mpq archives, so they could cover it up. That's good for modders though because now you can make use of these extra entries towards your own goals!

So, instead of editing a vulture, go and edit one of the unused unit slots, like ID 161 (right after the Gateway's entry, though it's a building...), and then make it buildable with StarGraft or MemGraft. As for the graphics... well, you have to replace a graphic that has an iscript.bin entry, and if there are any unused ones in there, they're very hard to spot. So just replace a seldomly used graphic like Norad II or the Ion Cannon.

As a side note, there used to be a program called StarEx that would hack the StarCraft.exe file to support data files with more entries, but that only worked with StarCraft version 1.07, or 1.08, or something around there. That program was never 'updated' (it would basically have to be completely redone for each new StarCraft patch), I presume due to the immense work involved in maintaining it and keeping it up to date. It was a really cool concept, but I don't think anyone is crazy enough to attempt that again. Until Blizzard releases a FINAL version of StarCraft, which we know will never happen.

(PS: my pokes at Blizzard are purely for humour. I really wuv Blizzard)

I tried updating StarEx. I got all the offsets right(part of how I know so much about the .dat files). It still had some problems. That's why I assume that it is very difficult to do. There's some data that is based on image.dat entires(pointers to data) that isn't resized easy. It makes it almost impossible.

I didn't know any one had ever even thought to open that chapter of StarCraft modding again. Your effort (though unsuccessful) to try and bring that back was admirable!

That and updating MemGraft, you are the man! People like you are carrying the StarCraft modding community these days.