Versatile game editors (right now, just Stormgate's)

[deepstrasz]

It's been some years since Stormgate was announced as a project and since we're a modding and mapping community, we'd surely be curious what other games and editors are or will be out there.

Seems similar to StarCraft II's.

 

[Napoqe]

Beautiful interface. However, I think Starcraft 2's style is bad. I never managed to learn the Data Editor and seeing that game it also seems very similar. I think it was one of the motives that Starcraft 2's Custom Game wasn't as successful as Warcraft 3.

The Clicli Editor was powerful and easy. In the style of Warcraft 3. Sad project to have ended. Its Object Editor had an ECA (Events, Conditions and Actions) trigger system that was easy to understand and more powerful than that of Warcraft 3. And I believe that @Mayday and @Kam experience must have greatly influenced these systems, leaving philosophy behind easy and powerful of Warcraft 3 in Clicli.

Age of Empires 2 has a Trigger system similar to that of Warcraft 3. Over the years, many functions have been added. Nowadays, you can even same make some maps from Warcraft 3. But it doesn't have an Object Editor or Data Editor. And your Trigger System is very disorganized.

 

[Uncle]

If I recall correctly (it's been many years), the Data Editor in Starcraft 2 was annoying because of the whole Actor system. You would copy and paste a Hydralisk thinking that you could just go from there, but no, that new Hydralisk was completely broken until you addressed all of it's Actors:

^ None of that would "just work" after a quick copy and paste. (If memory serves me right)

However, the power of Starcraft 2's data editor far exceeds that of Warcraft 3's. Do you want an Autocast ability that can only target Invisible, Air-Attacking enemy units that are currently Stunned? Sure, a few checkboxes later and you're good to go. Try that in Warcraft 3. You'll have to trigger everything from scratch and you can't even recreate a proper targeting Error, it all has to be faked (poorly) with many edge cases to think about.

I'm hoping Stormgate finds the sweet spot - which it looks like it does. I want the depth of Starcraft 2's editor -> Tons of data fields to modify every last detail, but with the ease of use of Warcraft 3's editor -> Copy and paste an object for a fully functioning duplicate that you can use immediately. Basically I want everything without any downsides, GIMME!

 

[deepstrasz]

^ None of that would "just work" after a quick copy and paste. (If memory serves me right)

Apparently, they simplified the copy process when they introduced the water pathing and Warcraft III mod assets: StarCraft II 5.0 Patch Notes
But yeah, I'm definitely hoping for the same thing.

Age of Empires 2 has a Trigger system similar to that of Warcraft 3. Over the years, many functions have been added. Nowadays, you can even same make some maps from Warcraft 3. But it doesn't have an Object Editor or Data Editor. And your Trigger System is very disorganized.

Looks nice but seems simple without complexity for stuff like RPGs which you could do a bit with Age of Mythology's editor.

Heroes of Might and Magic V's editor seemed nice but from my perspective a hassle to use. Don't know about the newer games in the series. It's irrelevant since HoM&M is locked to turn based strategy.

Not sure about CliCli, how much it is a game with an editor rather than an editor without a game or how much it resembles stuff like Unity but we should also consider the ease of importing and finding resources. If you had to buy like every piece of furniture to get a small room designed, then it's bad for people's modding and more directed towards ("indie") game producing.
For instance, we should also consider how lucky Warcraft III mappers and modders are that they have other games from the same company that they can extract resources from legally.