WinDinkedit Plus 2
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- Author(s): RW
- Categories: Development, Utility
- Downloads: 1189
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Every once in a while you hear of something wonderful that sounds too good to be true and hope to yourself that it eventuates as well as you're capable of imagining. Unfortunately in WinDinkEdit's case, Plus 2 falls incredibly far short of that and feels like being gifted some sort of unpleasant-looking home-made garment for Christmas instead of those fancy expensive black and white shoes you asked for. This editor was released about the time when everyone was clamouring to see what GameHampe's "HJEdit" vaporware would consist of. There were at least a few other proposals around this time in terms of Dink editor developments that went absolutely nowhere, and in usual Dink style made incredibly bold claims that never eventuated. Dink modders did eventually get an editor in the form of WDE2Plus but it's not really anything to celebrate.
Upon starting it up, you'll realise that you've ended up with basically the same sort of thing as the previous versions of WinDinkEdit, complete with useless sidebar and cryptic interface that follows no human interface guidelines known to mankind, except now if you're using Vista or above, your screen won't screw up. However you're still forced into loading things from folders that you have little decision over, and overall are given very little control in regards to just about any of the settings. Want to use a different Dink.exe to test your map with such as Dink 1.09? Eat shit! What's that? You want to load a DMOD you installed with DFarc3? Nope, too bad! Maybe you can attempt to use alternate paths with the "Dink installation folder" selector however I couldn't seem to get this to work at all.
Instead, the new features seem to consist of largely irrelevant and useless functions such as a FastFile unpacker/repacker as well as a .d file decompressor/compressor that nobody really needed nor asked for and make it feel like this was nothing more than a test of the author's skills in file decompression. If you're feeling nostalgic, however, all of your favourite random bugs from previous releases of WinDinkEdit are still present. You want a sudden crash that erases dink.dat as well? Coming right up sir! How about a random freeze while using the collision triangle maker that completely erases your screen that you took two hours to neatly arrange sprites on? Certainly!
Better yet, the author seems to have refused to release the source of this steaming mess meaning people can't really go in and fix the bugs or attempt to port to another platform. Maybe it's for the best though. Painting your rickety old shed solid gold still leaves you with a crappy gold-coloured shack with a leaking roof that really ought to be demolished. Unfortunately as there's really no other viable Dink editor out there other than FreeDinkedit, it feels like you're forced to wear the ugly knitted wool jumper by your family out in front of your friends who all received Nike Airmaxes who you hope won't notice you in case they all start bullying you together.
Unfortunately your options (at the time of writing) in regards to Dink mapping are very limited. You may either stick with tradition and use (Free)DinkEdit with its funky modes and keyboard hotkeys or else try out one of Shevek's rather convoluted editors that might launch properly if you pray in the right direction at the proper time of day and moon phase. At this point you're better off just using a hex editor to manually edit MAP.DAT and DINK.DAT yourself. At least a hex editor isn't going to crash.
Upon starting it up, you'll realise that you've ended up with basically the same sort of thing as the previous versions of WinDinkEdit, complete with useless sidebar and cryptic interface that follows no human interface guidelines known to mankind, except now if you're using Vista or above, your screen won't screw up. However you're still forced into loading things from folders that you have little decision over, and overall are given very little control in regards to just about any of the settings. Want to use a different Dink.exe to test your map with such as Dink 1.09? Eat shit! What's that? You want to load a DMOD you installed with DFarc3? Nope, too bad! Maybe you can attempt to use alternate paths with the "Dink installation folder" selector however I couldn't seem to get this to work at all.
Instead, the new features seem to consist of largely irrelevant and useless functions such as a FastFile unpacker/repacker as well as a .d file decompressor/compressor that nobody really needed nor asked for and make it feel like this was nothing more than a test of the author's skills in file decompression. If you're feeling nostalgic, however, all of your favourite random bugs from previous releases of WinDinkEdit are still present. You want a sudden crash that erases dink.dat as well? Coming right up sir! How about a random freeze while using the collision triangle maker that completely erases your screen that you took two hours to neatly arrange sprites on? Certainly!
Better yet, the author seems to have refused to release the source of this steaming mess meaning people can't really go in and fix the bugs or attempt to port to another platform. Maybe it's for the best though. Painting your rickety old shed solid gold still leaves you with a crappy gold-coloured shack with a leaking roof that really ought to be demolished. Unfortunately as there's really no other viable Dink editor out there other than FreeDinkedit, it feels like you're forced to wear the ugly knitted wool jumper by your family out in front of your friends who all received Nike Airmaxes who you hope won't notice you in case they all start bullying you together.
Unfortunately your options (at the time of writing) in regards to Dink mapping are very limited. You may either stick with tradition and use (Free)DinkEdit with its funky modes and keyboard hotkeys or else try out one of Shevek's rather convoluted editors that might launch properly if you pray in the right direction at the proper time of day and moon phase. At this point you're better off just using a hex editor to manually edit MAP.DAT and DINK.DAT yourself. At least a hex editor isn't going to crash.
Whilst WDE was great little editor for its time, dinkers have a habit of always seeming to want more from everything that gets produced here and RW you have not failed to deliver. This lovely version WDE+2 offers a lot more in the look and ease of use than Win Dink Edit+ now does, bringing it more up to date visually and with some additional and useful shortcut keys which I prefer to use. It opens a lot faster on the newer versions of windows – without the slight “hanging or lag” I experience now, all in all I am rather impressed.
