Is there a better alternative to mn3edit?

[sushi.h.a.]

The mn3edit.exe tool that comes with Descent 3 seems to use nearly any excuse to corrupt an mn3. Add a level to a reopened mn3 corrupts the mn3, Changing a level in a reopened mn3 corrupts the mn3, speaking too loudly around a reopened mn3 corrupts the mn3. Is there any other mn3 tool that is better.

Additionally, does any one know what the exact “.msn” data format is.
(Note: An “.msn” is the file that stores the mission order and other mission data. This type of file is packaged inside an mn3, and is readable in plain text.)
I have written one by hand before and gotten it to work, but other times I’ll write one and it will inexplicably not work.

Thanks.
...and Happy New Year!

[Kyouryuu]

I started using the D3 Quicktest that's also included in newer versions of D3Edit. You can clump your files in there and either play it, or use \"Save MN3\" if you just want to save the MN3 file.

MN3Edit is really flaky. I forgot the exact circumstances, but it would routinely corrupt / refuse to work.

[Duper]

that's wierd because I've not had that problem in years. I was having it when I would try to save to an existing mn3, but not if I made a new one. Not that hard really. Just keep all the file you are compiling into an mn3 in a separate fold so they are all right there.
For some reason, that's stopped all together, now that's on a different drive on a newer OS install, so who knows why it was doing it, but as I'm not building anymore it doesn't really matter.

[sushi.h.a.]

Thanks guys. I tried the mn3 editor built into D3edit and it is so much better I can’t believe I used Mn3edit while building GroupC, when I could have been using D3edit this whole time. So thanks again Kyouryuu, that will be a big help.

Also thanks for the info about Mn3edit Duper. I had suspected that saving to an existing copy of an mn3 caused problems, but I hadn’t heard of anyone else noticing the problem until you mentioned it. As I will still be using Mn3edit for some things it’s helpful to know that the glitch seems to be real.


From what I can tell the errors that Mn3edit usually makes while saving an mn3 are fixable. The corruptions I have seen Mn3edit save into an mn3 are as follows...
Mn3edit will sometimes save two copies of the msn inside the mn3 instead of overwriting the existing msn, so when you try to open the mn3 it will read the former msn and claim that the mn3 is unreadable.
The other error I have seen is that Mn3edit will sometimes write the msn file incorrectly, by skipping level numbers (i.e. 1,2,3,5...) or by calculating the total-number-of-levels value incorrectly.

Anyway, thanks again.

[Kyouryuu]

Yes, those are the \"circumstances\" I mentioned. My gosh, I remember using MN3Edit to compile Reactor Gamma's MN3, which had about a dozen files in it. It got to the point where I created a Gamma directory and dumped all content there just so it was easy to drag-select and make a new MN3 file.