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

Discuss and distribute tools and methods for modding. Moderator - Grognak
User avatar
kartoFlane
Posts: 1488
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 10:20 pm

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

Postby kartoFlane » Thu Jan 31, 2013 4:07 am

Hello people of the FTL forums,

I'm a completely unknown member of the community (though I've been a proud FTL owner since the release day); however, I'd like to share with you what started out as a small and completely unremarkable programming exercise for college, but grew in size over time as I worked on it, and evetually became my pet project.

Image
What It Is:
As is stated in the title, it's a ship editor for FTL. And while I know there are a few already around, I've gotten to a point where it'd be just wasteful to throw it all out of the window... So I decided to share it. Besides, it never hurts to have alternatives, and if someone actually finds it useful, then I'll be happy.

Image
What It Can Do:
The editor is fully functional:
  • Allows to create a completely new ship or modify an existing one - no post-work required
  • Export the ship to separate .txt, .xml and blueprint files, or to a ready-to-import .ftl archive - or both
  • Save uncompleted ships to a .shp file for easy storage of projects in progress.
  • Can change all the ship-related properties that are present in the shipname.txt, shipname.xml, blueprints.xml and autoBlueprints.xml files
The editor, however, cannot edit the blueprints of weapons and drones. Those elements, as well as graphics, have to be prepared in advance.

Image
What Does It Look Like:
Here is a screenshot of the main window, and here's an album of the editor in action during creation of a ship.

Image
How To Set Up And Use:
  1. Install newest JRE (Java Runtime Environment) - the application currently uses Java 1.7.
  2. Download a version of the editor appropriate for your platform and system architecture (32/64-bit)
  3. Unpack the file anywhere
  4. Double click on Superluminal.exe (Windows), Superluminal.app (Mac) or Superluminal.jar / Superluminal.sh (Linux)
  5. The editor will ask you to point it to .dat archives located in /resources/ folder in your FTL installation directory. Set up both paths, and then wait for the editor to finish loading.
  6. Voilà, you're good to go! Load a ship or create a new one using options in the File menu

Image
Technical:
The editor is written in Java.
Graphical interface created using Eclipse Foundation's SWT library.
Dat archives are extracted using KuroSaru's datLib, released with his FTL Dat Manager
Core drawing functionality created and contributed by Vhati, modified.

Source is available on GitHub.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Image
Known Issues:
  • Loading ships that have negative offset in shipname.txt may displace some of the ship's elements. Cause of this is unknown, as the editor was never designed to handle negative offset in the first place.
  • When loading a project, shields graphic may get displaced. The cause is, as of yet, unknown.

Image
Tutorial - Documentation:
A feature documentation detailing every part of the editor, its behaviour and functions.
Kinda updated for 13-6-1.

Superluminal Guides - a topic containing several guides on how to do various stuff in the editor.

VIDEO HOW-TO! - Vanguard of Valor has recorded a video of him creating his own mod using this editor (he figured everything out pretty much exactly, save for a few fairly insignificant quirks), and it's a pretty good walkthrough on how to create a mod in general.

Image
Downloads:

THIS THREAD IS OBSOLETE, NEW VERSION OF THE EDITOR HAS BEEN RELEASED - GET IT HERE

Current changelog

Image
Please report any bugs in this thread
Should the editor crash on you seemingly for no reason, find debug.log or crash.log file in Superluminal's directory and post it here.
Last edited by kartoFlane on Wed May 21, 2014 6:25 pm, edited 83 times in total.
UltraMantis
Posts: 2141
Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:17 pm

Re: [Tool] Yet Another FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal

Postby UltraMantis » Thu Jan 31, 2013 11:39 am

This looks promising. EDIT - Since it's done in Java, you should add Linux and Mac versions.
Report spam using the handy Report Button Mod.
UltraMantis
Posts: 2141
Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:17 pm

Re: [Tool] Yet Another FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal

Postby UltraMantis » Thu Jan 31, 2013 11:58 am

This is the first ship editor for FTL worth it's name.

- Room interiors are shown accurately, but this is a mistake because the game will stretch/squash to fit
- Tooltips dissapear a little too quick for my taste. Could they be on until mouse is moved away?

Note to Win64 users. If nothing happens when you run the program, download and try the 32-bit version. You probably have Java32 installed. (You can install Java 64 to use the 64 bit version of Superluminal, but iirc you cannot have both 32 and 64 versions of Java installed, and 32 is more compatible. Stick with 32 if you have it.)
Report spam using the handy Report Button Mod.
Tails
Posts: 15
Joined: Wed Jan 23, 2013 5:20 am

Re: [Tool] Yet Another FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal

Postby Tails » Thu Jan 31, 2013 12:48 pm

Fucking top notch, good show dude.
shark
Posts: 173
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2012 10:11 am

Re: [Tool] Yet Another FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal

Postby shark » Thu Jan 31, 2013 1:54 pm

Sounds good.

here's what I'd recommend...

com.kartoflane.superluminal.core
Main.java
ConfigIO.java
ShipIO.java

com.kartoflane.superluminal.ui
ExportDialog.java
NewShipWindow.java
PropertiesWindow.java
ShipBrowser.java

com.kartoflane.superluminal.elements
you actually got this one right.
Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All of our mods
are belong to you.
EchoesofOld
Posts: 100
Joined: Thu Jan 24, 2013 3:06 pm

Re: [Tool] Yet Another FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal

Postby EchoesofOld » Thu Jan 31, 2013 2:55 pm

This looks sweet. Cant wait to see how this compares to FTLEdit
The Rebel Flagship: The only ship to make the DemonStar look like a pansy.

