WC2 Space Station Model

[eddieb]

I have the misfortune of having to deal with a visually-oriented game editor at work. It is hell - all the clicking keeps getting in the way of the scripting. There are of course things that absolutely have to be done in a visual editor (3d world creation, etc.)... but there's nothing like that in a Wing Commander style game. You're mostly dealing with time-based events rather than place-based stuff, so a visual editor would only slow you down.

Possibly the only advantage visual editors have is that they require less attention to the syntax. It's much harder to screw something up when you're dragging a navpoint onto a map than when you're typing in the code for a navpoint. And IMO, this is only an advantage for experienced users - for inexperienced users, it's a killer, because it deprives them of a necessary education. At the end of the day, no matter how visual an editor is, you still need to be able to code simple programs - and that's much harder to learn when you're used to doing everything via mouse.

Agreed, you should understand the code a visual editor is spitting out. That's why I wish misb2 would spit out pascal as a starting point. Then you'd go do your coding of special events from there.

I'm glad you guys are engaged in this discussion. My background motivation for thinking about this is because I was toying with the idea of extending the flight commander mission editor to spit out wcp-pascal. And adding a gui for more complex events, such as in flight comms, refueling, docking, and time based events. But it seems like there's no demand for such a tool, and I've got plenty to work on as it is.

 

[Quarto]

I'm glad you guys are engaged in this discussion. My background motivation for thinking about this is because I was toying with the idea of extending the flight commander mission editor to spit out wcp-pascal. And adding a gui for more complex events, such as in flight comms, refueling, docking, and time based events. But it seems like there's no demand for such a tool, and I've got plenty to work on as it is.

The danger with spitting out code is that it leads to people not understanding it. And I suspect it would also be a nightmare from your point of view, because if you were to make such tools, you'd have to ensure that the code they spit out is always 100% bug-free, no matter what the mission circumstances are. Mind you, I'm sure there are some people who'd be very glad to have such tools... it's just that these are people other than me . WCPPas does have some tools to create code (for things like navpoints and such), and I've never trusted these tools enough to try 'em - whenever I feel the need to create some instant code, I just cut & paste it from other missions.