First off, I would like to say thanks to all the users on this forum who have made tutorials on upgrades. Without them I wouldn’t have been able to get as far as I have. But I noticed they are all lacking details, or its different than my editor or doesn’t explain how to do something. So I am writing this complete, one-stop-shop for upgrade details and how to do things step by step.
Getting started, Click on the Data button(F7) in your StarCraft II Editor.
Next we are going to add all the Data Type Tabs we are going to be using.
Select the Dropdown and select these Data Types.
Upgrades
Abilities
Requirements
Buttons
Your editor should look like this now.
Now I am going to teach you how to modify an upgrade and buttons for it(Don’t bother duping, use the current one). I am going to be Editing the [Zerg Ground Carapace] Upgrade, Now something you need to understand is, there isn’t levels in upgrades, each upgrade is its own upgrade linked together to make it seem like levels.
With that said, I want to remove the "Level 1", "Level 2" and "Level 3" from the buttons since I am going to make my upgrade go to level 100 in the end. So click on the Buttons tab and type in the search field "evolve ground" and it should look like this.
Now click on [Evolve Ground Carapace Level 1] from the left side window. we are now going to change our view for the right panel, so it’s easier to edit information. your editor should now look like this.
We are going to be editing a few fields and ill explain why we are doing this. First, let’s edit the [Editor Description]. This is for internal reference for yourself, since we are going to be removing the name of the level from the button, we want to make a note of what level it was for the button.
So Double-Click the blank space on the right side next to this and enter "level 1" and click OK.
Next we are going to be changing the [Editor Prefix] and adding an explanation mark ( ! ), This will be used to group together modified items so it’s easier to find when needing to edit them.
Now let’s rename the [Name] field from "Evolve Ground Carapace Level 1" to "Evolve Ground Carapace". Once done, your should look like this.
Now complete this step for both Level 2 and Level 3 of Evolve Ground Carapace.
I Recommend saving after every change you make as I notice this editor crashes a lot.
Now let’s go over to the [Abilities] Tab, This is where we are going to change the cost and duration of the upgrade. Now we have to know what building is used to upgrade our upgrade, so for the "Zerg Ground Carapace" it’s the "Evolution Chamber - Research (Evolution Chamber)" (Side Note, Nearly all upgrade buildings has "- Research" after its name).
Now let’s edit the Duration and Cost of "Zerg Ground Carapace Level 1" by clicking on the "Evolution Chamber - Research (Evolution Chamber)" at the top left.
Now on the right side scroll down and find [Ability - Info - Technology Resource Cost] and Double-click on the data on the right side of that, you should see this window.
Double-click on [Research 04 !Evolve Ground Carapace], scroll down and find [Info - Technology Resource Cost].
In my map I’m making, there is no gas and upgrades cost and increase by "125" with a "0" duration on research time(instant). so click on [Minerals] and in the Selected Value box, let’s change it to "125". and as for the gas, lets click on [Vespene] and change this to "0".
Now let’s scroll down and find [Info - Charge - Count (Max)] and put 1. This is where it shows the level on the upgrade icon, I'll explain later how to update this but for this button, its only done once so we only need to set this to 1. now scroll down to the bottom and find [Info - Time] and change this to "0", this is how long it takes to research the upgrade. your should look like this now.
Click OK and repeat process for [Research 05 !Evolve Ground Carapace] changing the [Mineral] field to "250"(remember for my increased cost of "125") and changing [Vespene] to "0" and [Info - Charge - Count (Max)] to "2" and [Info - Time] to "0"
Repeating for [Research 06 !Evolve Ground Carapace] changing the [Mineral] field to "375"(remember for my increased cost of "125") and changing [Vespene] to "0" and [Info - Charge - Count (Max)] to "3" and [Info - Time] to "0"
Now that we are done, click OK to close this window.
Save your work.
Now let’s move on to the [Upgrades] Tab. type in the search field "ground carapace", In my map, I want all armor upgrades to give +2 to armor instead of +1. So click on the upgrade name [Zerg Ground Carapace Level 1] on the top left window and on the right side you will see [Upgrade - Effects - Value], we are going to Double-click on the right side value so we can edit this.
Scroll down and find where the operation says "Add" and starts showing "Life Armor" and "Life Armor Level" in the name at the end of the Data - Reference.