Be ye wary of the ship with the demon airlock...
User avatar
kartoFlane
Posts: 1488
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 10:20 pm

Re: [Tool] Yet Another FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal

Postby kartoFlane » Thu Jan 31, 2013 3:23 pm

Thank you, I didn't actually expect it to be received that well :E

As for the issues;
UltraMantis wrote:Room interiors are shown accurately, but this is a mistake because the game will stretch/squash to fit

True, I'll have change the drawing function so that it stretches the images accordingly, it's pretty easy.
UltraMantis wrote:Tooltips dissapear a little too quick for my taste. Could they be on until mouse is moved away?

This bothers me as well, but AFAIK the tooltips are handled by Java/SWT internally, there's no way for me to change their display time. At least none that I know of, guess I'll have to take a closer look at the documentation.

As for the 64-bit version not running on 64-bit Windows; you're right UltraMantis, it actually refers to the version of the VM, not Windows. I'll update the description in a second, as soon as I'm done with Mac and Linux versions.

@shark
Thanks for the suggestion, will do -- I'm still learning all the programming "etiquette", for lack of a better word.

edit: Mac and Linux versions are up, but I don't have a Mac or Linux, so I'll need help testing to see if they work as intended.
Superluminal2 - a ship editor for FTL
EchoesofOld
Posts: 100
Joined: Thu Jan 24, 2013 3:06 pm

Re: [Tool] Yet Another FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal

Postby EchoesofOld » Thu Jan 31, 2013 5:24 pm

Is there a known bug with loading weapons/augs/drones? I tried to load them up, but dropdowns were blank. I DID start with a custom ship, as opposed to loading an existing ship.
The Rebel Flagship: The only ship to make the DemonStar look like a pansy.

Be ye wary of the ship with the demon airlock...
UltraMantis
Posts: 2141
Joined: Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:17 pm

Re: [Tool] Yet Another FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal

Postby UltraMantis » Thu Jan 31, 2013 5:42 pm

Keep up the good work. :D And why apologize for doing it in Java?
Report spam using the handy Report Button Mod.
San_Gue
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2013 5:57 pm

Re: [Tool] Yet Another FTL Ship Editor: Superluminal

Postby San_Gue » Thu Jan 31, 2013 7:01 pm

First of all, Congratulations, this is surely the most well made Ship Editor/creator seen so far....
said that... those followings notes:

-----------------------------------
Bugs (?):
1) Experiencing some kind of a weird problem here... All Gumps appear to be overscaled for their windows size....
f.e. in the Crew & Augments Section, in the Properties, i can' t see the Zoltan box to indicate the Crewmembee number for their race (same thing for Crystals); Same thing happend in the main screen where the Hull, Shields,Floor,Cloack and Properties buttons are cutted down.
The cause of this problem is that I had my widndows font dimension changed from 9 to 12 and the buttons changed their width according to that, but the app windows didn' t rescaled...
Is it possible to correct-it? Thanks...

2) When loading a Modded Ship, the program doesn' t load neither the name nor the hull &floor of the modded ship but, instead, those off the original ship that was replaced...
f.e. loading the Nexus Ship from the "Robotic Cruiser" Ship Mod, the displayed name while loading it is still "The Vortex", the original Engi Layout B that the nexus replaces and, also, the hull and the Floor are those of the original Engi Cruise. Is taht my problem or the Editor does this thing normally?

3) You Missed the Ghost race in the Crew & Augment section;
Many new mods does use that race and it would be nice to ave the possibility to add them in the ship blueprint.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And now 3 hints for developing the Editor:

1) Is that Possible to load the various weapon Layouts? This would very much help in placing the weapons to make them come out precisely where we want to create the right effect on the ship (f.e. having the weapon come out only partially and things like these...)

2) Coordinates in the left top corner indicates only the very big squares form the grid but they are quete useless when trying to set rightly both the hull and the weapons location... is that possible to add a second order of coordinates more precise? with maybe a x y text box to write the coordinate of te currently selected item?
This would greatly help desining the whole ship! The "Precision" mode while moving the hull help to place it better but nothing like a better coordinate system with a xy text box

3) Third and last, is it possible to add a lockdown button for weapons and hull, the way once they' re locked down wont move? Can' t count how many time I've moved that damn hull while trying to place weapons...

-------------

Greetings