So, I've been reading a lot of horror stories lately about overloading strings/maps exploding etc etc, and I just checked my strings in SCM Draft, and im at 462 strings (16.6%) is this pushing it? And if I do get too close, what exactly will happen? =\

Well, from what I know, there is no real limit to the strings you a given map. There have been a lot of maps made and unless your map contains 1000+ triggers each with a comment, and locations with comments, differently named units, and other string oriented material, I doubt that you will go over. I have seen some maps that have had over 1000 but not much over, and they were full of everything that could be used for strings. (EX: renamed units, locations, trigger comments, ect...) On the account that no one I know/herd of, has ever gone over this limit, I'm really not sure what would happen.

Uhm there IS a limit: Max 64k characters. But ScmDraft loosens the 1024 string count limit you find in other editors as it seems technically possible to go over.
What will happen when you make more than 1024 strings? I don't know. A bug if you're unlucky.
I've heard people claiming it would be np to use more than 1024 strings IF YOU SOLELY STICK TO SCMDRAFT. Other editors will screw up for sure.
But I also heard people experiencing bugs (strings got screwed up) when doing exactly that.
So I suggest you backup your map as soon as you get close to the limit and try for yourself.

But usually you don't need to get near this limit. Just save comments. It's not necessary to comment every single trigger.
For example make headlines for the following group of triggers. This headline can even be like an index stating what each of the trigger does as you usually hit the 1024 trigger count earlier than the 64kb limit.

SCM Draft was meant to be able to break the 1024 limit of strings. The idea was that the true limit was 65536 bytes,(correct me if I'm wrong) and so it was made to go over, but people seem to be running into many bugs with this lately, so I would definitely keep backups, which is a good idea, whether or not you are doing risky things.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on May 29 2008, 2:01 pm by Falkoner.

Correcting you as requested: 65536 Byte (= 64k)

It's not 65535 bytes worth of strings. You have to also count one short for the number of strings, one short for each string and all the null chars for every string

EDIT: Hm well, it is 65535 bytes worth of strings then the last string can be as long as you want? Because what counts is that you can point to the beginning of the string. Haven't used this stuff for a while...

http://www.staredit.net/maplantis/index.php?sid=eedfd11fef;wiki=35
http://www.staredit.net/maplantis/index.php?sid=f6bfa75d14;wiki=22


So:
65536 - 2 - 2n = amount of characters you can store.

Yeah that's the first that came to my mind. But notice that you have to reach the beginning of the string, but not its end. So it's 65534 chars worth of strings and the last string can be as long as you wish.

Nevermind. Didn't read all the posts thoroughly... For an additional comment:
It's the same as the TBL format... Except, for whatever reason, it stays at 1024 entries by default. I have no idea why map editors are so picky about this. TBL editors have no trouble.

Because setting a limit is easier than counting how many characters are left for strings. They probably thought that noone would make a map that needed more strings, otherwise changing the format wouldn't have been hard...

Yeah, they also thought no one would want to add and subract from health, this is just another reason why we're all going to love the SC2 editor

You don't need to change the format... it's just dumb the way they implemented it.

It is not dumb. They could've used longs instead of shorts, but the format is very good because it is fast to read. You just load it as a whole into memory then you can access a string by doing:

Simple and fast.