heroes and building skills

[Nirual]

Hi, for my map project I need informations about how heroes and building skills combined work or not work.
I noticed that in maps like NCCD, workers are heroes who do not level, have no hero skills but can use a building skill.

On the other hand, a friend claims that heroes cant have a building skill.

I need to know:
Can you give heroes building skills or not, and how?
Is it possible as generic or as hero skill, or both?

If its possible, is there anything that I need to be aware of? such as disabling leveling and hero skills for some reason like in these tds?
are all types of building possible (human, undead, NE and orc type) ?

Or do I have to trick in some way such as giving a summon that works like a whisp instead?

Any hint/help is appreciated.

 

[Panto]

You'd want to have a reason to make your builders heroes, but it can be done. The only reason that you can't do it innately in the editor is that the necessary fields for the object editor aren't enabled for heroes, only units, in the .slk that controls which fields are shown.

I don't happen to recall which .slk it is. I'll look into it. You can poke around a bit with this information and try to get it yourself. You need to find the right .slk, find the appropriate abilities in it, and set the cell under the Hero header to "1" to enable it. Then put the .slk in your Warcraft III\Units\ directory (you may have to create it) and run WE. It will use the .slk you placed. You do not have to import it into the map file.

 

[Nirual]

I do have my reasons for making him a hero yeah.
However, you really helped me already, Im not that good at that .slk stuff but perhaps my friend can tinker with that.

Thank you for the information.

 

[Panto]

I did my homework and found you more specific information.

The file that you need to extract is called UnitMetaData.slk and it can be found either in war3patch.mpq (check there first), or if not there, then in war3x.mpq. You'll need a program like WinMPQ to open these.

Don't ever insert anything into a .mpq. Ever. Not once.

Find the file in one of those .mpq's that's called Units\UnitMetaData.slk and extract it. Open it (Microsoft Excel can do that) and go to line 40 or search for the four-letter code "ubui". Column B will say "builds", so you know you've got it. Now go over to column Q, which is whether that field is used for heroes in the object editor. You'll notice that column R, which is for normal units, has a 1 in it, but column Q has a 0. Change column Q to 1 ("true"), save the file (don't let Excel tell you to save it as a different file type), and place it in your \Warcraft III\Units\ folder. Then start up or re-start up WE. When you go to a Hero in the object editor, he should be able to have buildings set. Any unit that has buildings available in that field will get a "Build" ability in-game based on his race.

 

[Nirual]

thank you very much, that should be it.

Some suggested me to work my way around with triggers, but I think this is more elegant.