Subset Games Forum

@Weltall Zero
Thanks, that's exactly the kind of feedback I want, this helps me out loads

1) Inability to recognize folders for the game's resources other than in the default routes expected by the editor; changing these routes does nothing. Forces to copy the extracted resource dirs where the editor is.

It'll recognise them fine, just if you've already set up the file paths with them pre-extracted... don't hit the extract button - I'll make this clearer in the next version

2) Inability to load .ftl files, only being able to read separate xml and .txt files.

Yeaah, this is mainly because it's such a pain to work out where to load stuff from, half the time it's coming from the game files, half the time it's coming from the blueprints file in the xml, etc, I should probably add that though

4) When saving a ship, the "save to .ftl" file is next to useless, as we need an uncompressed copy of all files (as mentioned above) to reload it, and also, it doesn't include the ship's graphics, even when we have selected them.

It should put all the file in the folder the .ftl file is saved to aswell (As it actually just throws them all in there, then zips up that folder), but i'll add a save all button too

6) Inability to move the ship's graphic and floor graphic separately.

...Can you even do this in FTL? o_O

7) Perhaps worse of it all, and even though the tutorial says otherwise, the editor does not save the graphics' offsets (correctly or at all), leading to manually having to edit them using guesswork.

Ehh, I'll doublecheck the exporting then, might be some cases in which it doesn't work I guess

For the record I'm a software engineer with 13 years of work experience, so it's not like I'm an inexperienced user exactly; I can't imagine what the average user might think.

So, feel free to grab the source and help out, it's on github, link in the first post

First, thanks a lot for addressing all my concerns, and knowing that they might be corrected soon is really great.

Darkfrost wrote:@Weltall Zero
Thanks, that's exactly the kind of feedback I want, this helps me out loads

1) Inability to recognize folders for the game's resources other than in the default routes expected by the editor; changing these routes does nothing. Forces to copy the extracted resource dirs where the editor is.

It'll recognise them fine, just if you've already set up the file paths with them pre-extracted... don't hit the extract button - I'll make this clearer in the next version

As I mentioned before, I didn't hit the extract button, and they already ARE already extracted. It recognizes them fine if I copy them to the root of where the editor is, you just can't change the paths in the editor itself, because there is no "accept" button and every time you close the window where you can change them, it just discards the changes. Not sure how else can I change them?

Darkfrost wrote:

2) Inability to load .ftl files, only being able to read separate xml and .txt files.

Yeaah, this is mainly because it's such a pain to work out where to load stuff from, half the time it's coming from the game files, half the time it's coming from the blueprints file in the xml, etc, I should probably add that though

I would load five things from the ftl file: the blueprints.xml.append, the ship xml, the ship txt, the floor graphic and the ship graphic. This would actually be the same as selecting each file individually, which the editor already prompts you to.

Darkfrost wrote:

4) When saving a ship, the "save to .ftl" file is next to useless, as we need an uncompressed copy of all files (as mentioned above) to reload it, and also, it doesn't include the ship's graphics, even when we have selected them.

It should put all the file in the folder the .ftl file is saved to aswell (As it actually just throws them all in there, then zips up that folder), but i'll add a save all button too

If you can get number 3 to work, and add the image files to the .ftl file, then that would go a HUGE distance towards improving the editor's usability. Right now it's a real pain to back up your work each time or test it....

BTW, there's another thing. When loading your ship from an uncompressed folder, the editor never manages to find the files of your ship. Each and every time, you load the .append file, then it complains that it can't find, for example, ship.xml, but opens a "file open" dialog in the exact same folder your ship.xml file actually is. Then the same for ship.txt. I have a suspicion it's searching for them in the uncompressed, original data folders, which of course doesn't make much sense.
Also, is it supposed to load the ship and floor images? Because, same deal, you have to open them manually each time too.

I would be content with either a fully fledged .ftl save/load, or, barring that, automated loading and saving of all files from a matching folder tree, including images.

Darkfrost wrote:

6) Inability to move the ship's graphic and floor graphic separately.

...Can you even do this in FTL? o_O

Good point, the xml file doesn't have separate offsets for the floor and ship images. Then I guess it should go somewhere on the tutorial that both files have to match in size and position from the get-go. Or rather, there could be a tutorial to make floor images.
There is an awesome way to make them and have them look exactly the same as FTL's own floor plans, actually. I have to post that sometime.

Darkfrost wrote:

7) Perhaps worse of it all, and even though the tutorial says otherwise, the editor does not save the graphics' offsets (correctly or at all), leading to manually having to edit them using guesswork.

Ehh, I'll doublecheck the exporting then, might be some cases in which it doesn't work I guess

That'd be great really. It's probably the biggest usability hitch right now, even above the save/load woes, so I'd make that the highest priority.

Darkfrost wrote:

For the record I'm a software engineer with 13 years of work experience, so it's not like I'm an inexperienced user exactly; I can't imagine what the average user might think.

So, feel free to grab the source and help out, it's on github, link in the first post

I've actually been tempted to, and I've even checked a bit of your code, but I don't really have the time right now. Also, I don't have a lot of experience with C# (mainly C++ and a few years of Java), and I don't particularly like it.

