A drive for Overdrive

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John Luke Pack Hard
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Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2012 8:45 am

A drive for Overdrive

Postby John Luke Pack Hard » Fri Apr 14, 2017 12:55 pm

Hello Gents.

It's been another few months, and what I did in those few months is a long story I'd rather not explain. Rather, let me get to the point. I'd like to take over development of project Overdrive.

So far I've developed a sample program. Only the main menu, ship selection, and options button are viable. However, it comes with the functionality to load and scroll through unlimited ship classes and blueprints.

Here's the sample:
Assets-"FTL Overdrive.zip"
Program-"desktop-1.0.jar"

I invite you to look through the assets and data files I've created, as I have unified the ship blueprint files into a more unified and cohesive format.
In addition, I have reformatted them into a more streamline version that follows the rules of XML. This is so they can be used with StaX-XML parser, which my software relies on.

The planned structure of this project is two file types, campaigns and mods:
Campaigns are complete overhauls, essentially entirely new storylines that completely rewrite the game. Only one can be loaded at a time.
Mods are bits and pieces-ships, drones, blueprints- that add, replace, or delete parts of the original campaign. Multiple can be loaded and order matters.

Instructions:
Unzip FTL Overdrive.zip in your home directory "C:/Users/YourProfile
Run desktop-1.0.jar
To change resolution or fullscreen, edit settings.xml located in FTL Overdrive/Campaigns/Faster than Light/Settings
NOTE: If your folder structure is FTL Overdrive/FTL Overdrive/... then it is WRONG. There should only be one folder layer of FTL Overdrive, the next folder should be labeled "Campaigns"

Features:
Unlimited ship class selection
Unified Ship.xml formatting.
Cleaner xml formatting and processing.

Known Issues:
Some of the floor tiles are off: may require individual offset values.
UI assets are missing, meaning planned features, such as 27 selectable layouts and a ship class selection screen are non-functional

To the end of developing this, I am sending out the call for volunteers. I am lowering the requirement. You need drive and aptitude. Drive is inherent to the person and aptitude is innate. You can't train those attributes. Skill can be trained given time, and I have plenty of time.

In addition, I could use a UI graphic artist, or someone who is skilled in graphic design to flesh out the graphics I'm missing so I can implement the missing UI features. Failing that, I'm gathering funds so I can hire a professional artist to implement the missing UI elements, although it will take some time.

Also, please report if there are any issues with the program.
Last edited by John Luke Pack Hard on Wed May 03, 2017 10:02 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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mr_easy_money
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Re: A drive for Overdrive

Postby mr_easy_money » Fri Apr 14, 2017 5:03 pm

John Luke Pack Hard wrote:Instructions:
Unzip FTL Overdrive.zip in your home directory "C:/Users/YourProfile
Run desktop-1.0.jar
To change resolution or fullscreen, edit settings.xml located in FTL Overdrive/Campaigns/Faster than Light/Settings
...
Also, please report if there are any issues with the program.

I tried running it and ran for like a second before crashing.

ran it through command prompt and got this: apparently shared library gdx-freetype64.dll is missing :?:

Image
John Luke Pack Hard
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Re: A drive for Overdrive

Postby John Luke Pack Hard » Fri Apr 14, 2017 7:36 pm

Ah, the old "missing native libraries" glitch. I swear I included those before I uploaded the file. Anyways I did that and reuploaded a new version. Use the same link. It should work this time.
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mr_easy_money
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Re: A drive for Overdrive

Postby mr_easy_money » Fri Apr 14, 2017 8:53 pm

John Luke Pack Hard wrote:Ah, the old "missing native libraries" glitch. I swear I included those before I uploaded the file. Anyways I did that and reuploaded a new version. Use the same link. It should work this time.

yep, sure does work. there isn't much to say, other than that it looks good so far.

John Luke Pack Hard wrote:I invite you to look through the assets and data files I've created, as I have unified the ship blueprint files into a more unified and cohesive format. However, it comes with the functionality to load and scroll through unlimited ship classes and blueprints.

pretty, pretty neat -- an all-in-one ship file

I have to say, doesn't this sorta conflict with redistribution of game files? and can you still legally do this?

I'll just point out right now that the redistribution of image files isn't allowed, right? you could tell people to add the image files from the game to the overdrive folder via unpacking the resource.dat folder.

I'm not really sure how legality works with a project like this; I haven't really looked into any replies in the old threads... :roll:
John Luke Pack Hard
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Joined: Thu Nov 15, 2012 8:45 am

Re: A drive for Overdrive

Postby John Luke Pack Hard » Fri Apr 14, 2017 9:08 pm

mr_easy_money wrote:I have to say, doesn't this sorta conflict with redistribution of game files? and can you still legally do this?

I'll just point out right now that the redistribution of image files isn't allowed, right? you could tell people to add the image files from the game to the overdrive folder via unpacking the resource.dat folder.

There are some issues with the old files.

