Making Starfall into Sheepfall!!!

Hey,

Someone mentioned a while back that they were screwing around one day and changed the starfall projectile graphic to the sheep model. The result being a spell that would summon sheep from the sky to smite your foes. That sounds really cool - is there any way to duplicate the effect from within the map editor (I don't really want to hack the game files for a number of reasons). I made a sheepherder hero for my AoS map and Sheepfall would be the perfect ultimate!

Thanks for any help.

I have made attempts at solving this, but none of the "Art" fields in the ability editor for starfall seem to have any effect (I changed any reference of an art or model file to the sheep model, but it's still not working). The starfall projectile is stored as a .mdl animation, right? There's no field in the Starfall ability that accepts a .mdl explicitely, so it's not obvious where to edit it. Or maybe it is and I'm just an idiot.

Search for Starfall in this file NightElfAblilityFunc.txt. The Starfall projectile ability code should be right under it.

You can add the Starfall projectile ability to the editor, but when you change it through the editor the game crashes.

So there's basically no way of making a spell that calls falling sheep from the sky inside of the map editor?

exactly

You could make it based of blizzard or rain of fire and change the shards to fall sheep through the editor. If you want to based off starfall you have to edit the txt file.

I don't know about starfall, but it works with projectiles. This one time, I was making a hero be like a Rifleman. I was changing the projectile, and didn't notice that when I picked 'Rifleman', the projectile was under units, instead of projectiles. So, whenever he shot someone, he a rifleman appeared on the target. It didn't make the game crash, and I did it in MapEd. The dwarves only appeared on the object, because that is where the projectile animations shows. Now, if I had replaced an arrow with one, for example, it would probably have shown it flying through the air as well. I hope this helps.

you cant edit blizzard or rain of fire to make sheep fall for the reason below

starfall, blizzard, and rain of fire all require buff editing to make have a different art. the only way to buff edit is open up the RACEabilityfunc.txt and change it but when you do this all spells based of the edited Starfall, blizzard, and rain of fire will have there art changed to what you changed it. There is no way of editng buff art inside the editor. hoepfully blizz fixes this in a late patch but no guarentees cuz blizz said that they may or may not add it.

Well you are wrong. I added the Blizzard and Rain of Fire buff codes into the abilitydata.slk and I have edited the effects through the editor. However, when I change the Starfall target buff art through the editor it crashes when I use the spell in game.

Forgot to attach this map. Play this map and when you cast Blizzard the effect will be stars instead of ice shards, and Rain of Fire will be infernal rocks instead of fiery rocks. Open it up with WinMPQ and you will see that I didn't add in RaceAbilityFunc.txt.

you could do it through triggers, when a dummy ability is cast, set a bool and activate a trigger

while the spell is being cast, pick all units in X range around the caster every 3 seconds or so and create a falling sheep special effect above them, add the units to a ugroup, and after a slight delay, hurt all units in the ugroup and remove them -- repeat process

woah bluedragon can you plz tell me step by step what you did?

I was going to do this by hex editing the w3a file until I thought about the spell editor doing it for me. You can't change buff icons or buff tips.

1) Find the code of the buff art by opening up the RaceAbilityFunc.txt and searching for it, it is usually right under the spell code.

2) Extract the AbilityData.slk, then add the code and strings that will specify the category of the spell buff.

3) Create a Units folder in your Warcraft III directory and put the AbilityData.slk in it.

4) This part isn't neccessary, but if you want the code to have a name add it into the RaceAbilityStrings.txt, or it will show up as Unknown <ABCD> in the editor.


Example:

1) Blizzard buff code = XHbz
2) Add the code like this or something: XHbz XHbz Blizzard Buff 0 1 1 0 hero human
3) ...
4) [XHbz]
Name=Blizzard Buff

dude! thats crazy you gotta tell Scio or starcraft freak to add this buff editing thingy into the world editor!!!!!! thnx!!!! so much!!!

Well, but you can't add new buff IDs, or did I miss something?
As far as I understand, you just add a new entry to AbilityData.slk with the ID of the buffs (so the editor "thinks" that it is an ability).

It would be a lot of work to add all the buffs to AbilityData.slk. But I will ask Scio about this.

And please can you guys inform me with a post in the Wishlist thread about such discoveries? This time someone referenced me to this, but maybe I have even missed something.

@bludragn:
If we add this, you will be mentioned in the Special Thanks section of the readme.

I found out something else.
We can only add buffs, that begin with X (like XHbz). Buffs that begin with B make the WE crash.