jonadrian619
-___-
- Reaction score
- 242
Help and Tips dialog by jonadrian619
1) Introduction
2) Getting Started
3) Editing
4) Importing the Files
5) Conclusion
- The Help Dialog and the Tips dialog under the Menu
- Help Dialog
- Tips Dialog
1) Introduction
This is a simple tutorial on how to edit the contents of the 'Help' and 'Tips' dialogs in the menu of Warcraft III and the TFT expansion, making your map unique and cool.:shades:
Instead of putting tips in the Quests dialog, you can put all the neccesary info and tips for your maps, in these dialogs.
2) Getting Started
You need these tools before you can proceed:
- MPQMaster (get it here)
- Notepad
Open MPQ Master. Click File -->Open. Find the war3.mpq inside the Warcraft III Directory, once you've found it, click the MPQ file and click Open. Use the Warcraft III listfile or the native listfile as the MPQ's listfile. Once opened, double-click the UI folder in the MPQ.
Find the Helpstrings.txt and Tipstrings.txt files, which contains all the necessary contents of the Help and Tips dialogs in the Game Menu.
NOTE: Don't forget to open the MacHelpStrings.txt. MacHelpStrings.txt is the text shown in the Help dialog when you play Warcraft III in a Mac. If you don't include that, if your map is played in a Mac then the Help dialog will be set to default.
Then extract both of those files. You can extract them in any folder, but you must NOT extract the files with a different file name.
3) Editing- A) Help Menu
Open the Helpstrings.txt or MacHelpStrings.txt using Notepad. The editing is up to you.
For best results, it's best that you type the hotkeys of all of your custom units and type the game modes that the players or host can type. Type all necessary info say some affiliated sites or email addresses or map download locations.
Once you've finished editing the HelpStrings.txt file and the MacHelpStrings.txt file, save those with the same filenames.
- B) Tips Menu
The contents of the TipStrings are much more different that the HelpStrings file.
It has that 'TipCount=60' at the top. That means 60 are the maximum amount of tips that can be used. TipCount can be edited if you have a lot of tips for players.
WARNING: If you have more tips than the max number of tips set in TipCount, then the excess tips will not be shown in-game. If the max number of tips in tipcount are higher than the number of tips created, well, the blank tips will be blank.
A tip's format is like this: (Example) Tip2="This is a custom tip"
Type your tips, and make sure that the tip descriptions are covered in the " signs. One example of a tip is like this.
Once you've done editing, save the file with the same filename.
4) Importing the Files
Open the World Editor. Create a new map from scratch or open an existing map. Then go to Import Manager (A page icon with a green arrow pointing left <--), then click Import (Ctrl+I). Import the Helpstrings.txt file and the TipStrings.txt files into your map.
Then right click the files, select the Modify File Properties. Check the Use Custom Path checkbox. Change the path of both files to UI\<the name of the file>. Then click OK.
Path: UI\<filename>
Save your map, then play the map in Warcraft III by clicking the Test Map button (With the Checkbox icon with a red check).
Click the Menu (F10) button, and click either Help or Tips dialogs. You'll see that the contents of those dialogs are customized and different. It would be then like this (my own text):
5) Conclusion
Hope you got it all right. You can read this tutorial again if you don't get it.
This can also work and function in a RoC World Editor or a RoC map. Import files in the RoC map using WinMPQ, and then do the steps above except the import manager stuff.Have fun making your own Help and Tips dialogs!!
