"Use Slade, far superiour to XWE!" Except for skins.

[Zwip-Zwap Zapony]

Honestly, it can't even include the ^ character in lump names. I pretty much need to use Notepad++ to edit a few bytes of character Wads I make with Slade, to avoid SRB2 saying "can't find the ^ frames" and crashing.

Is Slade really that superiour? What do people use to make character Wads? Seriously, what do they use? To me, Slade is superiour to XWE in many many aspects.
But firstly, XWE has a "crop image" function, (not really required for that much, but can reduce file-size,) and secondly, XWE can save ^ into lump names, (really required for characters,) both unlike Slade.

Or is there just some sort of thing I'm missing about Slade?

 

[Monster Iestyn]

Apparently you just need to turn on some option to fix the ^ problem. Only thing is I forget what it's called currently. (I don't have the latest version of SLADE here just yet)

But seriously, calm down. I know SLADE is hyped as the better so much, but no need to rant about it when it does something wrong.

 

[Zwip-Zwap Zapony]

Apparently you just need to turn on some option to fix the ^ problem. Only thing is I forget what it's called currently. (I don't have the latest version of SLADE here just yet)

Well, I know it didn't save ^ in the 3.1.0 beta 3 or something like that (by default). As that was a beta, it was excusable. But the full 3.1.0 was released I think 24th june, which I noticed today. It still didn't save ^ in lump names. So I was wondering what people use to make character Wads, and thus created this topic.

But seriously, calm down. I know SLADE is hyped as the better so much, but no need to rant about it when it does something wrong.

If it looked like ranting, I'm sorry. That wasn't the intention. The "Use Slade, far superiour to XWE" in the title was sarcastic, due to not being able to save ^ in lump names.
Anyway, I'll try looking through all options in the settings, then.

Edit: Looked through all options (including that "advanced" settings page thing which lists every single thing), found nothing to allow the ^ character.

 

[HellHawkX]

Looked through all options (including that "advanced" settings page thing which lists every single thing), found nothing to allow the ^ character.

Turn on percent encoding

 

[Zwip-Zwap Zapony]

Turn on percent encoding

...That... worked... I have no idea what "percent encoding" is, but I know Slade says "outside of Wad archives" about it. Well, ain't gonna complain about that working. Thank you.

 

[Mystic]

The basic difference is that SLADE has error checking, whereas XWE just pretends to do whatever you tell it whether it worked properly or not. This means that while you may encounter issues setting up SLADE to do what you want, it's much more unlikely that it'll corrupt the file or worse. A lot of the problems people report with editing SRB2 can be tied to them following the instructions on the Wiki correctly, but XWE didn't properly listen and actually execute the instructions properly.

SLADE isn't perfect by any means, but at least it has active developers working to fix problems and has been updated more recently than 2009. I'd also remind you that these tools are designed to edit Doom, not SRB2, so some of SRB2's weirder quirks, like having to use lower case letters and weird symbols in character WADs, aren't enabled by default in most editors because doing so would be incorrect in Doom.

 

[clairebun]

XWE has to be one of the least user-friendly editors I've had to deal with when screwing with SRB2. I wouldn't consider it a lump editor as much as I would consider it a lump monster. Y'know, like the cookie monster. Except with hipster glasses and his own Sonic fanfic stashed inside one of his trashcans.

 

[wolfs]

SLADE 3.0.2 has native support for adding ^ in lump names, so you can always fall back to that.

 

[Zwip-Zwap Zapony]

SLADE 3.0.2 has native support for adding ^ in lump names, so you can always fall back to that.

A different guy suggested turning on "percent encoding outside Wad archives" in the settings. That allowed me to put ^ in lump names in Wad archives, somehow.

Y'know, like the cookie monster.

I can't seem to figure out how to post YouTube videos on this forum (if that is even possible), so have a link instead.

 

[Monster Iestyn]

You know, from my own experience XWE has never been that terrible to use, never corrupted anything for me either. (from what I hear that only happens when you press certain buttons, but who can tell *shrugs*)

...Then of course my experience isn't everyone's experience, so eh.

 

[Zwip-Zwap Zapony]

You know, from my own experience XWE has never been that terrible to use, never corrupted anything for me either.

From my experience, eXtendable Wad Editor has neither been bad to use... except for the many many times it has corrupted stuff for me and/or said "This file is open in another program, relaunch XWE to avoid corruption" (despite XWE being the only program to load the Wad). At least it likes creating backups, so it's not all completely bad whenever it corrupted stuff.

 

[Rob]

XWE is fine to use but you have to use it long enough to understand its quirks. It basically boils down to being just better to use SLADE which does basic error checking than it is to learn how to play dodgeball with XWE.

This coming from someone VERY familiar with XWE and used it exclusively until about 6 months ago. Stick with SLADE. It's just way better and has all of XWE's functionality.

 

[Monster Iestyn]

Not quite all of the functionality though - last I checked XWE exports/imports only bmps for images in a WAD file, while SLADE exports only PNGs but can probably import anything into a WAD file (which have to be manually converted to the right type afterwards).

For people like me who use MSPaint (the version in Windows XP anyway) I find it better to use XWE for exporting images in particular, for at least then image offsets are actually saved in the bmps (contrary to some opinion, XWE does not always do these things automatically) and not lost when changed. SLADE's PNGs probably do the same thing, but MSPaint can't meddle with these without losing this offset data. That alongside the fact MSPaint just can't support translucency anyway!

Of course not everyone uses MSPaint anyway, so...

 

[Zwip-Zwap Zapony]

Stick with SLADE. It's just way better and has all of XWE's functionality.

I will stick with Slade, especially now it has been confirmed to me that Slade has a crop image feature, since eXtendable Wad Editor has it, and Slade has all of XWE's features you say.[/sarcasm]

Slade doesn't have all of XWE's functionality. Especially the crop image thing would be useful for cutting down the filesize of Wads, even more especially if one could select a lot of graphic lumps, and then right-click one of them, then choose to crop all of them. That would be an amazing feature to have. But I will stick to Slade.

 

[Boinciel]

Shouldn't you be cropping images in an image editor anyway? I mean, a WAD editor is designed primarily to edit and rearrange lumps, not for creation or manipulation of those images outside of how they will be displayed in-game. Every graphics program (other than MS Paint) have both manual and autocropping; you should be cropping the images at this step anyway so you save space on your hard drive.

 

[Zwip-Zwap Zapony]

Shouldn't you be cropping images in an image editor anyway?

I'd surely do that if making something from scratch, but if I want to for example make an edit of Knuckles (for some reason his sprites aren't already cropped), it'd be a problem when it comes to setting the offsets. I know many people go through setting the offsets, but I'm not one of those many people.

Every graphics program (other than MS Paint) have both manual and autocropping; you should be cropping the images at this step anyway so you save space on your hard drive.

I honestly don't care about saving a GigaByte of my 1,51 TerraBytes left or not on Sonic Robo Blast 2 Wads I'll probably not end up making anyway. :P

Edit: Also, it's not like you guys (looking at your "developer" status) working on Sonic Robo Blast 2 crop images yourselves. Well, you do crop some, but not all.