I’ve been using notepad++ for coding my scenes (not done anything extreme with it so far) but I’ve noticed my prologue file keeps corrupting - luckily I have backups but it’s a pain to have to fix every time. I was wondering if anyone else had been having this problem, is it something I’m doing wrong? Was also wondering if there were any similar alternatives to notepad++ that people liked?
I do like the program but I dont wanna risk a heart attack everytime I open my file and find half my script has been obliterated.
I have been using Notepad++ almost since I started, a looong time ago, and never had a problem. It is hard to know but it might be a problem of your hdd or SO or something else but notepad, just guessing. As a first stance you could try to uninstall it completely and reinstall it again.
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I use CSIDE for all my ChoiceScript coding. I haven’t had any issues with corruption with it, and it makes coding ChoiceScript just altogether a lot easier, as it was developed specifically for the language.
Maybe consider the switch?
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Yeah, i’ve heard good things about CSIDE, I’ll try giving it a go - thanks!
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I use Sublime Text and love it as an alternative to Notepad++. The highlighters and various customisations that you can do for wordcount, spellcheck etc are very useful.
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Corrupted how? What actually happens to the file when it gets corrupted?
Two things:
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Notepad++ is a very solid, long-standing and widely used program. If you’re having problems like this with it frequently, as @Loudbeat said, chances are that something else is wrong.
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Whatever you’re doing, whatever program you’re using: backup your work! I can’t stress this enough. If it’s not the app that crashes, it might be your OS. You might delete or overwrite something yourself in human error. Your power might cut out, or a surge might fry your pc. Backup!!! There are plenty of free/cheap and convenient ways to do this nowadays.
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Once again: backup!
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I can recommend local backups + multiple cloud storage, drive, dropbox, etc. You can never have enough, plus, the text files we use don’t take barely any space, so there’s no way to clog any modern storage with them.
I still think its weird that notepad++ have something to do with your problem. we can try to help if you give us some more info about it, but still recommend to do a hdd test to see if it’s working properly and it doesn’t have any bad or corrupted sectors, just in case, it also can help you prevent further problems and possible data loss if it is breaking for real. But yeah, backup everywhere you can. cause you never know…
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Me too! Although I made the change because Notepad++ wasn’t available for the Mac I got a few years ago. I’m used to it now, although there’s a few features in Notepad++ that I still miss.
It could be something with your computer, but before you throw it away and buy a new one, check if Notepad++'s encoding is set to UTF-8. If it’s encoding your files with a different standard it might explain why it “corrupts” them.
Settings → Preferences → New Document → Encoding → UTF-8 (with ANSI)If it doesn’t help, take a look at your computer. 
I use VS Code so much, it’s only natural for me to stay inside an environment I’m familiar with. Besides, it has many features I can’t live with.
However, CSIDE has that sweet sweet instant play that makes it more convenient to playtest. It also has shortcuts to the quickest and the random test. I also really like the repl command-line interface. Since I spend long periods of time without writing anything in ChoiceScript, it makes testing features or refreshing knowledge of the language rules a lot easier, without messing with my code or creating a throwaway “playground” scene.
Notepad++ is really solid, but I find its UI convoluted, so I only use it for quick-fixes. Can’t say too much about Sublime, but it has a great reputation.
I think you’re well served with any of these tools.
Git!
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I’ve used Notepad++ for all my games so far since I started writing CoGs in 2016, and I’ve had only 1 corrupted file (which I assume was because of a bad Windows 10 update that I had to roll back.) Other than that, it’s an amazing, lightweight platform. I tried CSIDE and it just didn’t work for me for whatever reason.
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Ooo I’ve never heard of Sublime Text, I’l look into it, thanks!
Yeah, I’ve reinstalled it before and it doesn’t seem to have made a difference, and normally I’ve had no issues with notepad which is why it’s so frustrating haha
I have backups, it’s just having to use them more often than i have in the past that’s proving annoying
Yea I checked on a notepad forum and my settings were fine anyway. The weirdness of it is that it seems to be the case even when using different computers, since I work between a laptop n pc normally, and only this one file no matter how much or how little i mess with it.
Have to agree about the CSIDE playtests, I wasn’t sure i was keen on using it to code but its soooo convenient its hard to resist lolol
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Whole chunks of the text gets replaced with NUL values and garbled strings of characters, and while I can use my backups I can never fix that main file, or replace it . Happens across different computers too and doesn’t even happen every time. Sometimes I can open and close the program in the same session and it’s messed up, sometimes I can work on it for a few days on and off, passes random tests etc fine and then the same thing happens again. Tried looking on actual notepad forums but cant find anything about it happening more than once to someone.
Honestly since the coding for that section is completed now and the backed up versions seem fine by choice standards i think im just gonna have to leave it as is -sigh-
Seconding Sublime Text. I don’t write CoG games, but I use it for editing them and I love it. Powerful search features, a nice dark mode, a rudimentary (but very customizable) spellcheck. I wish I could change the font so that em dashes looked distinct from hyphens, I wish that it had a Word-level grammar check (flagging two "and"s in a row, etc), and I haven’t figured out to to get a word count out of it. But dark mode has saved my retinas a lot of wear and tear.
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Try recovering it using Recuva.
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I resisted the move to CSIDE out of pure inertia.
Made the transition… and I now cannot imagine doing choicescript without it. SO much better than Notepad ++… just the fact you can quickly run quicktests play the game, etc, etc.
Just go for it, you wont regret it!
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Hey, it looks like sublime is extensible through plugins.
LanguageTool is like Grammarly, including checking duplicated words. This adds word count.
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Usually, a phenomenon like this would be caused by using the wrong character encoding. You didn’t mention if you checked that or not. It might still be possible to solve the problem, especially if the corruption was limited to one file.
Notepad++ is a plain text editor, and CS files are plain text files. They specifically are supposed to be resistant to this type of file damage (as opposed to Microsoft Word files, for example), which is why it’s unusual and alarming that you’ve encountered so much of it.
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