Yes, pretty much as this; scripting and programming within the editor that would be player-friendly, consisting of clickable buttons, rather than requiring the player to type in scripts.
What fascinated me so much about the GA adventure editor was the fact that it played in-game music while you were inside the editor and wind blowing sound effects would play when you would zoom or pan the camera in and out of long distances, unlike how many of these other in-game level editors would not play any sound effects while you’re editing. I could only wish that someone out there would be so interested in the Thrive project and had a large budget to donate/fund a large sum of money into the production of this game, because everyone has been begging for a Spore 2.