Campaign Creations

Is there an easy way to create an exe file that will automatically load into a Starcraft 1 map and maybe show a picture before the briefing starts?

I know there's a program called MPQDraft, but I have no idea how that is supposed to work.

Probably via exe editing, if you can figure out what command is passed to load maps. MPQdraft just loads an external winmpq and patches the game's memory with it to make mods. It is effectively the ancestor of Firegraft.

Firegraft? Thanks, I'll look into that.

Does anyone know a good tutorial that'd suit me?

I just looked into Firegraft and it talks about some mpq mumbo jumbo like the other program - don't know what that is.

How hard can it be to make an exe file load Starcraft, show a custom title picture and then start a custom map. What are all the nerds up to these days^^?

All of the nerds have since long moved on to either non-modding real life activities or engines like Unreal 4, unfortunately. You might be better off finding Heinermann (creator of BWAPI), since he is the last person I know of to possess serious reverse engineering skills that is or was recently active.

In a nutshell, all of Starcraft's data is contained in mpqs. If you look inside your base directory you will see stardat, broodat, patch_rt etc.

Map files technically are mpqs as well, and this trend continues all the way up into Heart of the Swarm, before they switched to a new format.

Traditionally, having an engine load a map requires a command to be sent to load the map. It's possible you might be able to do this with a shortcut (some games let you do this), but I wouldn't know the command. If this is not the case, you'd basically need to reverse engineer the ASM of the exe to figure out how and where it sends commands to load maps, and then modify or create an exe that hooks onto it to send that command.

This kind of stuff is way outside of my league, so unfortunately I don't know specifics. Hopefully someone else slinks by who has an idea. I am not even 100% sure this will require exe modifications, but I don't personally know or have heard of this before.

Thanks so much for the help.

I'll keep this thread in case someone comes up with an easy solution.

Juggling mpqs and redoing data files is exactly why I chose Starcraft, or Staredit, more specifically. I first wanted to make maps using the SC2 Galaxy Editor, but when I first tried to make a custom unit and saw what I had to do, I said: "Nope. Not for me."

^__^

Sweet Tassadar/Zeratul fusion, btw ^^

Well, compared to sc2's disaster of an editor, sc1 is relatively pleasant to work with. All custom content has a learning curve and entry barrier, however, and all systems have their limits unless you are a programmer to begin with. Ultimately it will come down to what you actually want out of your project.

And yeah, that image is from some Korean(iirc) comic.

I'm sorry, but I need to exploit the fact that I got you here now. I have some other threads open here that are important to me but no one answers them.

Can I ask you to answer these questions for me?

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7087&p=61553&sid=ed ... 7a1#p61553
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7085&p=61551&sid=ed ... 7a1#p61551

I haven't replied to those threads because I simply don't know the answers. I didn't do much mapping, only modding, and I don't know of any active sites left.

I see. Thank you.