SCI Studio vs. SCI Companion

[Cloudee1]

Alright gang, it's time to weigh in, sound off, or just plain add your two cents into the debate of sci Studio vs sci Companion.

After working on the point and click template, and then actually making a game using it. I have found that I actually use both editors when it comes down to it.

SCI Companion is a must when it actually comes to scripting and compiling, but I find some of the drawing tools to be a little lacking. For instance copy and pasting from an outside file, sometimes the image comes up divided, or just plain garbled. Also the add cel after/before buttons don't necesarily seem to add the cel where I want it to.


Then there is Studio, well we all know the issues there, when using the drawing tools, which is what I use it for  then it crashes alot. And for compiling, while it may be a little more lax than companions compiler, the files are slightly larger. Which burns up extra memory needlessly. I also like scstudios text editor a little better too, it doesn't fight me when it comes to putting in an extra blank line or two.

Does anyone else have any preferences or complaints? I hate to say it, but I may be leaning towards sci studio myself (except for scripting of course, companion hands down there).

[MusicallyInspired]

I find everything in Companion is much more intuitive. From the art editing to the scripting. The picture editor in Companion has enhancements over Studio's that sells it for me. I like the elipse tool, the picture importer, the event copy/paster/mirrorer and such. I really have no reason to use SCI Studio other than my Win98 laptop won't run SCI Companion very well at all.

[joek0]

For me, I use both depending on the situation.

I use Studio for editing everything except for the script. I don't like the text editor for editing scripts.

I use Companion for more the more complex editing features. I also find the text editor much better here. My only gripe is the font the text editor uses.

Off subject, does anyone know any good text editors for writing my scripts.

joek

[Collector]

Off subject, does anyone know any good text editors for writing my scripts.

I like Notepad++ for general scripting. It is a free, open source project that recognizes many different languages (for syntax highlighting). It is very versatile and robust. It is feature rich, yet small. It is what I use for most of my scripting needs except for NSIS.

[Cloudee1]

I also like how scistudio scales views whereas companion does not. I seem to have a habit of drawing everything bigger than anyone else. For instance you may have noticed in circus quest I used Doan's lady for the teenage girl, but considerably larger than she is originally. On the otherhand if you compile all scripts with studio then the game runs out of heap before it even starts. So I guess for now I will have to remain on the fence and continue to use both...

[MusicallyInspired]

I thought you did that on purporse seeing as the character you play is supposed to be a kid? That's the impression I got anyway lol.

[Cloudee1]

I do it on a regular basis. The guy with Doans girl is a straight copy of an ego from a different game I started a while back. I just had to blow up Doan's girl to match him. There's more room for details if everything is bigger. Unfortunately more detail means more work...

[Cloudee1]

So I figured out one of my gripes about companion. apparantly you can scale views, you need to press shift while resizing the cel and the image will scale to that size. The only other thing holding me back from dumping studio is the ability to save an existing resource as a different number.

[MusicallyInspired]

Err...you can do that in Companion as well. Just do Save As.

[Cloudee1]

Sure enoughm lol. I don't know why I never thought of save as...