Now click on the name, and change the value to "2" for all the "Life Armor" and "Life Armor Level". There is a lot so it’s going to take a minute or two to do.
Repeat this for [Zerg Ground Carapace Level 2] and [Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3].
Save your Work.
Now let’s open [Upgrade - Effects - Value] for [Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3] and this is where we are going to make the upgrade cost accumulative and keep track of the current upgrade we are on.
In the Data Reference area, Right-click and click on "Add Effect"
For the "Type" we are going to select "Ability", For the "Object" we are going to scroll down and find the upgrade building "Evolution Chamber - Research (Evolution Chamber)" In the "Field" area, it’s going to list the 30 possible upgrade the building has(doesn’t have 30 but it has room for 30) and we are going to scroll down and look for mention for "Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3" (for ease of purpose, this is located in folder "Info [Info=Research6]")
Now scroll down and find "Charge" folder, and click on "Count(Max): 3" and we are going to change the operation at the bottom to "Add" and change the value to "1". This will keep track of our upgrade levels after each upgrade and display it on the button icon.
Click on OK
Save Work.
Now let’s add an effect that changes the cost in minerals for each upgrade, open it back up again follow the same steps. (It's going to take longer to open once you added an effect, it could also crash on you at times) But this time, we are going to find "Technology Resource Cost [Technology Resource Cost=Minerals]: 375"
Change the Operation to "Add" and value to "125". This will increase the cost of my upgrades by 125 from this point on after we research Level 3 of my upgrade. Keep in mind, upgrades are Linear and keep the same stats you provided them in the upgrade tab, so the armor will always increase by 2 since that what it was set by, there is no way to make it where it goes from 1 > 2 then 2 > 4 then 4 > 8. each upgrade will always add 2.
Click on OK
Save Work.
Now we are going to change the max upgrade level on [Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3] by going to "Upgrade - Max Level" and changing the "1" to "98"
It should now look like this.
Save Work.
Please Note: Upgrades don’t work if you try to pass 100, I originally tried to make my upgrade go to "255" like from SC1 but there is a limit, and that is 100. if you want to go higher, you would need to make these same changes to the other level upgrades and then change the way they are links.
Reason I put 98 is because I want a total of 100 upgrades for armor, now I know I am doing extra work, but I wanted level 1, and level 2 to have different icons than the level 3 and instead of figuring out icon changes for a single upgrade, I added an extra 5 minutes of work for myself.
Now, Moving on to the final step, [Requirements] Tab. In the search field, type in "zerg ground", In here I am going to be removing the requirements for Lair and for Hive upgrades for level 2 and on for my upgrade. Also once my upgrade reaches 100, I am going to make the button disappear so it no longer takes resources but doesn’t give any effect or bonuses.
Click on [Learn Zerg Ground Armor2] on the top left side, and in the "Editor Prefix" we are going to put an explanation mark ( ! ). now for "Requirement - Node Link" Double-click on the right side so we can edit this requirement. Find the "Count Unit Alias" and Right-click on this, and click on "Remove Requirement Node"
Now let’s do the same thing to [Learn Zerg Ground Armor3] and this time remove "Count Unit Hive Completed" requirement node.
Now we are going to make it so when my level 3 upgrade of this armor reaches 98(total of 100 with the other 2 counted) the button will disappear.
So we are going to be clicking on the "And" inside the "Use" folder. and changing the "And" to "Less Than" in the "Type" field. Now we are going to be changing the "Equals" in the "Use" folder to "Count Upgrade" in the "type" field, and in the "Alias" field we are going to select our armor upgrade "Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3" and then change the "State" field to "Queued or Better". In the "Tooltip" area remove all the text. Now Right-click the "Less Than" in the "Use" area, and click on "Add Requirement Node", It will add an "And", click on that and change the "Type" to "Constant" and change the "Value" to "98"
Now in the "Show" folder, we are going to change the "Equals" to "Less than" it should already have Count Upgrade Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3 with a state of queued or better, and we are going to be changing the constant from "0" to "98"
I did not go over on how to make special requirements or how to create custom buttons. there is other guides out there, I would like to link this guide as it helped me the most in pointing me in the right direction, but in total, I read 8 different guides, few searches on Google and over 18 hours of hating this editor trying to figure out all of this, so I wanted to put it all together in a very detailed guide, so it’s easy for anyone to follow.
