DotA RPG, need help..

I need some help on this map that I am creating, contact me at [email protected] (or add me on msn) or contact me on battle.net (rorix_bladewing there too)

So what is this map about and what is my biggest problem at the moment?
This map is going to be an RPG map (like a campaign with several players) based on DotA 3.7 (reign of chaos). I splitted it into a scourge and a sentinel side, I asked Ryude for an unprotected map and got one. The problem is, when I edit it (even if I just plant a tree) it doesnt work anymore, you cannot longer pick a hero and units no longer spawn. At first this didnt look like a big problem to me, I would just put in some triggers to pick the hero's and i didnt need spawning units anyways, so i started making the terrain different and adding some triggers, then i tested it again. I could pick a hero now, but all the custom spells in DotA were not able to pick, like you could pick shockwave, frost nova, heal, critical strike, but not the edited spells, like purification, proximity mine, pure water. To fix this problem i started asking around for help (starting with the dota editors) but they didnt want/could help. This forum was down for a short time, so i had to wait with registering. After asking lots of questions I found out that it probably had to do something with abilitydata.slk , so I opened WinMPQ to find abilitydata.slk in my unprotected map. which i found. Then I tried to find abilitydata.slk in my own map (which was an edited version of the unprotected map) and there was no abilitydata.slk . So I guessed that I had to import abilitydata.slk which I now know is not the easiest thing to do. I tried a lot of things, but none worked.

So please if anyone here knows what I should do to make it work thank you already. Btw I am editing it in the frozen throne editor (thats way easier editing) but the map I edit is a ROC defens of the ancients map.

Sorry for my bad english, I am not very good at it, still learning though.

Ps. My internet explorer sometimes doesnt work correct (doesnt open all pages all the time), so sending mail is greatly appreciated.

Thank you for reading.

You're wading in very treacherous waters now...

Since I post early, I would like to request no one flame this person for basing his map off DotA (but of course, suggestions instead of flames would be good).

Firstly, there should be no reason why the map does not work unless what he sent you was a deprotected version of the protected map instead of the original, which I highly doubt.

Second, since you're basing the thing off DotA classic, it won't take a lot of effort to recreate whatever you deem fit (and since it is an RPG, you can remove whatever elements you deem inappropriate). Even better, since you have the source, whatever triggered spells you have no idea how to do you can just copy off.

Third, and most importantly, I would highly recommend that you don't base your map off DotA. DotA was not created to be an RPG. 4 hero skills, unless you're planning to make your RPG as short as warchasers, doesn't work well in an RPG. RPGs need to have more variety and morphability than DotA heroes can give.

If you want to base your heroes off DotA heroes, go ahead, as long as you can add the variety in. But I don't think it is a good idea to just take DotA heroes and plonk it into an RPG. I'm sure you can come up with better stuff instead of reusing heroes.

I probably can do better indeed. I just want to do this, and for being short as a map, it has to be playable in a short time indeed, because if you want to play it online, it has to be short enough to end in atleast 2 hours if you do it fast. The reason why I want to take the DotA hero's abilitys and heros is because I wanted to make this the history of DotA (how it came to a fight) I thought it would be much easier if I just went on with the dota map. Since that would save me time in recreating items and skills. And the map he gave me had everything in it he said. And so it seems, since the map works if you do not edit it in the tft editor. (dont know if he also stops working if you use the roc editor, but i guess it makes no difference)

Well, making a map like DotA back in the days of RoC was no easy job, because you didn't have an object editor back then. That's why DotA was such an accomplishment at the time. As far as I remember, the majority if not all of the spells were just modified original spells, there were no or very little triggered spells, as the trigger editor was also far away from the current patched tft editor at that time.

My point is, the editing methods were difficult at that time, so continiuing to use them may actually be more time consuming than just recreating the heroes with the current editor capababilities. Once you figure out what ability a DotA skill is based on, there's very little work required to make it in the TFT object editor. I suggest strongly that you should just use the map you have as a reference and make everything from scratch.

I agree partly, It would indeed be easy to make the spells, but there are a lot of spells to create that way,and I do not intend to change the spells alot (wna stick close to dota on the spells of the heros. So I still hope someone can help me importing those abilitydata.slk files and some skins...

Unless, you make a story and diffrent gamplay for every hero,...