A kinda large question.

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TheNewbie
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A kinda large question.

Postby TheNewbie » Sun May 19, 2013 6:14 pm

So, I have posted two topics about custom weapons. Time has past and nothing happened. Well, I got sad but I also realized I shouldn't just wait for something to happen and that I should take action myself. So, after a lot of time I thought that I must make something that will help me and most importantly, the others. In a nutshell I want to try to create a weapon editor. Something like kartoflane's ship editor, but for guns. And here is my question: is it even possible for a person which has no experience in programming or whatever knowledge is required for such a task to make such a programme? Yes or No? Thanks in advance! :)
Last edited by TheNewbie on Tue May 21, 2013 10:51 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Kieve
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Re: A kinda large question.

Postby Kieve » Sun May 19, 2013 7:36 pm

TheNewbie wrote: And here is my question: is it even possible for a person which has no experience in programming or whatever knowledge is required for such a task to make such a programme? Yes or No? Thanks in advance! :) P.S. I will delete both of those posts I mentioned.


Theoretically, it wouldn't be difficult to write a simple Visual Basic program to output custom weapon blueprints. The hardest part, if implemented at all, would be "scrubbing" irrelevant data from the blueprint text - if it doesn't use ammunition, no <missile> tag should be present. Then again, I took a couple years in college with various programming including VB, C++, and Java, so I'm perhaps not the best person to answer if "someone with no knowledge" could handle it or not. In my mind at least, I can see how a weapon editor could work, both for game properties and the animation files.
shark
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Re: A kinda large question.

Postby shark » Mon May 20, 2013 7:01 pm

No, if you want to make programs you need to be able to program - or code. At the very least, in something like visual basic.

But no, there is no way for you to magically download a 'program maker' and make your weapon editor in it for everyone to use. kartoFlane wrote his own from scratch.

You pretty much asked us here 'can i write French literature without taking a day of french in my life", and the answer is obviously - "no, unless you put effort in it". IF you do however put up effort in it, people will see how much you invest and will be willing to help you more or less judging on that factor alone. The more shit you try and the more you bang your head against the many walls you'll encounter - the more people will find you worthy to spend their time on your problems. Stackoverflow.com might be your friend in such a period ;)
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Sleeper Service
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Re: A kinda large question.

Postby Sleeper Service » Mon May 20, 2013 7:53 pm

I think the ship editors exits because it is not exactly evident how the stuff in the xmls is going to look ingame and how the entries there effect how the ship is going to look (the rooms for example are just lots and lots of numbers). So the editors where created because editing ships just within the xmls is quite tedious if you don't know what all those stuff means.

But that's not that much of a problem for weapons. They just need some animation entries and a blueprint. So while it might be more comfortable to load a weapon sprite in an separate editor, it's still questionable if that is actually necessary and needed.

As for the actual creation of the weapon sprite, all people need is some image editing software.
speedoflight
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Re: A kinda large question.

Postby speedoflight » Mon May 20, 2013 8:56 pm

Besides, it will be stupid to make a "weapon" editor since the editors emselves are any image editing program out there. I mean, to make a custom weapon the only thing u need is to create the sprite and write the code. And the sprite can be created with any image editting program.. so, i dunno, just saying...

And no, u cant make a program like that if u dont know anything about programming. Not even using visual basic. I mean, if u know the basics of programming, visual basic is a good place to start, but still, u will need more than that.. if u dont know ANYTHING about programming, just forget about it.. honestly.
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TheNewbie
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Re: A kinda large question.

Postby TheNewbie » Tue May 21, 2013 10:50 am

About the weapon sprite, anyone can just make one. What I basically want to make is a programme which makes a .ftl file which can be used as a mod. If you guys use superluminal, you know what I mean. And if it is impossible for someone like me to develop such a programme, then I will just give it up. But personally I have no idea how hard is to create a programme which has inputs and outputs.
Last edited by TheNewbie on Tue May 21, 2013 10:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
TheNewbie
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Re: A kinda large question.

