Starcraft

For the beginner or advanced custom designer, arsenal III is essential. Arsenal III edits StarCraft's primary data files, also known as DAT files. DAT files control all of the basic stats, such as units health, weapon damage, and build times, as well as some of the more complicated stats such as whether a weapon homes in on its enemy, or whether a unit will cloak nearby units like the arbiter does. You'll need this program in almost every custom you make.

Now on Version 1.4, DatEdit maintains its incredible history as a great SC tool!

Combining the most useful features of previous editors Arsenal III and Arsenal Zero with the newest research, DatEdit is the most powerful DAT file editor ever created. Whether you are just starting modding, or if you are a highly established modder, DatEdit should be your tool of choice for editing DAT files. Arsenal III and Arsenal Zero are now obsolete.

This program is designed to save you time when making your MPQ customs. Take a folder, drag and drop it onto this program, and within a few seconds the MPQ Compactor will have finished compiling all the contents of that folder into an MPQ for you. It will even run MPQDraft and execute your patch if you have MPQDraft.exe in the same folder. With this program, making customs is effortless. Requires WinMPQ and Windows Script Host 5.6. To download this, choose the operating system you use: Windows 98, NT 4.0 and ME or Windows 2000 and XP.

This program is so essential to modding that you're not a custom maker if you don't have a copy of this program. MPQDraft will temporarily apply a custom created in the MPQ format to one session of StarCraft. It also lets you create your own standalone EXE that will let non-custom makers run your mod just by double clicking on your EXE.

Creates, adds, views, extracts and updates files from StarCraft's archive format -- the MPQ. You can use this file to extract files out of StarCraft, such as sounds, cinematics or campaign missions; or use it to put changed files into an MPQ which you will can then apply with MPQDraft. WinMPQ is the greatest and easiest to use MPQ manipulator so far. It provides options for power users, such as which compression algorithm to use, how much compression to apply, as well as flushing an MPQ and maintaining listfiles. Best of all, this is all done using a graphical interface. No other MPQ archiver compares. If WinMPQ doesn't start, try going to ShadowFlare's page and install the required runtime files for WinMPQ. If you are going to be looking at StarCraft's official MPQ quite a lot, you should also get UED77's listfile to resolve the names of the files WinMPQ does not recognise.

Allows you to view and edit the Starcraft cinematics and portraits, which are stored in the SMK format. For further details about this program and for a Mac version of the Smacker player, go here.

RetroGRP is used to edit graphics. In StarCraft, a GRP file is a collection of frame images of a unit, weapon, or menu graphic. RetroGRP converts each frame of the GRP file into number of BMP files, and vice versa, so that you can edit these images, or create your own with your favourite image editing package.

Allows you to view and edit the Starcraft cinematics and portraits, which are stored in the SMK format. Carbon Appliation designed for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9. Requires Stuffit to open.

StarDraft is similar to WinMPQ and MPQDraft for StarCraft 1.07. It's not designed for making patches in this day and age. However, it does have a very easy to use GRP importer/exporter which may come in handy.

TblPad changes TBL files, which store all the strings of text in StarCraft. Using this program, you can change unit names, weapon names, hotkeys and more. As you get more advanced, you'll be able to add new files into the MPQ using TblPad.

Your new RetroGRP graphics might be smaller, but StarCraft is still treating your unit like its as large as a siege tank. You can fix that problem easily with this program. The Unit Resizer will change the unit size values in stored in the units definition file (arr\units.dat) to your liking.

ICE edits a file called scripts\iscript.bin -- the image script of StarCraft. The iscript is debatably the most powerful file you can mod, because it controls the order of almost everything you can see and hear in the game StarCraft! The iscript tells StarCraft when a lurker should burrow, how long should the Battlecruiser charge before firing, what the marine should do when it is idle, how the reaver should crawl along the ground, what graphics to display when the scourge attacks... the list goes on. The iscript is an entire programming language full of instructions. Using ICE, you can edit, create, and rearrange this file.

MemGraft is a modding program that sits in a class on its own. It is designed as a replacement of StarGraft, so it edits tech trees and can add, remove or change button sequences. The patcher included in this version of MemGraft is only compatible with 1.12b.

StarGraft does two main things. The first thing it does is change the buttons a unit has, techtrees and a few other simple properties of the game.

