Two questions: vJass recommended? / JassCraft saving bug?

Hi ho

I'm new to this forum and custom Warcraft III map designing in general, although I do have programming background, and Jass looks very easy.

I've got two questions. First of all, I've been researching a bit about plugins and such, and I encountered vJass (and JassHelper). This adds the possibility of OO, polymorphing, interfaces, etc. But is this actually needed? At the end it's just a scripting language for WIII maps, and I can't immediately think of many uses.

I'll rephrase my question: is vJass used for professional (and popular) maps, like eg. Elements TD 3.0?

My second question is about JassCraft, it looks like a very nice application to me, especially with the Visual Studio theme , I'm addicted to that (now it should have Intellisense, hehe). But I've not been able to save a map or so, it always starts whining about a reading access violation with the external MPQ library he's using (SFmpq.dll). JassCraft is nice, but I can't use it in any way if I can't save my files.

Could anyone help me with this?
Thanks in advance.

Edit: Eeeeehm, how come my topic is not visible for guests, while all others on this board are...? :p

Try to code in normal Jass for a few months, if you don't feel the urge for suicide you can use it instead of vJass.

You try to edit with jasscraft the war3map.j of a map ?
what about copy/paste in the editor ?

If you are talking about save any.j try to copy paste on a .txt, change to .j and import the file in jasscraft folder

Hmmm, I took a look at vJass, and it's not that different from normal Jass. So I'll just program everything with normal Jass, and when I feel there's a situation where I could use vJass I'll do it that way. :)


Yes, I tried to edit a war3map.j of a map, but I read the MPQ thing isn't really working yet, so maybe it's just not recommended to do it that way. I'll just use some unpacking/packing thingy, and edit the raw .j file.

Of all the vJass features those are worth the least.

Jasscraft was never finished. Among the bugs that were never fixed was mpq editing. None of it works. Instead you must extract war3map.j with a program like winmpq. Or simply work on individual triggers and copy them to and from the world editor.

Can you give me a few examples of the most interesting features of vJass then?

After you said that I checked the application date, and it says 2005 - 2006 lol . Someone should finish it. Thanks for the info.

Lol, the smileys of this forum are annoying though. :p Why the unintuitive keywords with the "emote_" prefix and between : symbols? Why can't it just be :) , ;), :(, etc. ?

Im working on 2 maps that use mainly vJass, its MBA and ET2. In such maps vJass make u less wanna suicide when it comes to catergorized and easy reading codes.

I am not a programmer.
But at very very least, with the Vjass you can declare your own globals and of all types.
structs are so usefull too

I find myself using globals, structs, libraries, and the import command the most often. There's really not any reason to NOT use vJass. It's not difficult to learn, and the JassNewGen editor is exactly the same to use as the regular world editor, it just has bonus debugging and preprocessing features.

What are the full names of these maps? I can't really find them with their abbreviations. I'd like to know so I've got an idea what kind of maps fit for intensive use of vJass. :)


Alright, you're maybe right. I'll just keep vJass in mind, and try to recognize situations while designing maps where I can use vJass. :)

MBA = Mad Balls Arena (or it might be Ballz, but whatever).
ET2 = Elimination Tournament 2. It's hosted here, so should be easy to find.

That's probably the way to go with vJass. No need to force it, but at least know what it's features are so you can use them when they would be useful. I predict that within a week or two you will be using it much more than you thought you would :).

I personally find the debugger most useful due the WE won't crash if you forgot e.g. an endif or endfunction.
Delaring globals is also really nice because you don't have the nasty udg_ prefix.
Furthermore structs are good because they allow a fast and easy storage of datas for e.g. Spells (I personally have 1 Spell in the Ressources using vJASS, well ..., i'm currently working on another one).
Not all options are really that useful, but most are.

Alright, I'll check them out. :D And you're probably right. ^^


Yes, the alternative WE-integrated JASS editor is really a relief. But I haven't found a perfect one yet, the default one of WEHelper is quite annoying, and when you don't press save and click another trigger everything you wrote disappears (and you can't use Crtl+Z decently).

The other one is TESH, that one is really heaven. :p It has Intellisense and those things, but one problem is that I've got it from that JASS NewGen Pack 4c. And it crashes every time I save or try to run any map. Haven't searched for a solution decently yet, got exams atm.

[quote=Jitse]What are the full names of these maps? I can't really find them with their abbreviations. I'd like to know so I've got an idea what kind of maps fit for intensive use of vJass. :)QUOTE]

MBA = MaD Balls Arena, on east clan SLRD is a MBA clan
ET2 = Elimination Tournament 2
Elimination Tournament was a popular map created by Infrane and Gadden, then later continued only by Infrane.

The main thing in these king of maps are the physic system, but all the vjass helps alot with other things too, such as my Timing system is also made in vJass and used in ET2.