Changing forms on custom heros?

Alright, I'm new to custom stuff in Warcraft 3. What I want is to make a custom hero using existing animations and abilities, and what I want him to do is be able to change form (i.e. Medivh to Medivh(crow form)), and back while still retaining his hero qualities(i.e. experience, items, and hero ability level). Is this at all possible? If so, can someone please give me a step by step, newbie explaination on how? I've tried to mess with files in the MPQ but it seems that when I put them back into the MPQ file after changes, they revert back to the way they were before. Any help is greatly appreciated, even links to sites with information on this stuff already. Thanks.

Heres what to do. Edit the transformation spell and make the changed into unit a hero. Meaning change the XXXX part which is probably unique data 1 to a hero code like the archmages or something. Then edit that hero to what you want and poof, you got a hero. And if this doesnt work, then your doing it wrong cuz ive done it before with good results.

Sounds like it would work. Do you have time to give more concise directions on how to do that? Like I said before, I've tried to edit things in the MPQ but have been unsuccessful thus far.

The easyist way is to just change the Demon Form of the DH into what ever you want to hero to turn into and give the hero Meta. If you don't want to make the hero actually learn the skill, you need to edit files in the MPQ. In the Abilities.slk, make meta into a unit ability and edit the Func file so it doesn't block skills button position wise. I'm sure there are other ways, but this is the easiest.

Sounds like it probably is the easiest from what I've read from you and from other forum posts, but I want to be able to use the original Demon Hunter Metamorphosis skill on other heros, unchanged. Your way would probably mess that up huh?

Wow. It's amazing how much one person can learn in a short 48 hours. Not only have I created the medivh custom hero with crow form as his ultimate, but I've also learned how to let my hero get past level 10, and give him a leveling cyclone ability, among other things. MPQ editing is sweet. =) If any other newbies are having as much trouble with this as I have, let me know and I can try to explain what I've done so far. Thanks to you two guys for your help.

:-p All changers in the game have a specific thing animation for changing :/ even if its still in the game. Most people, such as DOTT and DOTC when u avatar become a bigger Crow or Druid:/ so avatar would make them transform for avatars time ;-p

Messing with the mpq is fun, but it can mess up your bnet experience, like kicking you off unexpectedly and such. But if you dont play on bnet, then just edit away. And i doubt theres many ppl that still need to know how to make a hero with a higher level than 10. Theres been a million posts about it.

Yeah. I play on LAN all the time so it works for me. I've only been editing existing characters and spells though. Is it possible to make completely new ones by adding my own spell ID? Or can I only edit existing character and spell IDs?

Well, to make a new spell it has to be based on an old one. Now remember, the animations and such can be changed, so even if it is the same thing as rain of chaos, it could bring down some water elementals that stun upon birth. First you have to have the alias the same as one of the other spells aliases. The spell you want to base it off of would be the alias you use. then for the code you want the same thing as the alias. For the uber alias you make that up. Now, what you do is set all other values to zero. Then open it up with a spell editor program and edit it the way you want. Now, for the abilityfunc.txt and abilitystrings.txt, copy the abilities data you used as the base and paste it at the end. In the data it will have a [XXXX] at the beginning of the data. Change this to the uberalias that you put for your spell. Now edit the strings and functions how you want them and save the file. It's tuff in the beginning, but it gets easier when you work at it.

Thanks a lot man! Maybe I should get one of those spell editors... I've just been editing through excel and notepad. Hey, I got another question (I seem to be full of 'em): I want to make a hero spell that raises skeleton archers from corpses. I've made one based on the Item ability that the Book of the Dead uses. So far I can get everything to work except for the corpse part. Right now, it just spawns the archers whether there's a corpse or not. I can't think of any other way to do it that won't mess up the Raise Dead spell, and I wanna keep that. Any thoughts?

You are full of questions. Well, use raise dead. And change the skeleton unit to a skeleton archer. Thats the only current way i know how to do it without messing with the game.dll which is were the unit spawned is hardcoded. If you wanna mess with that go ahead but really think about what your doing since this isnt the mpq data anymore, it actually keeps the game running and running right.

Actually, I wouldn't mind changing the game.dll. Do you know how to get into it?