Ok I know there are multiple of these guides around here but I have helped many people on IRC who are still struggling with this. At least now I can send them to a link of my own to help them troubleshoot.
Data Editor:
How to create your own custom unit by duplicating a “basic” unit. By basic I mean it doesn’t burrow, morph, have multiple attack types, spells, etc. Think zealot/marine etc. We will duplicate a zealot and remove his 2 attacks per turn feature and his charge behavior.
Step 1: The Duplication. Open your data editor. Go to Units tab at top left. Search Zealot, select Zealot on left side and right click “duplicate” on the pop up window you need to have the following check boxes FILLED IN: Actors>>Zealot, Zealot Attack Effects>>Zealot – Zealot – Psi Blades (Damage) (If you want the 2 attacks per turn feature of Psi Blades you need to duplicate the other effect here too) Models>> Zealot Weapons>> Zealot – Psi Blades
Press OK and don’t do anything. You should now have a new unit called “zealot” selected at top left. At bottom left in the tree you should see the duplicated items linked to this unit with “copy” after their names. We need to rename all those copies now.
Step 2: The renaming. Double click the unit name in the tree at bottom. (right now it says “zealot”). Rename it to “Your Unit” and click suggest on the ID field. IMPORTANT NOTE: If the ID field is grayed out and stuck on Zealot2 this is a bug. You need to Save your file and close the editor completely and reopen your file.
-Now rename the 2 copy actors and click suggest for ID. I recommend “Your Unit” and “YourUnit Attack” for the names.
-Now rename copied Effect, and click suggest for ID. I recommend “Your Unit Attack (Damage)”
-Now rename the copied weapon “Your Unit Blades” and click suggest ID.
-We have one important thing left to do for renaming. The model you duplicated was lost and we need to rename it to get it back for the unit. Go to the Models tab in the data editor and find “zealot copy”, rename it “Your Unit” and Suggest ID. Now click the “MODEL” field on the right and set it to “Zealot.m3”.
Step 3: The editing of objects. You can do these in almost any order but most orders will require backtracking. I strongly recommend the order I list them in. EFFECTS: Open the Effects tab on left, open “Your Unit Attack (Damage)” Edit the following fields on the right: Combat – Amount: This is the damage your weapon does. Combat – Armor Reduction: This is the reduction in dmg for each point of armor the attacked unit has. Effect – Random: This is optional in case you want a range of possible damage on your weapon. This effect will add a random number up to this number to your combat amount setting. For example: you set combat amount to 20 and Effect random to 10, when this unit attacks it will always do 20 dmg + a random additional 0-10 dmg. Making the effect of an attack 20-30 dmg. WEAPONS: Open the Weapons tab on the left, and open “Your Unit Blades”. Edit the following fields on the right: Effect – Effect: scroll in the list to “zealot – Your Unit Attack (Damage)” Stats – Period: this is the attack speed of your weapon, in seconds per attack Stats- Range: this is the range of your weapon, melee is 0.1 UI- Display Attack Count: set this to 1, it was 2 because of the double attack feature on normal zealot. This is only a display it doesn’t change anything Weapon – Target Filters: this is where you require ground or air. To attack both ground and air simply change ground to allowed. UNITS: Open the Units tab on the left, and open “Your Unit”. Edit these fields. Ability- Abilities+: select Warpable, ProgressRally, and Zealot-charge and click the red X to remove them. Ability- Command Card: click the Set Rally Point and Charge icons and press the red X to remove them. Combat – Weapons+: should say “zealot – Your Unit Blades” Cost – Cost: cost to build your unit. Editor – Description: the tooltip that appears in game when u hover the mouse over the wireframe display. Movement- Speed: the movement speed (there is a tutorial that says sc2 ms = wc3 ms/ 129 not sure how accurate this is) Stats – Life Armor: self explanatory Stats – Life Maximum: self explanatory Stats – Life Starting Amount: self explanatory Stats – Shield (etc): set these to 0 if you don’t want a protoss shield. Stats – Supplies: the “food/supply” cost of your unit.
The rest of the fields should be self explanatory if you want to further customize your unit. ACTORS: Open the Actors tab on the left, and open “Your Unit”. Edit the fields: Art- Model: make sure this says “Your Unit” Art – Scale: If you want to resize your unit I strongly suggest you do so here, you can also do this in the Model object itself but if you use the same model for multiple units that is bad idea. Event – Events+:here is where things get tougher.
Scroll to the top of this list of events, make sure the top 5 entries say “*.YOURUNIT.* and not *.Zealot.*
Now scroll down past all the greyed out event entries. Right click and remove selection on the bottom 4 entries about behavior.zealotcharge and UnitDeathCustomize for hallucinations.
At this point we are done unless you want to change the color of your unit. To Do this right click and “add event” on the left hand side. Now on the right side select Msg type: ActorCreation, select Target: Your Unit and then on the left side click on “Action Impact” under your new event and then on the right side select Msg Type: Set Tint Color and then pick the color you want. You are done and now press OK.
We are done! Now place your unit on the map and test him.
This is about the minimum you need to do to create a new melee unit based off of the zealot. There are other guides that tell you to duplicate everything, that’s a bad idea in my opinion. If this seems like a ton of work, well it is…. But once you have done it 2-3 times it becomes really fast and fluid. I have a little checklist in front of me when I create new units that says,
Duplicate Unit, check important actors, effects, model, weapons.
Rename the copied objects.
Edit the model and rename it.
Edit the effect.
Edit the weapon.
Edit Unit stats.
Edit the actor scale and events+.
So really its 7 steps to duplicate a basic melee unit and this takes me about 5 minutes max.
