Cans and Cannots with Starcraft Modding

[jhawks]

Hi all, new here ^^

So first, hi everyone!

Second, I want to make a MOD in Starcraft but before running around like a headless chickens, I want to know what's possible and what's impossible. Before I joined, I researched a lot of tutorials, including the one here I found by IskatuMesk.

I did practices and done more research but seem to fail finding the stuff I want.

So I thought I'd come here and ask everyone the cans and cannots when in comes to modding Starcraft.

1) Is it possible to change a unit's "blueprint"? It's the image at the bottom that goes green/yellow/red on parts of the unit when they get damaged.

2) Can you actually change the unit portrait? The video of the unit's faces? I read that you can use a tool called "Smacker" or something. But after reading about it, it seems like you can only edit the existing video? I want to actually replace the entire portrait. Let's say of myself dressed up as the unit.

3) Can you change the unit's voices with custom ones? I know you can "alter" their voices via DatEdit. But I can't find a tutorial where you can record your voice, stick it into Starcraft and give it to a Marine, let's say. I checked the codes of units, via IceCCUI, and it has lines that say "playsound" and then the sound file. But I don't know how to "add" my own custom voices into Starcraft.

That's basically the 3 main things I want to work on. I'm still looking around the internet and on this site but can't seem to find what I'm looking for.

If I missed or misunderstood something then I do apologize. I never modded a game before so excuse any ignorance.

But any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

JHawks

[IskatuMesk]

"Mod" is not capitalized. That's the first "do not" of modding. Adhere to this rule and you'll get far my friend. Break it and you'll reap pain untold.

1 - Yes. Hope you've got very strong photoshop skills.

2 - Yes. Hope you've got decent paintshop pro skills and talent in 3d animation and modeling because that's how the frames for those are made.

3 - Yes. See: any of my mods. But not with datedit. Datedit has virtually no bearing on sounds except for what id's the unit uses. You need an audio editing tool like Adobe Audition and a bit of patience to learn how to voice act and edit your sounds. You'll also want a decent mic. This is a considerable time investment but I guarantee you that if you're serious about this and you invest that time it will be a skill invaluable to you in all future projects.

Once you have your sounds you must place them in your custom MPQ "replacing" the existing sounds just like dat files and iscript.

Also - tutorials are scarce and people like me are reluctant to help individuals so far into sc's lifespan and so deep into the decay of modding. I've long thought of making video series and tutorials and stuff but time and time again decide that the time investment is not worth it as the people who've read my existing work remain in a single digit figure after all these years.

But I'll answer what questions I can given free time.

[New-/Hydrolisk]

For number 3:

Besides using DAT Edit, you can also go to this website, , scroll down to the bottom, and then download and use either the Brood War or Vanilla StarCraft sound utilities, to extract all of StarCraft's sounds. You'll get an idea on how the sounds folder of any mod is structured, and where to place files in an actual mod in order to change the sounds.

(The utility creates a "sound" folder in your main SC directory. Replacing those sounds will apply the new sounds for normal StarCraft. Download and using the utility is mostly just to get a clear idea on how to structure the "sound" folder of each mod.)

[jhawks]

Hmmm... I see, well I do have good experience in Photoshop and I have a degree that makes me competent with 3D Art but from what you say, in terms of you know, dedicating one self to modding Starcraft, seems like I chose the wrong game to mod.

This was suppose to be for an assignment you see and thought of using Starcraft since it's one of my favourite RTS of all time.

So you don't know of any existing tutorials that are relevant for 1) and 2)?

As for the sounds, I followed two of your tutorials regarding changing the sprites and changing the attacks (Changing a Mutalisk into a ship and giving it a Yamato attack). I sort of understand the MPQ thing, but I don't get how to put the custom sounds into my MPQ? From the tutorials, I just got from it that MPQs are like your custom files that contain your custom changes. But they were all from DatEdit stuff, which is very limited in terms of customization.

New-/Hydrolisk: Yeah I got a program like that where it extracted all the sounds from Starcraft. I used some of those for some of my triggers like the Dropship's sound when they drop off a unit. But even if I replace them with my custom ones, how do I put it back into Starcraft?

