Couple questions

1. How do you make a spell channel?
2. How can I make a hero permanently ethereal, including the graphical effect and status?
3. How the heck do you get the music list to work right?
4. I want to make a unit generate alarms, then have all creatures owned by neutral hostile in a region respond to it. How?

For ethereal, just add the ability "Ethereal onto the unit in the Object Editor.

I don't know about the rest of what you want to know.

The only way to make a spell channeling is to base it on an already existing channeling spell.

1. How do you make a spell channel?

In the object editor, go to abilities, new ability. I believe it is a unit ability at default but I could be wrong, but go to Channel. And make that the channel ability. If you have trouble more than that, come back and ask again, there is quite some detail that I won't go into now.

2. How can I make a hero permanently ethereal, including the graphical effect and status?

Well, I've never tried this, but create a custom version of the ability that turns a unit into ethereal form(can't recall name atm), and try setting the duration value of the effect to 0.

3. How the heck do you get the music list to work right?

Are you just using sound editor or are you using triggers for this too? I've never played with sound(got speakers working for the first time literally like a week ago), but I believe you could just do it through the trigger editor. Create an array sound variable, then create a trigger where the sound variable is set. Set the variable to every song you want on the playlist. In the array area of the variable, just go in numerical order(1. 2. 3, until you end up at ). Then setup another trigger where it the event is your sound variable stops playing(I'm pretty sure this is an event, if not then this answer here is useless), and create an integer variable. Name it something like s, to keep it short. Make that variable's default value 0. Then in that trigger, the very first line of code should be:

Set s = (s + 1)

And then tell it to play your sound variable, and in the array area put the s. Note that in order to get the sound played the first time, just run the sound trigger off of another trigger(a map initialization one).

4. I want to make a unit generate alarms, then have all creatures owned by neutral hostile in a region respond to it. How?

I'd answer that but my baby brother is getting born right now so I have to go.

1. It's a custom ability for a special Tinker hero called Golem Construction. I based it off of Archimonde's Dark Summoning and use a trigger to take away resources when it's cast. Quite frankly, I don't know how to use the Channel spell and don't see how I could make it do what I want.

2. Duh! Thanks!

3. I suppose that's one way to do it, but wouldn't that interfere with other sounds playing? This would mess up some of the cinematic sequences I've set up. I was actually referring to using Music variables with the Set Music List command.

4. Congratulations! You'll have much headaches in your future! I'd appreciate your help on this matter when you're done celebrating.

Well, channel is mostly used for trigger abilities. But if there is an ability in which you can modify to have it like you want(even if a little triggering is necessary), then I wouldn't say channel is for you.

Well, couldn't you just pause the main Music Variable during a cinamatic, and unpause it afterwards? And you would still hear the ambient sounds.

As for the alarms, could you be a bit more specific on alarms? I've seen that in the trigger area, but never really got into it. Do you mean that it is in need or in danger, and that enemies should could and take advantage or that allies should come and help?

What is your intent with the alarm(should have said this earlier)? I can help you way better then.

I actually got the effect I wanted from the alarm thing by simply assigning all the neutrals I wanted a color, but for curiosity's sake I'd like to know how that works anyway.

As for the channel, I could use a trigger to give an item that automatically uses the existing spell as an item on the casting hero when the custom channel spell was cast, but I'd like to channel more than one spell. How do I differentiate between custom channelled spells? I know it has something to do with one of the fields, but which and how?

Also, I have a logistical problem. I've been using 'tripwire' regions and units selected by player to run cinematic sequences in my map. It works great, as long as the player doesn't decide between issuing the order and entering the region to select anything else. What do most people use to get around this problem?