[Tool] Superluminal 2.2.1 - FTL Ship Editor

[Simmons_the_Mantis]

Quick question here, how to you decide the position of the artillery weapon gun on a ship? because currently, they all float in the upper left corner, it`s ugly and annoying

You'll need to add a 5th weapon to the ship.
All ships have 4 spots for weapons, even Stealth Cruisers and other ships that only have 3 guns. Artillery is the 5th weapon mount.

so, even if i only intend to have one weapon, i need to add a 5th slot? ok, but what if i have 3 artillery rooms.

ps. thanks for the the help

[kartoFlane]

You have to add a new mount for each artillery. So, if you have one weapon slot and 3 artilleries, you need 7 weapon mounts in total (where 2nd, 3rd and 4th mounts are dummy and unused. In the editor, those will be mounts 1, 2 and 3, since the editor uses 0-based indexing).

Keep in mind that multiple artilleries is not a particularly well-supported feature, both in-game and in the editor.

[mr_easy_money]

I'd like to suggest a feature:

so you know when you put in a medbay on your ship then you load it into the game and realize that you can't replace your medbay with a clonebay,
since there isn't a slot for one because it wasn't assigned?

so what if when you put in the medbay it also automatically puts a clonebay in the same spot (and vice versa) so you don't have to worry about forgetting to put it in

one thing that may be a problem with this is that if you want to put the clonebay in a different spot I don't know how that'll work, but this is just a thought and I think a good deal of people might want this feature, if it's possible

[Princess_Rarity]

Hi I am new to ftl modding.
I am busy building my first playership using this program. Great stuff and thank you!
I have a few requests, since I have struck somewhat of a bump...

1) Can someone make a complete detailed guide on using this program, please? Like a chm file that's attached to the program.

2) How does one move a glow around a the room? Mine seems trapped inside 1 saquare room block, so I can't move it to another room.

3) Can you make it possible so a person can add multple glows to a room?

4) Add rotation option And resize (crop and save) to manipulation function?

5) Add gif player? Or option to insert custom animations? That one can just link to a event or something? (Like making a ship that hides its guns, but shows it only when the gun fires?) Or having animated engine exhaust fumes? Animated external artillery weapon doors that opens door when weapon is powered? Powered lights, with sounds etc?

6) Adding option to edit pic file? (Add more options and settings and paths tab next to view tab. Open picture with specified program) user chooses which program for each filetype?

7) Few more backgrounds to see how ship would look in game?

8) Option to test ship (simulated game enviroment, user can test ship against another random enemy ship, with only custom ftl file. No need to pack and repack everytime to test or change something ...)

9) Option to add multiple systems to a room.


Thank you once again for your great program!

[kartoFlane]

@mr_easy_money
I don't think it'd be that useful, since sometimes you might want to not include the other system. If I were to do that, I'd have to add an option to opt out of it...
It's easier to just use the current system that allows you to assign multiple systems to the same room, I think.

@Princess_Rarity
Hey, thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, some of them are impossible, since I'm limited by what FTL itself can do, but I'll answer them anyway:

1. Well, there is a video "tutorial" linked in the FAQ post, though it's still not a particularly accurate one. I'd link a better, more informative one -- alas, I haven't found such, and I lack the video recording/editing (and teaching/explaining) skills to make one myself.
   Making a .chm is a possibility, though I've never made one, so I don't know how difficult it'd be. Still, IMO a proper video tutorial would be more popular, informative and easier to follow.
2. Glows can only be added to rooms that have a man-able system. You can move the glow to a different position within the room by left-clicking with the Station Tool. By using the Manipulation Tool, you can fine-tune the position of the glow image within that square -- that's why it's trapped within it.
3. Not possible due to the way FTL works
4. If you mean that for images, then just use an existing image editing program. It makes no sense for me to reinvent the wheel, especially when existing solutions are much better.
   If you mean that for rooms and stuff, then that's already possible for doors and mounts (there's a checkbox for that in the sidebar when you select either of those objects). For rooms it makes no sense, since they're limited to simple rectangular shapes, so if you want to rotate the room, just resize it *shrug*
5. Not possible due to the way FTL works. You could achieve some of that with clever sprite sheet & animation design, but that's not something that's within the scope of this editor -- this program is meant to streamline creation of ships, not entire mods.
6. FTL only supports 32-bit PNG image format. Since you need to convert the image from pic to PNG anyway, it again makes more sense to use an existing image editing program.
7. Could do, but there's not much value in it... It'd bloat the size of the download, and you can already see how the ship looks by testing it in-game.
8. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY out of scope of this program. I'd have to basically rewrite the game myself. There have already been several projects that attempted to do that, none of them succeeded.
9. It's already possible to do that in the current version of the editor -- you just assign multiple systems to the room, though only one can be displayed at a time (to switch between systems, use the menu just like when assigning the system the first time around).

[TaxiService]

8) Option to test ship (simulated game enviroment, user can test ship against another random enemy ship, with only custom ftl file. No need to pack and repack everytime to test or change something ...)

Just use this thing.

[IXXIAIXXI]

So, I'd like to ask a few things here, I've been having trouble with a ship mod I've been making (basically just editing vanilla ships for fun). I was modifying Fed C, my aim was to make a ship with 6 rooms, all 1x1. Piloting, Engines, Shields, Weapons, Drones, Cloaking. 6 system repair drones, and no crew. The purpose was to get an AI ship with fast repair (I'd get one drone per room). But it's crashing every time I try to open the ship in the hangar. I have ruled out a few reasons as to why it might be happening.

It's not the room size (crashes anyway, and I've seen other ships use 1x1).
Not the drone count (has worked on other ships). Not the total weapon/drone slot amount either.
Not the lack of doors (tried putting them on the ship, crashed anyway).
Not the lack of other systems (crashes even when they get thier own rooms, not available from start though).

Maybe this is no use at all, I don't know, I was desperate and frustrated with my troubleshooting.


The weird thing is, I tried the same on another ship, this time only removing the systems I didn't want, and putting them in a "dump room". This ship had no problems at all, but was useless since most drones spawned in the drone room and one other room.
Since I was using Superluminal to make the ship, I figured I'd ask my question here, why could it be that the game crashes? I am using the lates version of Superluminal, as well.

[stylesrj]

How far apart are the rooms from each other? That might be the problem. FTL doesn't like very disconnected rooms.

[IXXIAIXXI]

Well, most of them are only one empty tile between, but they're in two clusters, with some far from the rest. I'll try to change it tomorrow, now I gotta sleep. Thanks for the suggestion though.

[stylesrj]

Yeah that's probably the issue.
I think it's a 4-tile limit on how far the rooms can be separated from each other and also on how wide a room can be.