If you test this, you should see your amor upgrade now shows the current level on the icon, and goes up to level 100. Also if you click on a unit, you will see it has an armor of 200.
I hope this guide has saved you a lot of hassle and headache.
Yo so im tried following this tutorial but for some reason yours looks different from mine... i when i try to do this step
"We are going to be editing a few fields and ill explain why we are doing this. First, let’s edit the [Editor Description]. This is for internal reference for yourself, since we are going to be removing the name of the level from the button, we want to make a note of what level it was for the button."
Second; I'm afraid your screenshot is waaay to small to make out anything on. But if you can't see the "Editor - Description" field, make sure you have "Show Advanced Fields" marked. It's the middle one of the five orange buttons on the top right side, to the left of the search field.
sorry i didnt get back to anyone, the forum didnt notify me of users replying, glad i was able to help, and trembelwick if your still having issues, PM me.
If your having problems getting the accumulative cost to work, make sure you read this in the tutorial:
"and we are going to scroll down and look for mention for "Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3" (for ease of purpose, this is located in folder "Info [Info=Research6]")"
So in the field box, with the editor i use. it shows this..
(folder) Info (Research 01)
folder is expanded, showing contents*
(folder) Info (Research 10)
folder is expanded, showing contents*
(folder) Info (Research 11)
folder is expanded, showing contents*
I scrolled down, way down, to this folder>
(folder) Info (Research6)
Spelled as " Info (Research6)".
NOT "Info (Research 06)"
"Now click on the name, and change the value to "2" for all the "Life Armor" and "Life Armor Level". There is a lot so it’s going to take a minute or two to do."
I'm an inexperienced map editor giving it a first time go ... is there seriously no way to change a group of these at once?
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StarCraft II Editor Version: 1.0.3 (16291)
What this tutorial will cover:
First off, I would like to say thanks to all the users on this forum who have made tutorials on upgrades. Without them I wouldn’t have been able to get as far as I have. But I noticed they are all lacking details, or its different than my editor or doesn’t explain how to do something. So I am writing this complete, one-stop-shop for upgrade details and how to do things step by step.
Getting started, Click on the Data button(F7) in your StarCraft II Editor.
Next we are going to add all the Data Type Tabs we are going to be using.
Select the Dropdown and select these Data Types.
Your editor should look like this now.
Now I am going to teach you how to modify an upgrade and buttons for it(Don’t bother duping, use the current one). I am going to be Editing the [Zerg Ground Carapace] Upgrade, Now something you need to understand is, there isn’t levels in upgrades, each upgrade is its own upgrade linked together to make it seem like levels.
With that said, I want to remove the "Level 1", "Level 2" and "Level 3" from the buttons since I am going to make my upgrade go to level 100 in the end. So click on the Buttons tab and type in the search field "evolve ground" and it should look like this.
Now click on [Evolve Ground Carapace Level 1] from the left side window. we are now going to change our view for the right panel, so it’s easier to edit information. your editor should now look like this.
We are going to be editing a few fields and ill explain why we are doing this. First, let’s edit the [Editor Description]. This is for internal reference for yourself, since we are going to be removing the name of the level from the button, we want to make a note of what level it was for the button.
So Double-Click the blank space on the right side next to this and enter "level 1" and click OK.
Next we are going to be changing the [Editor Prefix] and adding an explanation mark ( ! ), This will be used to group together modified items so it’s easier to find when needing to edit them.
Now let’s rename the [Name] field from "Evolve Ground Carapace Level 1" to "Evolve Ground Carapace". Once done, your should look like this.
Now complete this step for both Level 2 and Level 3 of Evolve Ground Carapace.
I Recommend saving after every change you make as I notice this editor crashes a lot.
Now let’s go over to the [Abilities] Tab, This is where we are going to change the cost and duration of the upgrade. Now we have to know what building is used to upgrade our upgrade, so for the "Zerg Ground Carapace" it’s the "Evolution Chamber - Research (Evolution Chamber)" (Side Note, Nearly all upgrade buildings has "- Research" after its name).