Postby TheNewbie » Tue May 21, 2013 10:56 am

Kieve wrote:
TheNewbie wrote: And here is my question: is it even possible for a person which has no experience in programming or whatever knowledge is required for such a task to make such a programme? Yes or No? Thanks in advance! :) P.S. I will delete both of those posts I mentioned.


Theoretically, it wouldn't be difficult to write a simple Visual Basic program to output custom weapon blueprints. The hardest part, if implemented at all, would be "scrubbing" irrelevant data from the blueprint text - if it doesn't use ammunition, no <missile> tag should be present. Then again, I took a couple years in college with various programming including VB, C++, and Java, so I'm perhaps not the best person to answer if "someone with no knowledge" could handle it or not. In my mind at least, I can see how a weapon editor could work, both for game properties and the animation files.

About the ammunition, I think that having a "HUD" (Heads Up Display) around the screen with various options, such as ammunition selection could be very comfortable and user-friendly to beginners such as me to create their own weapons without the "complex" procedure of weapon creation. And for advanced modders it could just save their time.
TheNewbie
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Re: A kinda large question.

Postby TheNewbie » Tue May 21, 2013 11:03 am

shark wrote:No, if you want to make programs you need to be able to program - or code. At the very least, in something like visual basic.

But no, there is no way for you to magically download a 'program maker' and make your weapon editor in it for everyone to use. kartoFlane wrote his own from scratch.

You pretty much asked us here 'can i write French literature without taking a day of french in my life", and the answer is obviously - "no, unless you put effort in it". IF you do however put up effort in it, people will see how much you invest and will be willing to help you more or less judging on that factor alone. The more shit you try and the more you bang your head against the many walls you'll encounter - the more people will find you worthy to spend their time on your problems. Stackoverflow.com might be your friend in such a period ;)
I'm willing to put a lot of effort, even I have no idea what to do. And the best part is that summer is coming and that means a lot of free time to spend. :)
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Kieve
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Re: A kinda large question.

Postby Kieve » Tue May 21, 2013 2:58 pm

TheNewbie wrote: About the ammunition, I think that having a "HUD" (Heads Up Display) around the screen with various options, such as ammunition selection could be very comfortable and user-friendly to beginners such as me to create their own weapons without the "complex" procedure of weapon creation. And for advanced modders it could just save their time.


...

Okay, I was trying to be encouraging but this? This right here? This tells me you haven't got a clue what I was talking about. If you have any intention of attempting this, you need to start with some super-basic "Programming 101" lessons and spend that lovely summer vacation home-schooling yourself. Seriously, bare minimum you require a semester's worth of core coding knowledge.

For the record, what I meant had nothing to do with the interface (and to be clear, HUD is only a term that would apply in-game, for a program of this nature the term is interface). I was explaining that while it's reasonably simple to output a weapon blueprint, the simplest interface would essentially be every property a weapon can have. Shield-Piercing, Damage, System Damage, Personnel Damage, Ion, Missile (ammo cost), a selector (radio buttons or drop-down) for Type (Laser/Beam/Missile/Bomb)... if it can be applied to a weapon, it should be present on the interface. The catch being, if there is no value present, there's no need to export a blank tag into the blueprint text itself. If you use this hypothetical program to make a beam for instance, you shouldn't need a <Missile>0</Missile> tag in the exported blueprint - coding the program in such a way as to ignore "useless" tags is about the trickiest part of this mental exercise.
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kartoFlane
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Re: A kinda large question.

Postby kartoFlane » Tue May 21, 2013 5:04 pm

Kieve wrote:coding the program in such a way as to ignore "useless" tags is about the trickiest part of this mental exercise.

Code: Select all

if (weapon.missileCost > 0) {
    write("\t<missiles>" + weapon.missileCost + "</missiles>");
}

:|

Writing such a program wouldn't be difficult - most of the difficulty comes from having to become familiar with, and understand, the most rudimentary programming concepts, such as variables, functions, if-then-else statements, for/while loops and, most importantly, syntax. All of this can be learned in a day at say, codecademy.com
From then on it's all about problem-solving (how can I accomplish this task given the tools/limitations I have) and continually learning about other, more sophisticated tools (and more about programming/computing in general)

In short, it's pretty much exactly what shark said - you can't write French literature without learning French first.
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