Noob Modder looking for help

[Harrierfalcon]

I only started Modding recently, but I only use Arsenal III. It has limitations I don't want, but stuff like ICE and StarGraft are too confusing. How do I understand that, and what programs should I use? Also with Arsenal III, I want to make the 'Toss Scout's Photon Blasters so that they run along the ground to the target. I tried doing Line Splash and Sub. Spines, but those bug it and make you quit out. Also, are there other URLs you can go to for more modding programs? I need real help here!
I know this is gonna sound kinda corny, but I would be honored if BSTRhino would comment because I really like his Doom series, and I think that he should make a balanced one. I know he addressed that in one of them.

[HyperDemonic]

hi i will help i can do A3 ,ICE/ICECC ,DATEDIT,RETRO GRP and TABLPAD


and for that type of attack u need to use ICE/ICECC


just post wat your mod will be and ll try to do it

and stargraft and memgraft wont work on the new patch for SC

[Harrierfalcon]

1. Probe is cloaked, flies, has a ground attack, preferably Bombs or Flechette Grenade
2. All ground Spellcasters fly
3. Corsair's Disruption Webs nukes something
4. Scout's Dual Photon Blasters run along the ground to target damaging anything on the way ( I tried but it's bugged )
5. Scout's Anti-Matter missiles fired in groups of 4 with air splash
6. Arbiter has a more rapid-firing Hi damage Attack
7. High Templar has Psi Assault with a range of 14
8.Shuttle is cloaked, moves faster
9. Dragoon's Phase Disruptor fired in bursts of 8, They scatter around target
That's pretty much all I can think of now.
Thanks alot!
Do you think you can E-mail it to me when you're done? it's harrierfalcon@yahoo.com

[Holocaust]

If you want the Photon Blasters to run along the ground to its target, you could giving the Scout Yamato Gun and change the trail's graphical properties.
This is pretty advanced, as same as making ground units fly.
You might be shooting a bit high on this one, remember start small and build your way up

Hyper, Let Harrier do it on his own, it's his mod,
If you help him through this with more than just advice, he'll never learn hands-on =\

[King_Critter]

Hmm... you might want to try out datEdit, it's like arsenal 3 but it's a bit better. Arsenal 3 sometimes crashes and has bugs (it stoped working completly for me) and DatEdit dosent do that. I'll get you the link in just a sec...

EDIT: here it is: http://www.staredit.net/index.php?download=4668

[StarSword]

I only started Modding recently, but I only use Arsenal III. It has limitations I don't want, but stuff like ICE and StarGraft are too confusing. How do I understand that, and what programs should I use? Also with Arsenal III, I want to make the 'Toss Scout's Photon Blasters so that they run along the ground to the target. I tried doing Line Splash and Sub. Spines, but those bug it and make you quit out. Also, are there other URLs you can go to for more modding programs? I need real help here!
I know this is gonna sound kinda corny, but I would be honored if BSTRhino would comment because I really like his Doom series, and I think that he should make a balanced one. I know he addressed that in one of them.

One at a time:

1. How are Ice terrains confusing?

2. As far as I know there is no way to adjust certain aspects of units, e.g. attack range, speed, attack name, and aspects of attack (e.g. the Mutalisk's Glave Wurms' ability to bounce between targets). The reasons are simply to keep the AI effective in combat, as it makes certain assumptions about what a given unit is capable of.

[DemonicArchon]

Star he's talking about modding not mapping. You can easily get rid of the muta's bouncing wepon. Also he's talking about ice the program, not the terrain.

[mongoose41]

I once tryed to make a flying SCV, but if it built something it couldn't fly anymore, and got killed by devourers.

EDIT: I got it to work eventually.