[IskatuMesk]

Drag-drop files into your mpq. Assign their name and directory. Rename and fix up if need be. Bam, you're done.

Any kind of mod is a tremendous dedication, not just for Starcraft. Starcraft is one of the easiest and fastest games you can hope to mod.

Wireframes are a black art few have any attempted. The best I'd say is Laconius - he manually drew out his wireframes line by line which is pretty much the only way you're going to do it unless you make a really low-poly 3d model and render as wireframe and go from there.

For portraits, basically you model/skin/animate what you want, render as a small resolution, apply the Starcraft palette to the bmps, then compile each set individually with the old rad tools. Which don't work on Vista or Windows 7, btw, so if you use either OS you're out of luck for portraits unless you find someone else to convert them.

[jhawks]

Ah ok, I get it now. Need to play around more with that. Hopefully I can at least change the sounds.

I run Windows 7, so there goes the Unit Portraits hahahaha.

I'll work on adding custom sounds/voices now. Thanks.

Guess I'll have to abandon 1) and 2) =/

[New-/Hydrolisk]

Actually, if I recall correctly, bajadulce's Planet Erratus (was that what it was called?) featured custom "wireframes" that appeared like the actual unit did, as opposed to being made up of lines. (I.e. a normal picture of the unit, except that it had an "aura" around it that changed from green to red to indicate health.) Also, if you rendered a high-poly model, you could always erase the lines yourself, which may be tedious. Alternatively, if you can, you could try highlighting the "important" lines of the model and rendering only those in wireframe mode. This is getting outside my area of expertise though.

EDIT:
I tried running radvideo.exe just now, using Windows 7 x64. It worked for me. I recommend testing out the program yourself, fiddling with compatibility settings, etc. before losing all hope.

[IskatuMesk]

I repeatedly tried to run the old rad tools and windows would whine that they aren't a valid win32 application which is generally not fixable. I dunno why it would work for you and not me unless you're not running the correct tools.

And yes you can go baja's route but only looks good if you do that for every single unit.

[jhawks]

I'm going to start things one by one. Since sound seems to be the easiest route, I started with that.

I just tried changing one of the Marine's sounds and I failed. The sound I chose to replace is "TMaYes00.wav" - the Marine says "Go go go!" when moved around.

Here's what I did.

1) I got a random sound file of the same file format (.wav) and renamed it "TMaYes00.wav"
2) I opened my MPQ (which works because I made an Ultralisk breathe fire) and dragged the sound file into it
3) I gave it the following directory "sound\terran\marine\"
4) In the WinMPQ window, it reads "Sound\Terran\Marine\TMaYes00.wav" with 8Kb in size, 4% ratio, 7Kb packed, 0 location and C-- Attributes.
5) I ran Starcraft with my MPQ and the Marine's sound didn't change

I assume there must be something wrong with the way I written the directory? Because when I extracted the sounds from Starcraft, it created a folder named "Sound" in the Starcraft folder so I only assumed that was the correct directory.

What did I do wrong?

[IskatuMesk]

If starcraft or staredit or datedit is open/accessing the mpq while you add a file it won't actually add the file. Otherwise the directory looks fine to me.

Does the original sound play or no audio play?

[jhawks]

The MPQ is closed. The only thing opened is MPQDraft which opens Starcraft with my MPQ.

When I move the Marine around, all sounds are normal. He still says "Go go go", which is the sound file I was trying to replace. So it's like I didn't affect anything. Yet the other custom things work, like my Ultralisk breathing fire.

[IskatuMesk]

Send me your mpq and I'll see if I can figure out why.

[jhawks]

Ok, I just sent it to you.

[IskatuMesk]

Try renaming it to be all lowercase.

[jhawks]

I tried doing both of these:

sound\terran\marine\TMaYes00

and

sound\terran\marine\tmayes00

And both yielded the same result, the sound still doesn't get replaced. If it's working for you, then it must be something wrong on my side. Don't know where to begin thinking though =/