The ease of NEW spells.

Edit: I have this in tools as I believe it pertains to people's want of an easy to use tool for ability editing.

So, people here want to be able to make new spells, right? I just finished creating 4 new spells, not modified ones, but new ones. They have custom buttons but current game models as we have no public model editor yet. So far there is Arachnid Swarm, Vengeance of Blood, Summon Black Drakes, and Soul Ravage.

Here is what they do so far-

Arachnid Swarm-Hero Ability for Summoner-summons 4, 6, 8 of the Level 2 spiders.
Vengeance of Blood-Ultimate for Blood Venger-50 Mana, 15 second cooldown, instant 1000 damage to any unit.
Summon Black Drakes-Ultimate for Summoner-Summons 3 Black Drakes
Soul Ravage-Ultimate for Spiritmaster-Instant 50% damage to ALL units in area of effect, including heros, buildings, and air.

These are fully functional Hero Abilities that do not replace any others. I will put them up for download if I decide not to use them in my current project.

Seeing as there is a severe lack of tutorials on making new spells/abilities, I will write one tomorrow (I'm sure most experienced people have already made many new spells, but never written a tutorial for beginners)

you do realize you can't add abilitydata.slk to your map right?

Even if he has to change AbilityData.slk, I'm very intersted in this, because I tried myself to do it ;)
AND I KNOW THAT U CANT ADD IT TO A MAP, BUT THINK OF CHANGING War3Patch.mpq AND MAKING A SINGLE PLAYER CAMPAIGN!!! People would download Map+mpq as package, where's the Problem? Of course u cant play the map in b.net, but who cares if it's a single player map ;)

Precisely MM! I never add files to maps...though my edited war3patch is nearly 71 megs due to all my custom skins and a few music tracks. It allows me to make maps that use custom music, skins, and spells, but can still be imported into war3.mpq for campaign use because it doesn't contain the files it uses =)

this is odd, one of my abilities isn't showing up in the world editor. The abilities that are for the Orc, Undead, and Human hero work perfectly fine, but the ultimate for the Night Elf hero doesn't even show on the list of hero abilities. I check NightElfAbilityFunc and Strings, along with AbilityData.slk and everything appears fine. Anybody have a similar problem?

How!? could you link us to your tutorial once it's done :)

I had also many problems adding new Abilities :(
How do you do this, that the World Editor recognizes new codes like [ANxy] in NightELfAbilityFunc.txt? Always I used new codes the World Editor had unknown(ANxy) in the heros ability list.

@Diabolyx666: Could you please send me a mpq with the new abilities? (without the skins and sounds if possible ;))
My email: [email protected]

after a bit more of messing around, all the abilities are showing up as unknown with their string code (ANxx, AUxx, AExx, AOxx, AHxx) though in game they are showing up correctly. The NE ultimate still won't work, even though their other abilities do. I will release a tutorial and a sample MPQ as soon as I perfect my methods and get the damn NE spell to work.

Hmmm perhaps you have more than 5 hero abilities? This was also a thing I noticed, if you give a hero more than 5 hero abilities, it will just not show the others... You can check this also in the Editor, if you double click on the placed hero he will only have 5 abilities although in the Unit Editor you gave him more.

Does anybody know what the columns "alias", "code" and "uberAlias" in AbilityData.slk EXACTLY define?
AFAIK "uberAlias" is used in RACEAbilityFunc.txt and RACEAbilityStrings.txt, but I'm not shure...
And "alias" is used in UnitAbilities.slk but it seems to have influence on the behavior of the spell, too.

IF blizzard fixed the buffer art it would be nice, otherwise it still have same sfx when spell is casted

Alias=>code name of spell which is duplicated

code=>real spell code

uberalias=>bufferart for dpulciated spell <=====IF THIS ONE WORKS THEN IT WOULD BE GREAT....unfortunately..it doesnt....

as long as the function of uberalias is not working, im not bothering writing a tutorial as you can only duplicate spells with same sfx (although summonigs liek ferla spirit=> dragons would be appropiate, but for blizzard like spells....go figure =)

uberalias is not for buffer art, but for the buttonicon and the tooltip afaik!
buffer art is specified by the code, isnt it?

My other question still is unanswered:
If I add new string codes (like ANxx) to RACEAbilityFunc.txt and RACEAbilityStrings.txt, why doesnt the World Editor find them?

And one last thing: Could it be possible to change the triggers in the World Editor, so that in the list of "Hero - Learn Skill" you could take your new skills?

uber alias is also used for buffer art like it determines what things will be shown if you cast blizzard =)

they are mostly extensions with b or x

Well, but if you look at Blizzard (creep):
alias and uberalias are ACbz, but code is AHbz.
And the Effect shown in game will be the one of XHbz, which is directly below AHbz in HumanAbilityFunc.txt