[Confuzed_Person]

ok ppl, focus on his forumn, he needs help with it, not some1 else do it. HarrierFalcon, 1 thing bout moddin that BSTRhino had to explain to me. That u cant learn everything at once, u gotta work with it for a while, and when u think ur ready for more advanced stuff and had some practice with other programs, then try doing something harder. and for the programs u have trouble with, and u kno the others pretty well, theres always the tutorials:D
but like urs ideas:D

[HyperDemonic]

Hyper, Let Harrier do it on his own, it's his mod,
If you help him through this with more than just advice, he'll never learn hands-on =\

find my mod needs work any way ive havent work on it for bout a week

[Harrierfalcon]

Changing the graphical properties might be a problem. Are those Sprites, and do I just tell Arsenal for the yamato gun to look like duel photon blasters and add Line Splash? Anyway thanks guys, and I tried the flying probe; it does work, just it still looks like it's on the ground and appears above the nexus. Sam e with the High and Dark Templars.:D

[King_Critter]

I think you need to fiddle with the shadow to make it look like it's flying properly. Pretty sure you do that in IceCC.

[DemonicArchon]

Uhhmmm. O ya, that's what i was going to say. Graphical proporties depend on what you mean. If you are going to edit the graphics then you need to use retrogrp. Very hard. But if you want to just change graphics of certain units you can do that in a3..But i don't think you can do what you want..with that.

[mongoose41]

Changing the graphical properties might be a problem. Are those Sprites, and do I just tell Arsenal for the yamato gun to look like duel photon blasters and add Line Splash? Anyway thanks guys, and I tried the flying probe; it does work, just it still looks like it's on the ground and appears above the nexus. Sam e with the High and Dark Templars.:DReally? Have you tried building something with the probe?

[BSTRhino]

Hi Harrierfalcon, I'm glad you liked the Doom series and I do plan to make a combined mod with all three races edited at some point, but I don't think I'll have the time to do it until next year.

As you can see, once you really get into modding, like the people who have posted in this thread, you'll be able to come up with ideas about how to do various problems. Confuzed_Person is right though, that's where you're headed, just don't rush there or else it'll get too hard.

I think your effect at the moment is a bit beyond your level. I can think of two ways to do it, Holocaust's way is one and the other is to do something like the Marine in Terran Doom. Unfortunately, the first way would be difficult because of the graphics change (which by the way for the modders is probably done best with Arsenal Zero), but the second way would have a lot of code. If I were to do your effect, I would use the second method, but for you, I'm not sure which method would be best for you given you're just starting out.

What would probably be best would be to replace the Yamato Gun with your weapon. That would mean there would be no Yamato Gun in your mod, but you would get a glimpse of how your effect would look. However, after you've done more modding you'll learn more and be able to do the effect in a way that doesn't affect the existing Yamato Gun.

I'm sorry I can't really respond now with details on how to do it, so I hope someone else can explain. These are the general ideas though:

1. You'd go into Arsenal III and give the Yamato Gun the damage properties of your new Dual Photon Blasters, except make sure you're using "line splash" (which should be named friendly splash)
2. The actual Yamato Gun would be made invisible (tmprmgraphicstart).
3. The Yamato Gun would also have to do damage as it moved (domissiledmg)
4. The trails would be changed to look like Dual Photon blasters. There's many ways to do this. Probably the easiest way would be to find the sprite ID of the dual photon blasters and change the trail so that it spawns those instead of the regular trails.
5. The final thing would be to edit the iscript of the dual photon blasters so it can be used as a weapon trail and not as a weapon in its own right.
6. Set the Scout so that it uses the Yamato Gun as its ground weapon.

I hope someone else can give more explanation, I know they are too high-level at the moment for you Harrierfalcon so they won't be much help, but you could probably do the first part. It might take a week of posting back and forth questions and answers for you to finish these six steps, but as I always say, don't rush modding, it is hard so you need to take things slowly or it will get overwhelming. But the good thing is, once you understand what you're doing, it's not hard anymore.

[DemonicArchon]

Also, i would change cooldown, so that it doesn't fire every 10 ticks or whatever. Cause that would be massive. ALso, i see you have returned to an extent, welcome back. Also, i haven't checked sc.org but how is the revamp going? If it is finished ignore this question

[Harrierfalcon]

Yes, and it still works. By the way, thanks for showing me DatEdit, it's not confounding and it doesn't have the limitations of Arsenal 3. Thanks

[Fod]

wow, this is a topic for much more experienced modders..wish i was that good.

[Harrierfalcon]

I'm not THAT good... Hey BSTRhino, how do I make the yamato gun invisible? Can you tell me how to do it with DatEdit?

