[Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal [NOT UPDATED TO AE]

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Vhati
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Re: [Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal - b26-2-13

Postby Vhati » Fri Mar 01, 2013 2:34 pm

kartoFlane wrote:You don't have to use the .bat file anymore, after I changed the editor to be in .exe form. Guess I just forgot to remove it from the directory I packed...
You really should keep the jar+bat available as an alternative when the exe fails (when it can't find the proper runtime automatically, or when special args for java.exe are needed).

launch4j for instance will let you make a launcher exe that doesn't wrap (bundle the jar inside).
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kartoFlane
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Re: [Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal - b26-2-13

Postby kartoFlane » Fri Mar 01, 2013 3:36 pm

I acutally used launch4j for the exes -- I've wondered what that option does, but never tried it...
Guess I'll have to now :E
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xdiesp
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Re: [Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal - b26-2-13

Postby xdiesp » Fri Mar 01, 2013 5:19 pm

Well, I want my randomizer utility to make an .xml file which can be opened by either editor, and later converted to .ftl. FTLedit can do that, Superluminal doesn't which is a pity since it seems to support the artillery beam in .xml form while the other editor doesn't.
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kartoFlane
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Re: [Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal - b26-2-13

Postby kartoFlane » Fri Mar 01, 2013 5:42 pm

It's not like I can't implement such a feature. Bascially, what you want is for the editor to be able to load a ship straight from blueprints.xml created by your randomizer, without the need for it to be packed into .ftl?
As long as you also provide shipname.txt and shipname.xml files, that shouldn't be a problem, the code's already there...
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xdiesp
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Re: [Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal - b26-2-13

Postby xdiesp » Fri Mar 01, 2013 7:04 pm

Thanks that's nice, I will ask you for such a feature after I can complete my work on the utility.
speedoflight
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Re: [Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal - b26-2-13

Postby speedoflight » Sat Mar 02, 2013 1:10 am

Some issues here that i dunno if they are produced by the editor.

I cant get my ship to show in the right place in the in-game selection screen. The ship is big, about 750 x 320, but i dunno if there is a limit on how big can be a ship and if that is related to how the ships show up in the select screen, cuz it looks like it doesnt matter wat coordinates i write, the result is always the same.

Also, if u could explain how the game works with coordinates, cuz im having a really bad headache with this. I dunno if "X" means <> and Y means vertical position, or if the coordinates are handled with the ship looking up instead right.. ZZ. I was trying to change manually the position of the ship, but i am not getting anywhere.
If i move the hull to the right, this means the X position coordinate raises? But.. where i can see in the text files wat position has the ship actually?

And, wat is the purpose of the anchor in the editor?? How can i move all the rooms at once??. Happened that i needed to test this problem, and i was trying to move the ship closer to the anchor (maybe thats the reason the ship is not showing up in the right place, but again, i dunno the purpose of the anchor) and i coudnt move all the rooms again to another position (only one by one and losing all the doors... wtf). I thought the anchor was a guide where the coordinates start, (for example the anchor corner is 0,0 or something) but it doesnt look like.

So the only way was to start another ship since the beginning.. i didnt do that yet, since i see it a bit dumb.
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xdiesp
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Re: [Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal - b26-2-13

Postby xdiesp » Sat Mar 02, 2013 2:57 am

All right, here's another question... Most ships don't have the artillery beam. There's no code for it whatsoever in the xml, but in theory you could add this:

Code: Select all

<artillery power="1" room="7" start="false" img="room_drones_5"/>


And if I add this, am I going to screw up something like that the thing is gonna show up in some store? Because it shouldn't be buyable.
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kartoFlane
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Re: [Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal - b26-2-13

Postby kartoFlane » Sat Mar 02, 2013 11:57 am

@xdiesp
Yes, that's exactly how you add artillery to your ship - of course, the room property has to be set to an existing and unocuppied room, like any other system. Start property also has to be set to true. Also remember about an additional mount for the artillery, though it'll work even without it (though it'll look funky)

And no, you won't screw up anything. Artillery cannot be bought at store.

@speedoflight
It is possible that your ship is just too big - while there's no size limit that I know of, there is a position limit on the left side of the screen and to the top of the screen - and in the editor that limit is presented in the form of the anchor (you had that right, the anchor is a 0,0 point of origin for the ship)
Anyway, what that means, if your ship is big enough, you won't be able to center it perfectly, because you won't be able to move it farther to the left.

Coordinates; it's exactly like in the regular Cartesian coordinate system. X axis is left-right, Y axis is up-down. The perceived "facing" of the ship doesn't change the way the game handles coordinates.
As for what values to change in the .txt files, look here. In this file you can modify the offset of the entire ship (distance between 0,0 origin and the room closest to it) and positions of doors and rooms, as well as their size. Hull image position and size data is stored in shipname.xml.

And it seems like it'd really help you to take a look at the documentation that I wrote for the editor. It explains the purpose of the anchor, and how to disable the automatic removal of doors, among other things (Edit > Automatic Door Cleanup).
So, sparing you the read, in order to move rooms closer to the anchor you don't have to move them all one by one - you can shift-click on the anchor, and you'll be able to move it closer to, or farther from, the ship.
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Weltall Zero
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Re: [Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal - b26-2-13

Postby Weltall Zero » Sat Mar 02, 2013 1:17 pm

xdiesp wrote:Thanks that's nice, I will ask you for such a feature after I can complete my work on the utility.


Unless I'm missing something, couldn't you make it so that your utility packs your xml and txt files into a .ftl file, then open it with Superluminal? A .ftl file is just a renamed .zip, after all.
speedoflight
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Re: [Tool] FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal - b26-2-13

Postby speedoflight » Sat Mar 02, 2013 3:05 pm

Thanks Karto,

About the coordinates, i was saying that, because the coordinates for weapons are completely different, and X doesnt mean <-->, for example, but the opossite. I had terribly headaches trying to figure out the position mount of the weapons in the animations file, until i realized that X doesnt mean x and Y doesnt mean y.

This is making me to think on just stop modding for this, since i cant make relatively big ships without messing all up. And i really dont see the point in making a hive ship (for example) with the size of a fighter...

I will keep investigate. The ship is not extreme big (its only 700 horizontal resolution, but i reduced it to 650 and still i cant get the ship showing up in the right place).

Thx for the tips, keep u informed :)

EDIT:

This is wat i could get. In the editor, all the rooms are showed in place, but in-game this is how it looks. I dont care the position of the weapon mounts or anything else, the first i want to do is to fix this:) ->

Image

And i dunno wat values to change in the txt file to fix the rooms position. If i touch any value of the offsets, the things became far worst. I also changed the x offset value on the xml file, with terrible results. Any ideas?

And btw is any way to avoid the editor adding a "base" prefix in every image file?? i always end with "miship_base_cloak" instead "miship_cloak". And the hull image always end like "myship_base_base" ....
Last edited by speedoflight on Sat Mar 02, 2013 4:12 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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