I just want something that looks "psychic" and does either decent damage or perhaps slowing or mind control. I know mind control is there, but it has to be researched and letting that be standard on whatever it comes on would kill whatever remaining balance is there in the mod.

You could cannibalise ensnare for a slowing effect and apply a damage to it using orders.dat and weapons.dat. You can't actually create a new spell from scratch, you have to cannibalise an existing spell and probably a weapon slot as well (the latter is less problematic due to the excess of unused weapons but the former is a bit more difficult to deal with). It is likely that you can cannibalise ANY spell in the game if you play around with orders.dat and exe edits but I'm not 100% sure since I haven't bothered with that field in years.

Not fond of the whole "cannibalizing" thing, but is it possible to make it slowing but accelerate healing?
Also, is it possible to give heal to another species?

It is almost certainly not possible to accelerate healing. The most you can do is increase the amount healed through exe edits in Firegraft.
It is possible to give heal to another race. To have it auto-heal, though, you'll need to give it the same unit AI as the Medic in units.dat.

makes sense. Would it be possible to make ensnare cause healing? Or can it cause attacks to ignore armor?

I can do the coding for you.

Spell/order cannibalization is usually necessary but I may try experimenting with it some time to see if unused orders can be coaxed into being a target spell.

Making ensnare heal should be doable. Making it deal damage is outright easy. Making ensnare cause incoming damage to ignore armour may be possible.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 27 2015, 7:07 am by Sand Wraith.

You would have to find a way to change the armour type of the afflicted units (might not even work then) or change all incoming damage to the ignore armour type (might not even be possible).

IIRC, the current GPTP has a hook for damage calculation, so there is an opportunity here to modify this logic to provide a separate procedure when calculating damage for a unit addicted by ensnare. I presume it should be as simple as a conditional block to detect if the unit has been ensnared. I'll try it out and see what happens.

You remind me of a good question though: Would ensnare change the unit's armour type or would it only affect the armour value? (It may also be possible to change the incoming damage's type to something else.)

Since it does neither of those things by default you'd be best off finding whatever method is easier to code around.

Thank you very much, if healing ensnare is doable It'd be much appreciated. Making it armor-ignoring is a good runner up.
So so far I just added Heal to High Templars. Their animation is a little to be desired (in that they stay frozen in their cast frame until the healing is over) but it doesn't crash and it works 100%. I also added Feedback to the infested ghost (I figured it'd be a good raging uncontrolled psychic mind attack spell) and I added mind control to my slightly tweaked Infested Kerrigan, who I'm changing the name of (for the mod's story). I'm still having problems with non-original cloaking, so if anyone could give me a step by step run on that, It'd be much appreciated because they can't decloak and I know i'm missing something somewhere.

Addendum: Is it possible to make protoss units be able to be repaired? The EXE edit claims to allow all races to repair but I tested it (gave probe repair button and allowances and activated the edit) and it still says it's only Terran units able to be repaired. If not I might just try giving probe "charge shields", see if that works.
Also, is there a way to make a spell that allows recharge of energy, like consume, but with non-zerg units? And preferably not consuming any other units? I mean, the concept fits for zerg but not the others, and makes little sense. Or would it be possible for a spell to donate spell energy to another unit? Like a recharge station or something for the Science Vessel...

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So how do I test this or implement? because it's claiming it's requiring 1.0.1.0, where I have 1.16.1.0 and it says It won't be implemented.

What is giving you the error?

Ok, everything's going well but I hit kind of a snag... For some reason, Overlords aren't able to morph into Yggdrasils anymore. I checked everything, it should work but I don't know what's going on. Was there anything in the plugin that would hinder this by any chance?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 27 2015, 6:03 pm by SCRuler.

Indeed, it is very likely there is something conflictory in the plugin. I compiled it with a lot of hooks I didn't need, and I'm sure some of those included the morphing behaviours. I suppose the changes in the plugin have precedence over the changes from Firegraft, probably due to the redirection method of the plugin process.

When I have the time and energy, I'll look around the GPTP and see how to disable compiling in all the unnecessary code.

For the record, the Broodling plugin I provided will certainly also have this problem. Let me know if you're still using that plugin so I know if I should also go back and fix that too.

I haven't used the broodling plugin yet. I was gonna wait during the super-final phases. I look forward to seeing the cleaned up product. I'm not sure how useful the broodling plugin would be now. when facing a sizeable mass of troops, they are easily felled. Best counter to them is area of effect spells, Siege Tanks, and bishops as well.

So yeah, once this is finished, only thing I really need is the help with the cloaking for the infested ghosts, and making a kitbash for a Zerg capital ship.

This new plugin should work. It only uses the hook pertaining to updating status effects.

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Edit: Ok, its working perfectly! Thank you!
Now, I need these last things: a proper list of things to enable complete cloaking and decloaking, the setup of the AI build order replacing the pylon with the charge pylon (shield battery) and a zerg capital ship kitbash. Then, Mapping and voice acting phase!

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 27 2015, 10:35 pm by SCRuler.

You're welcome!
http://www.staredit.net/topic/16678/ Please see this to address your cloaking issue.
I cannot help with AI -- that is one field I never got into wrt modding.
Kitbashing is also one of the fields I never got into.