Tools - Mission Editors
A mission editor is an editor with functions to allow you to place units and buildings onto your maps. They should also allow you to control how they AI will play in the scenario you have created. Some of these tools do not do much in addition to just breaking the encryption on the map files, whilst others provide some really nice functions to make scripting easier. Currently, I highly recommend you to use Lewin's mission editor, as it's far more advanced than the rest of the mission editors you can find from here.
Lewin's Mission Editor
This is by far the most used Mission Editor. For all people who are unfamiliar with scripting of missions, I highly recommend this tool for you! There are buttons that can be used to add units/buildings and then the object can be chosen from a list. Additonally, the tool also supports adding of messages, adding goals, giving AI commands, remapping colors and just about every command that there is can be added by using a button. You can place buildings and roads graphically! Didn't you hear me?! Place buildings and roads graphically, now that's something!
Harold's Mission Editor
This is most likely the mission editor out there that is simplest in it's functions. What this mission editor pretty much does, is allowing you to open a mission DAT file and it will automatically break the encryption. The rest of the tool is pretty much the same as editing a unencrypted mission file in notepad, so this tool is not that useful to people who have no understanding of the mission commands.
Thunderwolf's Mission Editor
What started off as simply a tool to help in the graphical placement of buildings and roads later evolved into a fully fledged standalone mission editor. It supports most of the commands that are needed to make a smooth singleplayer experience and support for multiplayer scripting is probably in the works. The GUI used by the editor is quite nice looking consisting mostly of in-game graphics.
Merchator's Mission Editor
This editor is a bit more advanced than Harold's Mission Editor. It allows you to easily break the encryption on the mission files, and after this there are features such as Street Helper and Village Helper available. For whatever reason, this tool will not start on my computer, so I have been unable to test it throughout myself.
