Spell creation tutorial?

[The Watcher]

I tried turning Tom K into the Kerrigan clone and the cloaking works just fine. It's a bummer that we can't get it to work with just any unit, but at least I have something. I wasn't planning on using Tom K for anything else anyway, so it all worked out in the end. I might look at some exe stuff in the future, but since I know very little about it, I don't want to mess with it right now. I have something that works and it suits my purposes.

Ah, so that's what was going on with the irradiate spell. That's convenient. Another less thing for me to do.
I wasn't planning on using irradiate for anything anyway. I was thinking about maybe doing an "irradiation grenade" kind of spell for one of my characters, but I came up with another ability instead that I think will be simpler to make; especially if using irradiate at all would mess up the animation for the "grenade." That image you made for the cast does look really cool! Looks like an aura that you would see out of Diablo 2. Come to think of it, that sprite looks kinda like the amazon from D2, but with white clothes. I really like that select circle, too. Was that difficult to make?

Thanks for the support! You'll hear more about the mod as I go along in it and learn more about modding. As you may have already been able to tell, it's for a campaign that I'm making. It's mostly just for my friends from school as well as a hobby of mine, but I'll probably post this one online as well since I'm making my way into the community. Most of my old stuff was just some garbage that I did for fun and it wasn't incredibly advanced or inspired. I'm trying really hard on this one, though, because SC2 is almost here and that means the end of an era for mapmakers. But also a new beginning. I'm so excited!

[Derqua]

Ok, lots of stuff to eventually get into the wiki.

Have someone else help you with the wiki, like the mods. you could get it done faster that way

EDIT: One thing I forgot to mention; the only thing I'm having trouble converting from the Magellan base to the Kerrigan clone is the wireframe. Is that done in the iscript.bin? I didn't see it in DatEdit.

Open patch_rt.mpq.
unitwireframwirefram.grp.
It's hard to make new ones, I've expeirenced that myself. You'll see them when I release the next version my mod. It'll come with a map to test the campiagn units. Cutoms are there and with my tamed units.

Zerg wireframs are all wierd, but there are no side effects. baja this an improved file from the previous one. Tested pal there is a "mod" which is just the normal wireframs run through SFGrpConverter.

Thanks for the support! You'll hear more about the mod as I go along in it and learn more about modding. As you may have already been able to tell, it's for a campaign that I'm making. It's mostly just for my friends from school as well as a hobby of mine, but I'll probably post this one online as well since I'm making my way into the community. Most of my old stuff was just some garbage that I did for fun and it wasn't incredibly advanced or inspired. I'm trying really hard on this one, though, because SC2 is almost here and that means the end of an era for mapmakers. But also a new beginning. I'm so excited!

I plan on continuing with modding and map making until they release the first two parts of SC2.
If you ask me it might be a little exagerated at the moment and I want the second to come out, because they will fix all the mess ups that the have with the terran version.

Also glad to see that you'll be modding with us for some time .

[The Watcher]

Sorry, I'm a little confused. Is that dl supposed to be for me? Cause I got it and have no idea what to do with it.

And I found the grp for the wireframes that you were talking about, but I don't know where to go from there. I'm not trying to make any new wireframes; I just want to make my Kerrigan clone have the Kerrigan frame (it currently has the Tom K frame from the base unit). How do I replace individual wireframes?

[Derqua]

Both are for you, dl SFgrpconverter.
Run it.
Click the top button.
Navagate to the extracted grp.
Click the middle button.
Navagate to the extracted pal.
Don't worry about the text boxes.
click the "all in one image" circle.
extract, keep the name the same.

you get a bmp. modify it with your favorite image editor. I use paint, you might use paintshop pro or gimp.

To compile:
top button.
select your modified bmp.
open PyGrp.
check the number of the last frame in the original grp.
add 1
enter into the last text box in the middle.
bottom button.
name wirefram.
done.

[The Watcher]

Well, I got it to work. I still only have a foggy understanding of what I just did, but it worked. I did it Derqua's way this time, but, since I know I will be having to do this again soon, I'll do it baja's way next time.

For now, I think I'm set in terms of needing help. My list of things to do is shrinking and I think I should be able to figure it out as I get to each task. The list is as follows:
-Create new abilities (I assume that involves the orders that are involved with activating the abilities, right? I think I can figure that out)
-Make buttons for the new abilities (my friend will be able to do that now that I know how to decompile the grp for him)
-Copy and edit the Kerrigan sprite (again, my friend will be able to do that)
-Develop custom voices for characters and impliment them (working on making the voices in Adobe Audition now)
-Create a few new ranks for terran characters (learning how to change TBLs. Hopefully won't be difficult to figure out)

I'll let you guys know if I run into any trouble. I can't thank you enough for how much help you've been in my learning process! Honestly, I don't think I would be able to do very much of this modding stuff if it hadn't been for you guys. I'll be sure to credit you guys once I get my demo out for the project announcement. Thanks so much!

Eventually we will get around to writing some highly detailed modding tutorials for our wiki. Until then these simplified attempts to describe the steps will have to suffice.. sorry.

Trust me, this is plenty helpful to me! To be honest, the fact that there are so few tutorials out there actually makes learning it this way more exciting. It makes modders seem like an elite few and the fact that they know how to do all this stuff without having tutorials around to teach them makes it all that more valuable of a skill to have.

EDIT: After extracting and decompiling the Kerrigan sprite grp, I realized this is a lot more time consuming than I thought it would be and I'm not sure if my friend will have time to edit all 221 frames of it. Does anyone know where I can find a female ghost sprite with brown hair?

[The Watcher]

Huh.... perhaps it won't be that difficult for him, then. I know he is really good with photoshop (he is gonna be a graphic design major in college), so he can probably do that pretty easily. I, personally, don't know much about photoshop. I'm more of a writer than an artist. I'm gonna discuss it with him tonight, so we'll see what happens with that.

@cracking open mods
I hadn't really thought about it like that. I started learning modding only about a week-and-a-half ago, so I hadn't really considered that as much of an option. But that is a great idea. I'll have to try that out sometime. I'm sure I could make use of it. For right now, all the stuff that I've mentioned I'm doing is just for the mod for the demo of my campaign, so there will be more for me to do and learn.

Don't worry, I'm still very interested in modding. I find all the capabilities and processes fascinating. You'll see me around for years to come.

[Derqua]

Any palette will do as you won't be doing any physical modification of the decompiled .bmps.

Not true, most palettes have repeats in them. This means that sometimes wireframs look the same, or the zergs act as regulars.