BD's Enhanced World Editor BIG BUG

Well this is a very nice program, however I managed to lose several days worth of work because after creating several custom units (something I usually don't do anyways as I just use it mostly for changing models), I saved the map and low and behold the next time I loaded it the new units were not there and several units were corrupted.

This would not be such a big deal, except that I am unable to save the map without it reverting back to its corrupt state as if the unit properties are uneditable. This is using the World Editor as well as the Enhanced World Editor.

The good thing is that I can meticulously manually copy every single custom unit (probably 30-40 in all) which have most of their fields edited, however this will take a long time and is a major pain in the @$@)@(#U.

Anyways, it appears as if the custom unit table will get corrupted if you create a new custom unit using the Advanced World Editor. I have tried saving just the W3U file and reloading it in other maps and the custom unit table is either not loaded at all (after saving) or else things are even more corrupted.

So unless there is some way for me to fix the unit properties, I will literally almost have to start over from scratch on a lot of work because at the moment I cannot save anything.

Don't get me wrong this is a very nice utility, and works well for just modifying existing unit models created with the normal world editor, however creating custom units bugs this up really bad.

Any ideas on what I should do other than starting a lot of stuff all over would be highly appreciated (-:

Thanks in advance....

you have two versions of World Editor, the advanced one (a simple small file which is in fact safe. Compatible with battle.net)

and the second one, the enhanched WE (its a program) for now there are some problems concerning this file. So advicable is to wait either for a newer version or get the advanced one =) The bugs are known btw, but Blackdick doesnt have time to fix it because he is busy with a mdx editor =)

yeah I know, there are some confusion over there. Infoceptor renamed the Advanced World Editor inot enhanched, and the one from blackdick (the program) is also called enhanched. Go figure =)

btw=post the map in question, and ill try to make it fixed again

Was just letting people know not to do anything other than use the Enhanced World Editor for changing models and icons. For that it is a godsend.

Here is the map. I am probably just going to redo everything (yah a lot of gruntwork) because some of my unit balancing formulas have been screwed with due to lots of tweaking during playtesting so a lot of units do not conform to the global formulas in terms of their cost.

I also added some other gameplay stuff which I need to factor into gold/wood costs. Either way, it would be easier to do all of this if I didn't have to start totally from scratch.

Here is the attached file BTW. Hopefully it will help BD fix things when he gets the time (-:

Sad thing is when this happened I was 95% done and only had a few more custom spells to finish up testing (-:

hmm, I opened it with a regular WE but I see all custom units avaialbe still.

But what I did notice are the cliffs=they are snow cliffs all of them ??

Well that is simply because of the tileset of the old beta LT. That is no problem because I can easily make a cloned map and copy over triggers and unit properties.

Unfortunately, the unit settings or the trigger files or something is corrupted so it will just not save.

Try changing some properties and saving it yourself and see what happens.

Load things back up and you will find nothing has changed.

It is as if the WE refuses to write out the WCU file altogether.

All of the other stuff gets written out correctly (triggers, properties, etc.) but the WCU file just can't be changed anymore.

I tried hex editing a few things that seemed abnormal and had no luck.

All I did was change the properties of the Huntress hero (which after saving with the EWE reverted many changes to blank) and create two custom units and then saved.

Ever since then, I have been unable to save anything with that map as it seems that the WE will load up a semi-corrupted WCU file but will not be able to write it out.

Another thing is I am pretty sure what is messed up is some relationship between the trigger strings and the WCU file. I exported the trigger strings and everything seemed OK, but I am pretty sure something is wrong in terms of what trigger strings are referenced in the WCU file.

It could just be the WCU file is looking for trigger strings that were never written out, hence why it has problems loading things up. Why the WE would not be able to correct those errors when writing things out is beyond me.

Basically, for whatever reason the WE refuses to write out the WCU file of my map.

sorry, i'll take a look this fryday.

No need to apologize. I already fixed the problem. Anyways, as long as you just use the EWE for changing models, it works great.

I have been able to do so many things already in my mod using your tool.

It rocks!

Well, as i said before, my editor is nothing more that a custom MPQ using special SLKs to allow some stuff to users. You can even rename it to .mpq and open on WINMPQ and edit those SLKs.

As far as I know, the WE from blizz is somehow bugged (some already identified).... If the WE is bugged, my editor will also be bugged, as it is nothing more than a custom MPQ.

I was not aware of that. I knew a lot of things with the WE are defined by layout files and not hardcoded, but I didn't know it went that far.

Would it be possible to add the firebolt and rain of fire hero spells as well as the more powerful versions of starfall, earthquake, and death and decay to the drop down list of hero skills when scripting a Hero -> Learn Skill action?

Right now in the mod I am working on, I automatically have the skill points invested in hero skills as a hero levels, however for those particular skills (in particular the firebolt and rain of fire ones) I cannot script that in right now unless I want to convert everything to custom text which is something I may do in the future, but for right now I would like to just be able to do all of this with the trigger actions.

I cannot answer this coz i'm not exploring the trigger stuff. I only made them usable on the WE. Still don't know if they're going to work with triggers.

I don't see why people fear custom text once you look at Blizzard.j you'll see just how many actions are left out of the wizard and just start loving to go custom text. ITs amazing how many hidden triggers are running during a normal game play.

It is not about fear, but reuse of triggers. Most of the triggers I have could be used for other maps made by other people who don't understand custom text.

Since there is scant documentation on all of the functions available, very, very, very few people out there will know what to do with custom text.

As I said I might switch things over sometime just because you can have triggers operate more efficiently if you have direct control over loops and stuff like that instead of letting a 4GL tool do it for you.

One advantage I had with not using custom text from the beta to the release is that all of my beta maps were importable with the retail version of the WE, while many other people who used custom text had maps that would not even load.

I guess it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish (-:

here's a question from a newbie about hte blizzard.j file mentioned above.

i've got winmpq and have managed to extract blizzard.j from the mpq, but unfortunately i can't read whats in it. is this in hex? how can i decode it to something legible? i've tried opening the file in a hex editor but it still doesn't come up with anything that makes sense, do i have to change the offset?

ps i have the retail version not hte beta.


thanks in advance.

GR

blizzard.j (anf others .j) are text files (open on notepad ok)
Probably your winmpq is screwed. Try to replace the storm.dll that comes with winmpq by the storm.dll tha comes with the w3 retail, or use mpqview to extract.