What are the differences in the mision editors?

[MichGal]

I noticed that there's more than one mission editor. I downloaded Lewin's because I read that his was easy. (Very impressive Lewin. I love it! My husband does too.) Anyway, I was wondering what the differences were in the editors.

Thanks in advance.

[The Dark Lord]

Some script editors allow you to read the script and edit it by typing/copy/paste. They decode the mission file (.dat) to .txt, and if you want back to .dat again.
And there are editors like Lewin's and Thunderwolf's. You can see what you're doing in those editors. Lewin's editor is the easiest to use, Thunderwolf's probably second.

[Lewin]

The Dark Lord is right.


Graphical editors are easy to use editors designed for beginners. They make it easy by removing the need to editor script by hand. However, they don't not allow you to do some very advanced stuff and you are locked into the system. If a new command is discovered, you must wait until the developers add it, whereas with script editors you can do anything.
Graphical Editors:
Lewin's
Thunderwolf's

Script editors are for hard core people, who have programming skills. Slower and harder to use but you have a lot more control over your mission.
Script Editors:
Harold's
Merchator's
Old versions of Lewin's editor like 0.2


Hope this helps you,
Lewin.

[Nick]

I personally use the script editor for my missions.
I only use the grafical editors for troop/unit placement...

But keep in mind that I know every script command of kam and using a script editor takes (like lewin said) much more time. So you got 2 options:

1) If u wanna make a very good mission where u got control about every small detail, then i suggest u to learn every script command and start making a mission once u got experienced with it
2 Just use a grafical editor if u wanna make a nice mission without bothering too much of the details.

It doesn't make that much difference... It's mainly ur personal taste. I like making a mission without the use of a 3rd party program.

[MichGal]

Thanks guys!

Hey, can you put fish in the water? When I was looking at mission 5 -The New Lands through the editor and found ducks and wolves, but nothing about fish. There's a lot of water on this map, but I don't see any fish. Is that something we can control? Asking in advance for when I try to make a mission of my own.

[Litude]

Yeah it's totally possible, Lewin's editor (I guess Thunderwolf's too, haven't used it though) allows graphical placement of fish with the click of a button. No idea why there's no fish in The New Lands (have yet to play it myself).

[The Dark Lord]

There is no fish because the water in the map is, according to the storyline, caused by rain. I've never seen fish falling out of the air, so there is no chance there could be any fish.

[MichGal]

Hi everyone. I have an outdated editor. Do I have to delete it before downloading the new version?

Thanks in advance!

[Lewin]

First of all you should say whether you mean the mission editor or the map editor. But either way it shouldn't be necessary to delete the old version before installing the new one. However it wouldn't hurt to.
If it's my mission editor then you might be best to delete the old one in case some configuration options aren't compatible in the new version. Also my EXE names change (e.g. KaMEditor-0.9.exe) with each version so if you don't delete the old one you will end up with two EXEs which might be confusing. So yes, for my editor delete the old one first.
Lewin.

[Ben]

Ermmm....

Could someone name a few things that you can't do with Lewins Graphical editor? I know about the whole Human AI, but is there anything else? I am wondering because I am suriously considering using the scripting editor rather then the graphical.

[kuba11100]

Beside of editing map files...

Some values have limits there (e.g. one ware type in storehouse - up to 30000, but the real limit is 65535; that's because it can overflow to 0), also you cannot test unknown script commands (e.g. range in attacks) - even after manually writing them in the script tab, it is removed while switching back to map tab or saving.

It also changes some values after loading original mission files - minimap colors, lines not starting with exclamation marks (like removed second storehouse from 20 TSK) etc.

But... what's wrong with the WYSIWYG that you don't want to use it?