XWE Corruption

[Theqmayn]

When I am working in XWE, often times I will get a message to close the wad because quote it was modified in an external program. I close out, I come back I get a bunch of weird things where the lumps were:




Like this: X01010101010101


Or something like that. That forces me to screw around with the backups. Is there a way to prevent this from happening?

 

[Xkower8181]

When I am working in XWE, often times I will get a message to close the wad because quote it was modified in an external program. I close out, I come back I get a bunch of weird things where the lumps were:




Like this: X01010101010101


Or something like that. That forces me to screw around with the backups. Is there a way to prevent this from happening?

Oh boy this question is so simple so even I can anwser it.
So like the question the anwser is simple too
And the anwser is: DON'T USE XWE!!!!!

 

[Theqmayn]

Also how can I easily add backslashes, the ones opposite of / because I always have to copy and paste them from somewhere, as there doesn't seem to be a key for it on my keyboard.

 

[toaster]

Yep. There is literally no reason to use XWE in 2015. Use SLADE instead.

 

[Monster Iestyn]

Pst, telling people not to use XWE isn't an actual answer to fixing a problem with XWE, even if SLADE is objectively better. It's like responding to "how do I fix my car" with "cars suck, just use a bike instead". ;) (yeah okay, that was a terrible analogy)

Did you make sure to turn off the "Perform clean up on exit" option in XWE's preferences? Apparently that alone causes a lot of problems with using XWE.

 

[toaster]

It's more like "gee, how do I cut this plank of wood? This unstable hacksaw which has taken a couple fingers in the past, or this machine which detects when it nicks flesh and stops immediately?"

The latter requires a little more setup but less skill to not suck with.

 

[Theqmayn]

What does the cleanup thing do? Disabled it though.

 

[fickleheart]

WAD cleanup removes junk data from the file, which reduces its filesize. WAD editors sometimes tend to leave the data in a lump behind and just delete the pointer to it when you delete a lump; cleanup prunes that.

I'll say that I never had to disable auto-cleanup to avoid XWE corrupting files. Note that the error is usually "was modified by an external program"; you really shouldn't be opening a WAD in another program, SRB2 or otherwise, while it's open in XWE. See, XWE edits the file directly instead of storing changes in RAM to save when prompted, so editing the file elsewhere without closing it in XWE first means contents can and often will be moved around, which messes everything up when it goes to write those changes.

Also, if you're going to use XWE, use the stable version instead of whatever the beta version was that supported lowercase lump names. You only need those if you're editing characters (and once 2.2 is out, you won't even need them for that), and the beta is a lot less stable.

 

[Mystic]

Okay, everyone back up. This is incredibly stupid.

Theqmayn, you should download SLADE, and spend a little time experimenting with it to figure out how it works. XWE is beyond ancient and no longer updated. This means it contains tons of known bugs and other issues that will cause you problems, like the corruption issue you're having. While SLADE is slightly more complicated, it's way more stable and is still actively maintained. It might annoy you at first to learn a new interface, but you'll be far better off once you figure out how it works.

To everyone else in this thread, the goal of this forum is to help people edit SRB2, and to that end we should not only provide current information, but enough information that it actually answers the question. Saying "use SLADE" or "don't use XWE" doesn't provide any helpful information to anyone. You've gotta tell people why they should use SLADE over XWE.

To the XWE lobby, I'd like to point out that XWE was last significantly updated almost a decade ago. While many of you have been using XWE for an eternity and therefore know its quirks inside and out, that doesn't mean newbies to editing should be using it. We don't provide support for Wintex and WadAuthor anymore, so why should we continue to do that for XWE? I'd like to remind you that while I was using WadAuthor for long beyond the time when I should have been, I recommended everyone use Doom Builder once it was stable. I knew all of WadAuthor's bugs by heart, but anyone new to SRB2 level editing would have to learn how to edit stages AND handle WadAuthor's ancient bugs at the same time. At this point it's time to treat XWE the same way: a historical relic you can technically use if you've been using it for years, but something newbies should stay far, far away from.

 

[Monster Iestyn]

I'm not really in the "XWE lobby", I use SLADE a lot more than XWE these days. My only stance here in this thread was that someone was asking for help with XWE ...and ideally one should at least try to figure out or explain what the problem is rather than being totally dismissive about the issue, as that just comes off as a bit lazy. Undoubtably SLADE is wholly better in almost every way, of course, there is no argument about that.

@RedEnchilada: pst, you forgot that lowercase letters are still used by some long sprite animations outside of characters - weapon rings, invincibility sparkles, that sort of thing.