*blows dust off account*

Hey there, I have what is probably a dumb question for you guys. I'm trying to edit the Zoltan Ship to have three human crew rather than 3 Zoltan crew for narrative purposes in a video series I'm working on this year, however every time I do the weapons are broken in the process.



As you can see, the missile weapon is floating off into the void and the beam weapon just flat out isn't there, or at least it's not showing up (even if powered). Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this?

Looks like all the mount points have been lost. I'd recommend you don't use FTLEdit for this: just create a very simple zip file containing nothing but a blueprints.xml.append file containing the <shipBlueprint> for the Zoltan cruiser, tweaked as you wish.

I see a lot of people on this thread who're wanting to use FTLEdit like MSWord or something: make a mod, find it's not quite right, load the mod back into FTLEdit to change it, save it again, discover another tweak you want to make, load it back into FTLEdit etc.

FTLEdit really isn't designed to work that way. FTLEdit is a design tool, for laying out the floor layout of the rooms/doors in a custom ship. It's intended to be used once, to create a floor layout; then you export the ship and make any remaining tweaks by hand. The Options dialog is a good way to specify most of the parameters for a newly created ship, but it's really not a sensible thing to use to just adjust a ship.

For this kind of edit where you're not changing the floor plan, I strongly recommend you create a simple mod outside of FTLEdit. Create a directory called data; within that directory create a text file called blueprints.xml.append; edit that file and paste into it the <shipBlueprint> defining the Zoltan cruiser, which you'll find in your resources/data.dat-unpacked/data directory, in the file called blueprints.xml, starting around line 3500. Zip up the data directory, rename the zip file to end .ftl, and bingo, you have your mod. It's really best done from outside FTLEdit.

Modding FTL is not going to be a drag-and-drop button-clicking task. You're going to have to edit some text files. That's just the simple fact of the available tools at the moment.

Darkfrost has built us a great hammer here, which is very useful for hammer-type things. But it's not a Swiss Army Knife.

(Now, as a potential future development direction should Darkfrost wish to do this, it would be seriously awesome if FTLEdit could load a .ftl file to get the blueprint, layout and images all from one place, and remember all the settings like room and shield and cloak images; and then write out the .ftl file to a target location in the filesystem. That would alleviate a lot of the pain felt by visitors to the forum who expect it to work that way. But that's not what FTLEdit does right now, and we really can't blame Darkfrost for not doing that because it would be a lot of work.)

Ahhhh, fair enough! You see I also tried editing the blueprint file manually, however I didn't do it as an .append file, which may have been where I was going wrong. But yes, using wrong tool in the wrong way will not have helped.

However... I'm still running into issues, but that's not really on topic now so I shall decant to a new thread: http://www.ftlgame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=10571

Thank you for the response.

New version!

- Added a 'Save Paths' button in the options - If you were pasting the path into the textbox instead of using the browse button, they weren't saving!
- Added an 'export all' button
- Will now load in the Gibs / Weapon mounts from the xml file and save them back out after. There's no way of editing these yet, but now they wont all get load when you load and save a ship!
*It will however, assume your gibs are in order in the blueprint file, and ignore the actual <gibX> number, since the end tags on those are messed up and this kept breaking the importing.
- Added options to change the maxpower / health settings
- Imports shield size correctly now

Same url: http://jacobkeane.co.uk/FTLShipEdit.zip

Still have the problem where the ship background image and floor is shifted up and left. I don't encounter the problem if I make no changes to the rooms, i.e I can add doors and save it and be fine.

Also have this weird thing in the ship building part where the top left corner of the program is unresponsive/my mouse pointer is not aligned to where it really is. My mouse pointer is in one square and if I put down anything the room ends up 1 square down and 1 square to the right. If I shift the screen to the down and right with the arrow button then the mouse alignment issue occurs in more areas.

Could you post a screenshot of that or something? Or directions to reproduce it?

So I'm using FTL from Steam.
Gognak's mod manager v1.5
Installed mods: Beginning Scrap advantage (came with the mod manager and needed to get the resource folders)
Modified save file to get access to all ships

Modifying the Shivan in the ship editor:
Cursor problem
Occurs when I load an existing ship from game folder but not when I create a ship from scratch. Is not unique to Shivan

Here it is normal: Black arrow shows where my cursor is on the screen



Here is where the my cursor no longer corresponds to where it is in the program. The red arrow is where my cursor is.



Now if I use the direction keys in the program and shift the entire thing down and to the right the mis match cursor area increases.The Red arrow is where my cursor is and the red square now corresponds to the entire area my cursor will be messed up in.



Now for the problem when adding the ship into the game

Changing the Shivan again.
Steps:
-load existing ship from game
-delete all rooms
-make new layout superimposed on base (make sure it matches)
-options -> export ship
-export ftl package
-use mod manager to import ship so I can check in the hangar

Changing doors only:


Result:


Restoring backup

Changing rooms:



Result:

I'm here because of the trojanized ftldat.exe. I ran it through f-secure testing laboratory(*) and it was loaded with 2 trojans. In the screenshot you can see that it actually downloaded 2 unwanted executable files.

*): the way f-secure lab works is it runs automatically the program in actual working operating system and sees what it does, files it drops etc.

Screenshot: