Questions come in pairs:

1. Are there any map editing programs that can run without Starcraft being installed on the computer?

2. What is the best map editor to use?

For 1- If not, no big deal; I just need a way to work on maps at school since the home comp crashed

For 2- I'm using Xtra editor right now at the grandparents house but i want to know where and what is better.

1.No
2.Scmdraft2
Here is Scmdraft2.

do u need a patch loader or is it basically just like a souped up staredit?

All you need is StarDat and BrooDat and patch.rt(if you want patched things to be correct) in order to make the editors work.


Depends on what you need, usually SCM Draft covers everything you could want, but StarForge does have a few cool features, X-tra is outdated and is only good because of it's StarEdit feel, if you just can't give up the StarEdit feel, I would recommend FartyEdit, which can be found here in the Mods section, the other programs can be found on the Programs section of my website.

1. No. Well that means you don't have to have it installed, but you need the MPQs (for ScmDraft that is)

2. The newest release of ScmDraft 2 v0.8
Scmdraft has a lot of extra features, for example no need for mode change, perfect stacking (instead of that 1 pixel dislocation) supports EUDs, text base trigger editor, to just mention a few...

If you have starcraft installed on another computer, simply copy the StarDat, BrooDat, and patch_rt.mpq and move them to the computer that doesn't have stacraft installed. However, you must make sure the mpq's are in the same folder as your editor.

Nobody is going to post their stardat/broodat/patch_rt either, since they contain your cdkey. However, I can vouch for using scmdraftt on a flash drive. Make sure you setup scmdraft so it knows to look for those three files on the flash drive, and doesn't try to look for them in your starcraft directory.

Starforge works without anything, I think.

Starforge is slightly worse than SCMDraft, but only because SCMDraft does nearly everything Starforge does better. SF sucks for terrain, and editing triggers (rules at making them though). SF does support negative numbers, EUDs, and number sprite placement. SCMDraft doesn't do those three very well.

Farty swears by fartyedit, which is just a mod of staredit. Most people use a combination of SCMDraft/SF/Staredit + other small programs like trigger duplicator.

I don't recommend Starforge. The few advantages it has are likely unnecessary to someone who hasn't progressed passed X-tra Editor. Switching between editors also can mess up your map, so I'd be careful.

All around, SCMDraft is the way to go.

This is all the more true for the newest release. It has far less bugs than the previous release and SI implemented almost everything that ScmDraft was missing compared to SF.

As does FartyEdit.

Only StarDat contains CDKey information, and the main reason I can see not posting them, other than they are quite large, is that they are the main game data so Blizzard would definitely love it to be passed around.

It has some required files, but I am not sure what they are.

I love SF's square terrain. It's isometrical terrain, I'll admit, is less than satisfactory.

As is SCXE.

I could check the sizes of the minimal MPQ requirements for SCMDraft if you'd like.... maybe make something that copies MPQ data into a new MPQ.
Unfortunately, though, SCMDraft uses the registry.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 5 2008, 11:41 pm by FaRTy1billion.

That would be quite helpful. I'll just use the farty editor 'till then

It works fine off of a flash drive, so it's not too much of a problem, you just have to change the settings for the profile to go to the right spot.