VJass environment?

[Astrella]

I remember JassCraft and such being a thing in the past but what's the common tool used to code in VJass these days? I know the World Editor itself allows it but I'd like something with a bit more functionality.

 

[PurgeandFire]

I'd recommend Wurst if you want an out-of-WE programming setup, since it was designed like that from the start.

Else I'd use VSCode:
Compiling vJass and Wurst using VSCode

 

[Lizreu]

Unfortunately, there's not much in the way of alternative WE options like JNGP or WEX anymore, since neither work on the newest patches, and waiting for anything from Blizzard is like watching paint dry.

Like Purge mentioned, if you want an out-of-WE experience, you can use Wurst. If you insist on using vJASS or Zinc for whatever reason, there's a little trick you can do to use your code editor of choice.

1. Go to your WC3 directory, and find the JassHelper directory
2. Edit jasshelper.conf
3. Add a section called [lookupfolders] and under it, add a quoted path to where your project files will be, e.g.

[lookupfolders]
"C:\work\code\mymap\vjass"

4. Create an empty trigger in your map and convert it to custom text. Replace the code with

//! import init.j

5. In your project folder, create a file with the same name, "init.j". This will be your "entry point.", where you can basically do anything you want - include other files, or just write libraries/triggers like you normally would in vJASS.
6. Now when you save your map, all the code from init.j (and whatever it includes) will be imported into your map.

Alternatively, if you want to use Zinc instead of vJASS, you can use "//! import zinc init.zn"

You can see an example of this approach in a map I used to develop here:
SamuelMoriarty/Yet-Another-RolePlay

 

[Chaosy]

I do not see how anyone can work with vjass on the latest patch, the lack of syntax highlighting is way too important for me.

I am biased but wurst is pretty much the only remotely viable option.
Unless you are willing to play on 1.29, in which case you can go vjass.

 

[Pinzu]

Notepad++ set to use C# language. Do save your files as backup, in case you copy over something (CTRL-Z doesn't quite work as you except in the script editor)...

 

[The_Silent]

There is a syntax highlighter for sublime 3. Which is what I use. Not super convenient, but programming wc3 really never was

 

[Chaosy]

Well if coding in vjass in the standard editor was 1/10 then coding in notepad++ has to be -10/10

If you use visual studio code with the wurst toolchain you can at the very least.

1. Automatically Inject the code into the map without copy paste
2. Test/launch the map from your text editor

Note that this does not require you to write in wurst ;P but you'll use the wurst extension for the launch and build tasks.

 

[Astrella]

Thank you all for the detailed explanations.

And yeah; that's basically the problem. I knew very little about programming when I did my first bout of mapping 10 years ago, but now I'm in a Java Course and dabbled in other stuff as well and IDEs just add a lot of useful features. And we never really got much documentation for JASS from Blizzard either so it's a bit of adjusting back into that mindset coming from the super detailed Java API.