First and foremost, the ship blueprints. They're in a sub-divided mess. I don't know what technology the original creators of FTL: Faster than Light used to read their files, but my code uses StaX-XML reader, and that *demands* neat XML formatting. The original XML not only broke the rule of one root element at a time, but also in almost all the ship.xml files, ended <medbay> tags with </clonebay> tags and <gib1> tags with </gib2> tags, causing exceptions. In addition, some of the system tags weren't spaced properly, also causing StaX reader exceptions. If I were to revert to line-by-line FileReader parsing, there would be a horrendous amount of coding headache involved because I would have to code the parsing myself, in addition to the amount of restrictions i would have to put on formatting and editing.

Point 2, some of the resources have to be derived/converted from the files to be useable in libgdx, such as .atlas files from .png files. I can't convert on-the-fly from someone's resource.dat downloaded file, unpack it, then derive it; it has to be there in the first place, converted and ready. Second, some of the images are chopped up and made for convenience sake, such as opened and closed doors png files. Normally they're all in a whole .png sheet. In order for libgdx to derive the exact door frame it I'd have to chop it up from a texture and it's a whole mess I'd rather not think through right now.

To put it simply, if I'm forced to work with their mess of assets *as is* in order to make FTL:Overdrive, I'd rather not make FTL:Overdrive and instead take my newly derived skills and assets and gather a team and develop an independent project off one of my old ideas.

I think it's fine if we just distribute FTL:Overdrive for free to those who already possess FTL:Faster than Light.
John Luke Pack Hard
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Re: A drive for Overdrive

Postby John Luke Pack Hard » Sun Apr 16, 2017 6:25 pm

Well, it's been two days. Where'd all the excitement go? This topic was much more active when I was here years ago. I guess the enthusiasm died off while I was gone.

With the community's blessing I'd like to get started. I'll hire/find the artist and implement the 27 layout buttons, the ship class selection menu, and the campaign/mod pre-selection screen.

I invite you all to test out the unlimited ship class/layout selection feature by modifying ship_list.xml and adding your own assets to the img folder and your own ship_blueprint.xml. Unlike the main FTL: Faster than Light game this program does not require you to replace any of the original entries to load your custom ship; just follow the format of the entries and add your class and ship to the list. Follow the unified blueprint.xml format or if you'd like a unifier utility, I have one, just it's not in a user-friendly format so you'll need a java compiler and IDE to run it....

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1TDF ... XRWZlBheDQ
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R4V3-0N
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Re: A drive for Overdrive

Postby R4V3-0N » Mon Apr 17, 2017 3:22 pm

John Luke Pack Hard wrote:Well, it's been two days. Where'd all the excitement go? This topic was much more active when I was here years ago. I guess the enthusiasm died off while I was gone.


I can assume people are checking the forums less and less often as less and less new stuff happen, it isn't unheard of that there is a bit of drop in interest and forum activity.
But that's no need to forget about FTL.

It is also possibly that stuff like Overdrive takes a very long time to get any progress which is fair enough, but it does mean hype dies down, or that there isn't enough 'big' things happening in a decently paced time. But do please keep us updated...

Also, you asked about an artist for layout buttons... I do dabble a little bit in art but what exactly do you need?
R4V3-0N, a dreamer.
John Luke Pack Hard
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Re: A drive for Overdrive

Postby John Luke Pack Hard » Mon Apr 17, 2017 4:31 pm

R4V3-0N wrote:Also, you asked about an artist for layout buttons... I do dabble a little bit in art but what exactly do you need?


If you're volunteering, I'm greatly appreciative, and I will keep you in mind in the accredations, although if you demand a rate, I will do no more than 20$ an hour, as my alternative charges 25$ for professional graphical design work.

https://imgur.com/a/YIrzw

The descriptions contain the instructions.

FTL's backgrounds operate at a default size of 1024x720, bear that in mind.

Also, I haven't been working on FTL Overdrive recently as I have been waiting for more of a community response and also I'd like a modder with a custom ship to test out the sample engine by adding his custom ship to the data and seeing if it doesn't break the engine. Give it a whirl, shall we?

Anyways if there are no volunteer programmers here, I'm going to have to go on reddit.com/r/INAT and recruit from there. There should be a couple of eager newbies willing to get into the mix of things to help out.
John Luke Pack Hard
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Re: A drive for Overdrive

Postby John Luke Pack Hard » Tue Apr 18, 2017 2:22 pm

UPDATE: I tested the engine with the player-made ship, the Kodiak, by adding it without removing any base ships. It worked.

Also I recruited a friend who dabbled in game development. He isn't too experienced game programming, or programming at all, but he's eager to learn, so I suspect he'll still be an asset so long as I can teach him.

With this, I think we'll need one more volunteer and I think we'll be ready to get started.
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R4V3-0N
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Re: A drive for Overdrive

Postby R4V3-0N » Tue Apr 18, 2017 5:58 pm

I'm not looking for any pay (to be honest I do not even know the first thing about work over internet) and I would rather pay by end product rather then time (and I do not even mind being paid little to nill, since this is better for the whole FTL community and I want this to happen as much if not more then you).

I will start with the alphabetical buttons since it's the easiest, expect them in a few days!

For the ship selection screen, do you wish the two buttons for 'scrolling through' per ship, or a section on the side for the entire page of vehicles much like how we got buttons to switch between type a, b, and c layouts?

Also, the current UI has a 1x2 section for the crystal and lanius separated, you want me to remove that divided section?
R4V3-0N, a dreamer.