Now let’s edit the Duration and Cost of "Zerg Ground Carapace Level 1" by clicking on the "Evolution Chamber - Research (Evolution Chamber)" at the top left.
Now on the right side scroll down and find [Ability - Info - Technology Resource Cost] and Double-click on the data on the right side of that, you should see this window.
Double-click on [Research 04 !Evolve Ground Carapace], scroll down and find [Info - Technology Resource Cost].
In my map I’m making, there is no gas and upgrades cost and increase by "125" with a "0" duration on research time(instant). so click on [Minerals] and in the Selected Value box, let’s change it to "125". and as for the gas, lets click on [Vespene] and change this to "0".
Now let’s scroll down and find [Info - Charge - Count (Max)] and put 1. This is where it shows the level on the upgrade icon, I'll explain later how to update this but for this button, its only done once so we only need to set this to 1. now scroll down to the bottom and find [Info - Time] and change this to "0", this is how long it takes to research the upgrade. your should look like this now.
Click OK and repeat process for [Research 05 !Evolve Ground Carapace] changing the [Mineral] field to "250"(remember for my increased cost of "125") and changing [Vespene] to "0" and [Info - Charge - Count (Max)] to "2" and [Info - Time] to "0"
Repeating for [Research 06 !Evolve Ground Carapace] changing the [Mineral] field to "375"(remember for my increased cost of "125") and changing [Vespene] to "0" and [Info - Charge - Count (Max)] to "3" and [Info - Time] to "0"
Now that we are done, click OK to close this window.
Save your work.
Now let’s move on to the [Upgrades] Tab. type in the search field "ground carapace", In my map, I want all armor upgrades to give +2 to armor instead of +1. So click on the upgrade name [Zerg Ground Carapace Level 1] on the top left window and on the right side you will see [Upgrade - Effects - Value], we are going to Double-click on the right side value so we can edit this.
Scroll down and find where the operation says "Add" and starts showing "Life Armor" and "Life Armor Level" in the name at the end of the Data - Reference.
Now click on the name, and change the value to "2" for all the "Life Armor" and "Life Armor Level". There is a lot so it’s going to take a minute or two to do.
Repeat this for [Zerg Ground Carapace Level 2] and [Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3].
Save your Work.
Now let’s open [Upgrade - Effects - Value] for [Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3] and this is where we are going to make the upgrade cost accumulative and keep track of the current upgrade we are on.
In the Data Reference area, Right-click and click on "Add Effect"
For the "Type" we are going to select "Ability", For the "Object" we are going to scroll down and find the upgrade building "Evolution Chamber - Research (Evolution Chamber)" In the "Field" area, it’s going to list the 30 possible upgrade the building has(doesn’t have 30 but it has room for 30) and we are going to scroll down and look for mention for "Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3" (for ease of purpose, this is located in folder "Info [Info=Research6]")
Now scroll down and find "Charge" folder, and click on "Count(Max): 3" and we are going to change the operation at the bottom to "Add" and change the value to "1". This will keep track of our upgrade levels after each upgrade and display it on the button icon.
Click on OK
Save Work.
Now let’s add an effect that changes the cost in minerals for each upgrade, open it back up again follow the same steps. (It's going to take longer to open once you added an effect, it could also crash on you at times) But this time, we are going to find "Technology Resource Cost [Technology Resource Cost=Minerals]: 375"
Change the Operation to "Add" and value to "125". This will increase the cost of my upgrades by 125 from this point on after we research Level 3 of my upgrade. Keep in mind, upgrades are Linear and keep the same stats you provided them in the upgrade tab, so the armor will always increase by 2 since that what it was set by, there is no way to make it where it goes from 1 > 2 then 2 > 4 then 4 > 8. each upgrade will always add 2.
Click on OK
Save Work.
Now we are going to change the max upgrade level on [Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3] by going to "Upgrade - Max Level" and changing the "1" to "98"
It should now look like this.
Save Work.
Please Note: Upgrades don’t work if you try to pass 100, I originally tried to make my upgrade go to "255" like from SC1 but there is a limit, and that is 100. if you want to go higher, you would need to make these same changes to the other level upgrades and then change the way they are links.
Reason I put 98 is because I want a total of 100 upgrades for armor, now I know I am doing extra work, but I wanted level 1, and level 2 to have different icons than the level 3 and instead of figuring out icon changes for a single upgrade, I added an extra 5 minutes of work for myself.
