Hi guys.
Every now and then, a new discussion pops up talking about changing ZvZ in broodwar. I have put quite alot of thought into the matter myself over the years and I wanted to chat to you about theoretical alterations that could be implemented into a mod.



I want to make the Hydralisk have a new upgrade in the hydra den called Bioflak Aspect.
Players research Bioflak Aspect and Burrow aswell.
Then players make hydralisks as normal, but whats new is that when the hydralisk is burrowed, it is capable of attacking Biological Air Units (and it does splash damage).

Burrowed Hydralisk Stats:
30 attack vs Bio Air Units only (and splash)
15 cooldown
6 sight (same as hydra so other matchups arent affected)
8 range

Bioflak Aspect upgrade in the Hydralisk Den costs:
150 minerals
100 gas
100 time

The cool thing about these alterations is that only Zerg vs Zerg is affected so balance in the other matchups is not an issue.
But I am asking you guys, with your large amount of experience, is this actually possible?
I found this thread with a related question:
http://www.staredit.net/topic/15817/

I use SCM Draft2.0 and have made several maps. For example:
http://www.panschk.de/mappage/comments.php?mapid=4661

But I have not made a mod before. What I really want to know is:
Are these alterations possible?
Are they relatively easy to implement?
If I were somewhat familiar with modding BW already, would I be able to make this mod in less than a month?

Regarding your questions:

1) High chance.
2) Depends - I can't think of any extremely elegant or easy solutions though.
3) If you know plugins, high chance. Otherwise, depends on if you want to learn programming in C++ to use plugins for this.

I do have a few ideas for how to implement this.

Iscript, some DAT editing, probably (re: certainly, unless you can think of something very exceptional) going to need FireGraft and plugins.

Do burrowed units (excluding Lurkers) even acquire attack targets at all? If the Hydralisk doesn't pick an attack target, iscript opcodes like castspell and attackwith will probably not work.

Also, you have to factor in that StarCraft's unit AI causes burrowed units to automatically unburrow when they are attacked (again, excluding Lurkers).

Given this, it might be worthwhile to investigate a workaround that will achieve the same desired effects.

Thankyou for the tips guys.
I have also been talking to Sahasrahla who made the SC Super Unit Mod.
For completion, and for possible future readers, the following is tips he has given me:

" Is it possible to make a unit's attacks only affect Biological Air units?
Yes, this is quite simple. DATedit allows to restrict weapons or skills to biological targets.

Is it possible to make a Hydralisk change to a different set of attacks but only when it is Burrowed?
The very short answer: yes.
The long one:
This is far from easy to achieve. Allowing burrowed units to do anything besides standing still is real hardcore plugin stuff. You gave the alternative yourself: giving the Hydra the possibility to switch between two modes like a Siege Tank. This can be done by sacrificing the Siege Tank Hero unit and mapping the corresponding unit switches to your Hydra and its second mode (which is another unit with seperate weapons, skills, button set, etc.). This can be done with Firegraft. There is a lot of additional work too, because you will need to edit the involved unit animations (with IceCC), but the good thing is that all this can be achieved without using plugins. "