(splitted from) Think you got a hardcore map, with good triggers?

Anyone else think "Advanced GUI" is an oxymoron? ;)

yup.

Advanced gui is like a square wheel...

I suppose you guys use text editors to skin and model? :P

Theres a difference a text editor doesn't give you any more power then a 3ds max, and isn't 400 times easier to use.

Jass is not ONLY easier then GUI but its just plain more natural for a programmer then this gui junk its cumbersome and I can't even get it to do what I want ussually.

If you'd like to prove me wrong on ease of use of GUI why don't you rewrite some of my projects to GUI.

Saying GUIs are always less powerful than simpler solutions is essentially like saying that assembler is in all regards superior to C++. Of course, the wc3 GUI isn't exactly Turing complete ://// But I interpreted your comments to mean that any and all GUI was by definition inferior to the next lower level of interaction.

EDIT: What the heck, I never even meant to post that first comment, since I noticed it would probably be interpreted to mean that I didn't realize how bad the WE GUI is for serious programming. I deleted it and wrote the one I'm editing now.. How I actually managed to post it I don't know :P I do know the WE GUI sucks, it just sounded to me that you guys were expressing the in certain "hardcore" circles Oh so prevalent conviction that any high-level programming always gives a lesser degree of control and therefore should be avoided if at all possible, ignoring all the potential benefits of a well-designed GUI. Anyways, I'm tired and can neither think nor type straight.

Well the GUI really is just too cumbersome for me and most anyone who can stand to take a wack at jass.

And yes any gui solution in war3 is inferior to its well written jass equivalant.

Thats not very hard to believe if you think about it. If I take a game somebody made in java which has high system requirements and then I port it to use C++ the requirements are going to drop. And then if someone else were to port that C++ to asm, the requirements are going to drop again.

The GUI adds quite abit of overhead. By its use of fluff functions and nonsense method of doing if then elses and loops. The fact that blizzard even had to implement a hack to help with the memory issue this overhead added is just tribute to how much better an inline jass solution would have been. (they could of assigned it to group var then destroyed it which is how most people have been using a method to solve it.

The GUI is also very limited, you have very poor extension functionality because you can not create your own functions or objects in GUI. While you can create triggers and then merely have them always called by something else, that adds overhead, (triggers themselves create new threads when ran not to mention you just created a trigger which requires memory in the handle stack) and requires usage of global variables for parameters which is the first taboo your taught in OOP programming.

While OOP style jass has its own overhead of using game cache, the added usability of creating your own objects and handler functions is simply unbelievable level of ease that is added. Low level methods of cutting up arrays and such have limits and still require usage of global array which are more memory intensive then game cache unless your getting most of your elements filled. (Arrays take 32 kb when created regardless of what you specify to them. They then take extra depending on the type of array (i.e. any handle array will take more more memory as it needs to access the handle stack while cache uses more memory per entry because it also requires string literals (about 16 bytes per entry) it still is ussually much less then the 32kb that the empty array will always take unless your filling it quite heavily... )


In short: its not shocking, but GUI is not always the best way and jass ussually will have a better solution which is less variable intensive and less processor and ram intensive.

Jumping in to the discussion, seeing as how this is my thread, I agree partly with both of you.

Weaaddar, JASS has superiority as to building things which require a lot of power and memory with GUI, into something that, well, doesn't. It also adds posibilities to write some triggers ("Actions") in to others and shortening, streamlining, code.

MMad, GUI is good for those who do not have time, or want to spend the effort to learn JASS. To actually start to learn JASS doesn't take very long, but weaaddar and MMad, both of you, JASS takes a long time to learn as to being as efficient as GUI is, and beyond. You could possibly CnP or rewrite already made code in to something that works for you, but this takes time.

This said, JASS -is- better then GUI, and GUI is Guided User Interface, meaning it writes the code for you. Writing the code raw, for yourself, sets you in the number one powerseat of triggering your map (Or whatever else you might be working on). GUI is still the beginners alternative, and for myself, I haven't found the spirit to take up JASS to the part of actually writing it.

B a c k o n t o p i c . . .

Does anyone have a map which they'd like me to view?

Regards
Dead-Inside

If your not being naying of jass I still have my two latest projects which you can look at it...

From my experiance, GUI is Graphical User Interface, not Guided User Interface in most cases... Just a little correction. I htink IMO you should take JASS, for most who get to the advanced GUI level seem to jump into JASS soon after, leaving few maps that fit your criteria.