Basics » Custom Ablites

What are custom abilities?

Creating more complex maps will make you want to make use of spells or attacktypes that are not provided in the object editor. If you have ever played DotA, you will already know a bunch of custom abilities, like the Zeus or Tidehunter ultimate. If you don't know Dota (you really don't know? :p), let me explain. Zeus is a hero, having a spell that casts a lightning bolt on every hostile hero regardless its current position on the map. Searching thhe object editor for such a spell will not lead to success. But you can create this spell by using some tricks, called dummy abilities and dummy casters.

First, create a hero or a unit, you want to make use of your custom ability. In the object editor now create a ability that does nothing else than releasing a trigger. This is our dummy ablity. To make it do nothing, set values for damage, duration, area of effect and so on to zero. For some abilities, like howl of terror for instance it is necessary to set the value for spell duration to at least 0.01, else it won't release any trigger when being used. Note that you should also remove every effect or spell amp or at least customize those to make them fit to your ability. There is a bunch of abilities, you may use as dummy abilities for different custom spells. For abilities with no target, howl of terror works fine. Abilities needing a single target, you could use storm bolt for instance. Abilities with just a location instead of a single

The second step is to create the ability, you actually want to use - the spell having the wanted effect.