The second thing it does is to change the code of StarCraft itself, to a certain extent. With this feature of StarGraft, some knowledge of ASM and an ASM compiler, you can create new spells. However, each patch upgrade to StarCraft effectively destroys all the community knowledge and research we have on programming this feature as memory locations move.

Another thing to note is StarGraft does not work directly with the latest version of StarCraft, as its patch loader is designed to work with version 1.07. However, I recommend that you use it to create PAT files, as StarGraft's patch creator is much easier to use; and then import your PAT file into MemGraft to upgrade them.

Now that you know how to use the iscript, you'll probably find yourself needing to edit the 'arr\images.dat' file. The problem is, Arsenal III is well known for corrupting the 'arr\images.dat' file. The solution? Arsenal Zero. It's not as pretty as Arsenal III, but it does the job without corrupting anything.

Arsenal Zero, like Arsenal III, is a DAT file editor. But instead of providing you with a graphical user interface, Arsenal Zero converts the dat files into a human-readable INI file, and vice versa. This gives you painfully accurate control over the DAT file, without the hex editing. One of favourite use of Arsenal Zero is to search it for particular IDs or references using the search feature of your text editor. This makes it the perfect tool for avid graphics reprogrammers.

Firegraft is a modding program that is a successor for both Stargraft and Memgraft. It allows for editing of certain memory aspects such as the button sets and the tech tree. However, that's not the limit of what Firegraft can edit. In a controlled way, Firegraft allows modifications of many previously untouchable aspects of Starcraft. With things like the number of spidermines to the amount of time a unit is in stasis, from the ability to set multiple peons constructing a building to reversing the effect of recall, Firegraft allows for greater freedom in creating modifications.

ICE is nice, but it still has its problems. ICE is to IceCC kind of like Arsenal III is to Arsenal Zero. As the complexity of your iscript code increases, ICE becomes increasingly difficult tool to use. That's where IceCC comes in. IceCC decompiles the iscript into the a specially made IceCC programming language, which can be edited by your favourite text editor, and then recompiled back into the iscript.bin file for use in your StarCraft patches. Just like Arsenal Zero, you get painfully accurate control over what goes in the iscript and what doesn't. However, to make the job slightly less painful, IceCC does have a user interface to help out with the compiling and decompiling of your text files. You will need the Java Runtime Environment to use the user interface.

This is an iscript.bin (Starcraft image script) decompiler and compiler. It comes in the package as 3 separate programs: the console-mode decompiler and compiler (icedc and icecc) and IceCCUI (requires Java Runtime Environment). No other iscript.bin decompiler and compiler set is more correct on the names of animation types or its list of opcodes. Based on the source code for the original IceCC by DI. Recompiled to work under Mac OS X.

Edits StarCraft's LO? files, which contain graphic offsets for turrets and reference GRP files.

SCAIEdit 3.1 will edit 'scripts\aiscript.bin' which is a file that contains the AI scripts that you will be very familiar with if you're a map maker. These AI scripts include Terran Custom AI, and Build Nuke. This program can be used to make the AI harder or to take advantage of the different units you have made in your custom.

Views and edits the StarCraft's dialog boxes, including the dialog boxes for StarEdit.

You will probably prefer to use this program when converting old StarDraft EXE mods. This converts the EXE into MPQ format, which is the format most people use nowadays.

This zip file contains a dll library that may be used for loading and displaying grp graphics. It can also be used to create grp graphic files within your programs. You can have it use SFmpq instead of Storm for reading from MPQ archives. Also, you can use a custom drawing function so you can get the image data for the graphics into a buffer or draw it using a different method.

This is an MPQDraft plugin that allows almost all modded files to be loaded directly from Starcraft maps. It also has the features from ShadowFlare's playlist plugin integrated into it, so you can use those in your maps.

This is an MPQDraft plugin that allows almost all modded files to be loaded directly from Starcraft maps. It also has the features of ShadowFlare's playlist plugin integrated into it, so you can use those in your maps. A beta update that introduces many new features, but is definitely still a beta.

This program converts .grp graphics for Starcraft and Warcraft II to bitmap format (.bmp) and back. It supports both known .grp formats for those games, importing RLE and non-RLE bitmaps, and 3 of the more popular palette formats and has a very good encoding engine that will accept larger images, mismatched image sizes, and other irregularities that most other converters do not.