Now, Moving on to the final step, [Requirements] Tab. In the search field, type in "zerg ground", In here I am going to be removing the requirements for Lair and for Hive upgrades for level 2 and on for my upgrade. Also once my upgrade reaches 100, I am going to make the button disappear so it no longer takes resources but doesn’t give any effect or bonuses.
Click on [Learn Zerg Ground Armor2] on the top left side, and in the "Editor Prefix" we are going to put an explanation mark ( ! ). now for "Requirement - Node Link" Double-click on the right side so we can edit this requirement. Find the "Count Unit Alias" and Right-click on this, and click on "Remove Requirement Node"
Now let’s do the same thing to [Learn Zerg Ground Armor3] and this time remove "Count Unit Hive Completed" requirement node.
Now we are going to make it so when my level 3 upgrade of this armor reaches 98(total of 100 with the other 2 counted) the button will disappear.
So we are going to be clicking on the "And" inside the "Use" folder. and changing the "And" to "Less Than" in the "Type" field. Now we are going to be changing the "Equals" in the "Use" folder to "Count Upgrade" in the "type" field, and in the "Alias" field we are going to select our armor upgrade "Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3" and then change the "State" field to "Queued or Better". In the "Tooltip" area remove all the text. Now Right-click the "Less Than" in the "Use" area, and click on "Add Requirement Node", It will add an "And", click on that and change the "Type" to "Constant" and change the "Value" to "98"
Now in the "Show" folder, we are going to change the "Equals" to "Less than" it should already have Count Upgrade Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3 with a state of queued or better, and we are going to be changing the constant from "0" to "98"
I did not go over on how to make special requirements or how to create custom buttons. there is other guides out there, I would like to link this guide as it helped me the most in pointing me in the right direction, but in total, I read 8 different guides, few searches on Google and over 18 hours of hating this editor trying to figure out all of this, so I wanted to put it all together in a very detailed guide, so it’s easy for anyone to follow.
If you test this, you should see your amor upgrade now shows the current level on the icon, and goes up to level 100. Also if you click on a unit, you will see it has an armor of 200.
I hope this guide has saved you a lot of hassle and headache.
Feedback and comments welcomed.
@darkdemondd: Go
thanks for the tutorial
@darkdemondd: Go
Yo so im tried following this tutorial but for some reason yours looks different from mine... i when i try to do this step "We are going to be editing a few fields and ill explain why we are doing this. First, let’s edit the [Editor Description]. This is for internal reference for yourself, since we are going to be removing the name of the level from the button, we want to make a note of what level it was for the button."
I dont get that pop up... all i have is "Button/EditorPrefix/
id
" take a look in the picture. http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z74/Trembelwick/Starcraft.jpgAny idea why they look different? or is there something im doing wrong?
@darkdemondd: Go
First; thanks for the tutorial. Helped a ton.
@Trembelwick: Go
Second; I'm afraid your screenshot is waaay to small to make out anything on. But if you can't see the "Editor - Description" field, make sure you have "Show Advanced Fields" marked. It's the middle one of the five orange buttons on the top right side, to the left of the search field.
sorry i didnt get back to anyone, the forum didnt notify me of users replying, glad i was able to help, and trembelwick if your still having issues, PM me.
If your having problems getting the accumulative cost to work, make sure you read this in the tutorial: "and we are going to scroll down and look for mention for "Zerg Ground Carapace Level 3" (for ease of purpose, this is located in folder "Info [Info=Research6]")"
So in the field box, with the editor i use. it shows this..
(folder) Info (Research 01)
(folder) Info (Research 10)
(folder) Info (Research 11)
I scrolled down, way down, to this folder> (folder) Info (Research6)
Spelled as " Info (Research6)". NOT "Info (Research 06)"
That folder is for Zerg Carapace lvl3.
It took me hours to find the Folder for Zerg Carapace lvl3. Now I can set it to add, but the editor wont let me change the value.. whats wrong?
"Now click on the name, and change the value to "2" for all the "Life Armor" and "Life Armor Level". There is a lot so it’s going to take a minute or two to do."
I'm an inexperienced map editor giving it a first time go ... is there seriously no way to change a group of these at once?