[mongoose41]

"tmprmgraphicstart" is a command in IceCC.

[BSTRhino]

It's easiest to do with IceCC if you're most familiar with IceCC. You just add the line "tmprmgraphicstart" at the start of the Yamato Gun's script. So it helps to know IceCC first. Just decompile some script and change some things that look interesting and then recompile it, you'll get the hang of it quickly.

There is a way to do make things invisible with sprites.dat which I use instead of the iscript method, but really I don't see any reason why one method would be better than the other, and I do think that the sprites.dat one takes a little more explanation so it's a bit better to use the other approach.

[mongoose41]

It's easiest to do with IceCC if you're most familiar with IceCC. You just add the line "tmprmgraphicstart" at the start of the Yamato Gun's script. So it helps to know IceCC first. Just decompile some script and change some things that look interesting and then recompile it, you'll get the hang of it quickly.

There is a way to do make things invisible with sprites.dat which I use instead of the iscript method, but really I don't see any reason why one method would be better than the other, and I do think that the sprites.dat one takes a little more explanation so it's a bit better to use the other approach.BST, I made an SCV launcher in asimilar way, and it crashes after a while...

[BSTRhino]

Oh, the only suggestion I have is to make sure that the tmprmgraphicstart is after the lines that go:

sigorder 1
wait 1

I wasn't sure if it was necessary to do that because I use the sprites.dat method, but if it does crash that's the most likely thing. If it still crashes, I don't really think that tmprmgraphicstart is a command that has been known to cause crashes, it's quite possible, but I would've thought there were other things that are more likely to cause crashes.

[StarSword]

Star he's talking about modding not mapping. You can easily get rid of the muta's bouncing wepon. Also he's talking about ice the program, not the terrain.

My bad.

[mongoose41]

Oh, the only suggestion I have is to make sure that the tmprmgraphicstart is after the lines that go:

sigorder 1
wait 1
I wasn't sure if it was necessary to do that because I use the sprites.dat method, but if it does crash that's the most likely thing. If it still crashes, I don't really think that tmprmgraphicstart is a command that has been known to cause crashes, it's quite possible, but I would've thought there were other things that are more likely to cause crashes.Well, it has that, but after it attacks about 50 times, it crashes...

[Holocaust]

Possibilities:

- Changing SCV launcher weapon GRP to Terran SCV, unstable (Is that what you did?)

- Grab the SCV's GRP file from StarDat or somewhere and rename it to the file name of the weapon file (Like say you were using Psionic Shockwave for the SCV Launcher, you'd extract the SCV GRP file from StarDat and place it in a folder called bullet in another folder called unit that will be located in your mod folder. You'd then rename it to emshit.GRP because that's the GRP file name of Psionic Shockwave)

- In the weapon's iscript in IceCC, change the name of the GRP file that it's used (The GRP filename in the script is usually in brackets) so it uses the Terran SCV GRP

[Harrierfalcon]

Hey BSTRhino, is there a way to do the Yamato/Dual Photon thing with ICE instead of ICECC? I tried getting ICECC From http://www.starcraft.org, but it gives me some crap on a platter about a missing file.

[Sub-Focus]

Sorry buddy, but you're going to have to learn ICE. I know it's a pain in the bollocks, and trust me, if there was another program I knew of that could do what ICE can do, I would jump to that one in a second.

[Harrierfalcon]

I know, I'm trying to learn ICE. Any Tutorials?

[mongoose41]

Sorry buddy, but you're going to have to learn ICE. I know it's a pain in the bollocks, and trust me, if there was another program I knew of that could do what ICE can do, I would jump to that one in a second.IceCC. And it's not very easy either.

[Sub-Focus]

Here's a tutorial that will teach you how to do at least something in IceCC
http://www.starcraft.org/customs/CustomsTutorials/How+to+create+a+bouncing+weapon

Secondly, if you installed IceCC properly, or extracted all of it's files or whatever, you should have an Adobe Acrobat Reader file called "Manual". It has a tutorial, and everything else you need to know about the program. You could just skip straight to the tutorial, but I reccomend you read a few things and experiment for yourself first.