Ok I know there are multiple of these guides around here but I have helped many people on IRC who are still struggling with this. At least now I can send them to a link of my own to help them troubleshoot.
Data Editor:
How to create your own custom unit by duplicating a “basic” unit. By basic I mean it doesn’t burrow, morph, have multiple attack types, spells, etc. Think zealot/marine etc. We will duplicate a zealot and remove his 2 attacks per turn feature and his charge behavior.
Step 1: The Duplication. Open your data editor. Go to Units tab at top left. Search Zealot, select Zealot on left side and right click “duplicate” on the pop up window you need to have the following check boxes FILLED IN:
Actors>>Zealot, Zealot Attack
Effects>>Zealot – Zealot – Psi Blades (Damage) (If you want the 2 attacks per turn feature of Psi Blades you need to duplicate the other effect here too)
Models>> Zealot
Weapons>> Zealot – Psi Blades
Press OK and don’t do anything. You should now have a new unit called “zealot” selected at top left. At bottom left in the tree you should see the duplicated items linked to this unit with “copy” after their names. We need to rename all those copies now.
Step 2: The renaming. Double click the unit name in the tree at bottom. (right now it says “zealot”). Rename it to “Your Unit” and click suggest on the ID field. IMPORTANT NOTE: If the ID field is grayed out and stuck on Zealot2 this is a bug. You need to Save your file and close the editor completely and reopen your file.
-Now rename the 2 copy actors and click suggest for ID. I recommend “Your Unit” and “YourUnit Attack” for the names.
-Now rename copied Effect, and click suggest for ID. I recommend “Your Unit Attack (Damage)”
-Now rename the copied weapon “Your Unit Blades” and click suggest ID.
-We have one important thing left to do for renaming. The model you duplicated was lost and we need to rename it to get it back for the unit. Go to the Models tab in the data editor and find “zealot copy”, rename it “Your Unit” and Suggest ID. Now click the “MODEL” field on the right and set it to “Zealot.m3”.
Step 3: The editing of objects. You can do these in almost any order but most orders will require backtracking. I strongly recommend the order I list them in.
EFFECTS: Open the Effects tab on left, open “Your Unit Attack (Damage)” Edit the following fields on the right:
Combat – Amount: This is the damage your weapon does.
Combat – Armor Reduction: This is the reduction in dmg for each point of armor the attacked unit has.
Effect – Random: This is optional in case you want a range of possible damage on your weapon. This effect will add a random number up to this number to your combat amount setting. For example: you set combat amount to 20 and Effect random to 10, when this unit attacks it will always do 20 dmg + a random additional 0-10 dmg. Making the effect of an attack 20-30 dmg.
WEAPONS: Open the Weapons tab on the left, and open “Your Unit Blades”. Edit the following fields on the right:
Effect – Effect: scroll in the list to “zealot – Your Unit Attack (Damage)”
Stats – Period: this is the attack speed of your weapon, in seconds per attack
Stats- Range: this is the range of your weapon, melee is 0.1
UI- Display Attack Count: set this to 1, it was 2 because of the double attack feature on normal zealot. This is only a display it doesn’t change anything
Weapon – Target Filters: this is where you require ground or air. To attack both ground and air simply change ground to allowed.
UNITS: Open the Units tab on the left, and open “Your Unit”. Edit these fields.
Ability- Abilities+: select Warpable, ProgressRally, and Zealot-charge and click the red X to remove them.
Ability- Command Card: click the Set Rally Point and Charge icons and press the red X to remove them.
Combat – Weapons+: should say “zealot – Your Unit Blades”
Cost – Cost: cost to build your unit.
Editor – Description: the tooltip that appears in game when u hover the mouse over the wireframe display.
Movement- Speed: the movement speed (there is a tutorial that says sc2 ms = wc3 ms/ 129 not sure how accurate this is)
Stats – Life Armor: self explanatory
Stats – Life Maximum: self explanatory
Stats – Life Starting Amount: self explanatory
Stats – Shield (etc): set these to 0 if you don’t want a protoss shield.
Stats – Supplies: the “food/supply” cost of your unit.
The rest of the fields should be self explanatory if you want to further customize your unit.
ACTORS: Open the Actors tab on the left, and open “Your Unit”. Edit the fields:
Art- Model: make sure this says “Your Unit”
Art – Scale: If you want to resize your unit I strongly suggest you do so here, you can also do this in the Model object itself but if you use the same model for multiple units that is bad idea.
Event – Events+: here is where things get tougher.
Scroll to the top of this list of events, make sure the top 5 entries say “*.YOURUNIT.* and not *.Zealot.*
Now scroll down past all the greyed out event entries. Right click and remove selection on the bottom 4 entries about behavior.zealotcharge and UnitDeathCustomize for hallucinations.
At this point we are done unless you want to change the color of your unit. To Do this right click and “add event” on the left hand side. Now on the right side select Msg type: ActorCreation, select Target: Your Unit and then on the left side click on “Action Impact” under your new event and then on the right side select Msg Type: Set Tint Color and then pick the color you want. You are done and now press OK.
We are done! Now place your unit on the map and test him.
This is about the minimum you need to do to create a new melee unit based off of the zealot. There are other guides that tell you to duplicate everything, that’s a bad idea in my opinion. If this seems like a ton of work, well it is…. But once you have done it 2-3 times it becomes really fast and fluid. I have a little checklist in front of me when I create new units that says,
Duplicate Unit, check important actors, effects, model, weapons.
Rename the copied objects.
Edit the model and rename it.
Edit the effect.
Edit the weapon.
Edit Unit stats.
Edit the actor scale and events+.
So really its 7 steps to duplicate a basic melee unit and this takes me about 5 minutes max.