Editing Lightning Effects

[Nogusta]

Hi there, I downloaded Magos' simple model editor the other day and was looking through the MPQ for the spell "drain life". What I wanted to do was change the lightning effect of drain life to something more beam-like such as Flare.blp.

I found out a little while ago that the textures used with lightning effects such as the green beam that is fired when drain life is casted are actually referenced from a file called LightningData.sdk (excel file) located under the directory Splats/LightningData.sdk in the War3x MPQ where you can change the texture that plays when a specific lightning is fired.

So I went and found this file, then changed the lightning texture field for the drain life lightning to "Flare.blp", but when I proceeded to save this I realized that I couldn't save the file back into the MPQ, but only somewhere on my harddrive where it would remain useless (at least I think it would). At the same time, I also realized that even if I WAS able to save the LightningData.sdk file back into the MPQ, the change in the lightning effect would only apply to my machine (I think?) and not be specific to my map because this change is only present in MY MPQ, and not other ppls MPQs.

My question is how do I change the texture of a lightning effect to a custom texture and where do I save the LightningData.sdk file that controls this so that it applies only to my map?

The thread where I found out about the ability to change lightning effects is here: http://hilton.gw.oiccam.com/showthread.php?t=27524

 

[ElmStFreddie]

For one, yes, if you were to replace it in the mpq that would only affect you.

I'm pretty sure you can just import it into the import editor, and replace the original sdk file..?
Try that. My best solution

 

[wd40bomber7]

Hes correct, if you import it with the same path as that in the MPQ it will overwrite it during the game. Better yet, it does work in multiplayer.