My spell upgrade CRASHES the game without a word...

[Xifos]

Nope, not even an error message. Just a polite shutdown.

PROBLEM 1

I edited "Melee Lightning Damage Bonus" (MLDB from now on) so the unit automatically casts Chain Lightning when it attacks. Then, I made an upgrade for Chain Lightning, which only worked for existing units.

Now, I have many different units with this kind of setup (i.e. one with Forked Lightning, one with Frost Nova, etc.), so triggers are out of the question.

So, I tried something else.

PROBLEM 2

I made four increasingly better Chain Lightning abilities instead of one Chain Lightning with four levels. Then, I gave the MLDB four levels, the only difference being the effect ability (level 1 used Chain Lightning 1, etc.). Instead of upgrading Chain Lightning itself, I now had the upgrade modify MLDB.

This solved the original problem; now, even new units were affected by the upgrade. But, it caused a different problem instead...it crashed the game.

I don't think some bad value in MLDB caused this. (Maybe I should have changed it back to an item ability...?) But anyway....

PROBLEM 3

So I created four different MLDBs as well. Each one had its own Chain Lightning to play with. I gave the unit all four abilities and gave the upgrade NO effects. Instead, the upgrade worked a trigger. This trigger manually enabled/disabled these various Chain Lightning abilities based on the level of the upgrade.

Obviously, this no longer crashes the game, and new units are also affected by the upgrade. So, it solved problems 1 and 2. But again, I have another problem....

Even though only one "version" of MLDB and Chain Lightning are enabled at a time, the unit STILL thinks it has all four and will only use one.

PROBLEM 4

So THEN, I got WinMPQ and played with AbilityData.slk a little. I made three copies of Melee Lightning Damage Bonus (its alias is Ailx) and gave them aliases of Xno1, Xno2, and Xno3.

But I can't find them on World Editor....

I guess all I'm really asking is how to create NEW abilities. I don't mean simply modifying an existing one; I need to create a NEW copy of MLDB with a NEW alias so I can use the dumb thing four times.

I tried downloading some spell editor only to find an ActiveX error prevents it from running....

If I can find another way around ANY of these problems, then it all works out. But, I seriously doubt there's any other way to do this other than creating four NEW spells and using a few triggers.

...Anyone?

 

[Xifos]

Alright, minor update...I gave up on spell editors and just used plain old-fashioned MPQ editing to add my four new abilities to my map, but I still can't get it to work.

MLDB is an item ability, so I extracted AbilityData.slk, ItemAbilityFunc.txt, and ItemAbilityStrings.txt from War3Patch.mpq. In each one, I copied MLDB three times...also known as Ailx...and gave each copy a brand new alias: Xno1, Xno2, and Xno3. Then, I just copied Ailx and pasted it three times in Func.txt and Strings.txt, again only changing the alias.

All of these I pasted on the BOTTOM of each file and in respective order.

Then, I imported the three files into my map with WinMPQ, and I still can't see my new variants of MLDB in my map.

Forget all the other problems[...I'm positive this will work if I can only make four different MLDBs so the unit can use each one separately.

I've been messing with this for a while now, and I'm at my wit's end. Am I doing something wrong, or what?