My little find on special effects

I was messing around with special effects and I noticed that all the special effects end with ".mdl" Since I know that Warcraft II doesn't use ".mdl" files i decided to look in War3.mpq to see if there were, in fact, ".mdl" files. I found that there aren't. However, I noticed that all of the special effects the ended with ".mdl" for the trigger parameter had a place in the MPQ with the same path as the ".mdl" file, except it ended in ".mdx" Then I had an idea, why not try other ".mdx" models to use for special effects? So I tried several other ".mdx" files in the MPQ to check if they worked. After my test, I concluded 2 things: You can use any ".mdx" file as a special effect, and you can use either ".mdl" or ".mdx" for the extension, it does not matter. The only restriction I have found so far is that you cannot use unit protraits as a special effect, other than that, all of the other ".mdx" files show up. I have generated a listfile for all the ".mdx" files.

Here is the link for the listfile (sorry about geocities)

http://www.geocities.com/xccmx/war3mdx.txt

MDL are just text ascii versions of MDX, wich are the models. If you use MDL or MDX as spec effects, it will work ok as far as that file is on the mpq path.

BTW, you can generate MDL from MDX files and back using YobGulls converter.

just generate a list by yourself using the mpqview =P
you should goto the tools/modding/skinning/maps section as the things you ahve discovered where already available at a looooong time =P

Heck, you can even create units which uses special spell effects or doodads

Well, some people jst don't know these things =P

This is pretty well known. Using this with the Enhanced unit editor, you can:

Make a unit that looks like a special effect, projectile, or spell.

Make a special effect that looks like a unit, projectile, or spell.

Make a projectile that looks like a special effect, unit, or spell. (Grunts that can shoot sheep... mmmmm)