Games "Under Construction" can transfer to being developed in this version with no glitches or anything being lost, changing or moving position so there is no "do-over" bits I have come across as yet (always a plus). Nice to see the menu tidied up of things not used or needed.
Detail/Visuals
I really like the improved ability to see details more clearly - this version has a smoothed over look, as if it has rendered the details better so your map and screens are not so ‘pixelly’ to view which is visually more pleasing to the eye. I am rather pleased that the updated look supports Aero and the fact my desktop or task bar doesn't go black any more when I have WDE open
For us dinkers who make graphics, we need to be aware of the increase in detail that is now available when making new sprites. Also love the updated/cleaned up look of the properties menu's.
New Features
You don't know how many times I have tried to scroll the map with my mouse in WDE without thinking and now it actually DOES IT, it scrolls the map with the middle scroll bar hehe, that feature is very useful and one I would use a lot.
Love that the minimap details without it having to be in a full screen
A really great new feature is the ability to increase or decrease the detail if you want to, this is especially useful to get a decent screenshot for a map Dink can use in- game. It is also very nice that you have fixed the “Screenshot” choice from the menu – it now doesn’t take a distorted or ‘on an angle’ shot or even a mere greyscale image heh, it does however take a nice screenie you are able to use and even had an added beep to let you know it is finished!
I also applaud the ability to enlarge the sprite selection window, I for one used to have trouble finding the smaller sprites because Win 7 made everything so much smaller than previous versions. However a ‘ reset to default’ button would be a nice addition.
Double click to add a new screen! How cool is that!
Love the being able to hold a sprite on your mouse (arrow keys) and move it across multi screens by both large increments (hold Shift and arrow keys) and especially like the ability to nudge it in smaller increments (control and arrow keys).
Resizing sprites is such a pleasure now, as you can click on a sprite and watch it reduce or enlarge as you press the [ or] keys. The visuals cut out the guess work of what percentage you want it and you get what you want with less effort and many less clicks into the properties box.
Whilst I very much like the fact that this runs separately from DFARC I feel that since you have done such a nice job of the visuals in other parts of the program, you could have updated the look of the dmod list for selection (to open) – it looks very ‘notepadish’ and unpolished when the rest is so “pretty” for want of a better word, which lets you down a bit.
One thing I feel would add to this, is the ability to select multiple sprites (maybe even the ability to ‘group’ these ) I think this would be great so there is no one sprite at a time deleting which can take ages if you don’t want to delete the screen)
I will be using this version solely from now on as it doesn’t remove any of the features I used in the old version – rather adds ease of use to the program in all ways. All in all a very nice job RW
Games "Under Construction" can transfer to being developed in this version with no glitches or anything being lost, changing or moving position so there is no "do-over" bits I have come across as yet (always a plus). Nice to see the menu tidied up of things not used or needed.
Detail/Visuals
I really like the improved ability to see details more clearly - this version has a smoothed over look, as if it has rendered the details better so your map and screens are not so ‘pixelly’ to view which is visually more pleasing to the eye. I am rather pleased that the updated look supports Aero and the fact my desktop or task bar doesn't go black any more when I have WDE open
For us dinkers who make graphics, we need to be aware of the increase in detail that is now available when making new sprites. Also love the updated/cleaned up look of the properties menu's.New Features
You don't know how many times I have tried to scroll the map with my mouse in WDE without thinking and now it actually DOES IT, it scrolls the map with the middle scroll bar hehe, that feature is very useful and one I would use a lot.
Love that the minimap details without it having to be in a full screen
A really great new feature is the ability to increase or decrease the detail if you want to, this is especially useful to get a decent screenshot for a map Dink can use in- game. It is also very nice that you have fixed the “Screenshot” choice from the menu – it now doesn’t take a distorted or ‘on an angle’ shot or even a mere greyscale image heh, it does however take a nice screenie you are able to use and even had an added beep to let you know it is finished!
I also applaud the ability to enlarge the sprite selection window, I for one used to have trouble finding the smaller sprites because Win 7 made everything so much smaller than previous versions. However a ‘ reset to default’ button would be a nice addition.
Double click to add a new screen! How cool is that!
Love the being able to hold a sprite on your mouse (arrow keys) and move it across multi screens by both large increments (hold Shift and arrow keys) and especially like the ability to nudge it in smaller increments (control and arrow keys).
Resizing sprites is such a pleasure now, as you can click on a sprite and watch it reduce or enlarge as you press the [ or] keys. The visuals cut out the guess work of what percentage you want it and you get what you want with less effort and many less clicks into the properties box.
Whilst I very much like the fact that this runs separately from DFARC I feel that since you have done such a nice job of the visuals in other parts of the program, you could have updated the look of the dmod list for selection (to open) – it looks very ‘notepadish’ and unpolished when the rest is so “pretty” for want of a better word, which lets you down a bit.
One thing I feel would add to this, is the ability to select multiple sprites (maybe even the ability to ‘group’ these ) I think this would be great so there is no one sprite at a time deleting which can take ages if you don’t want to delete the screen)
I will be using this version solely from now on as it doesn’t remove any of the features I used in the old version – rather adds ease of use to the program in all ways. All in all a very nice job RW
