Have StarMade auto import .sment files on startup.

[Batavium]

So you are a new player and want to use some awsome ship or station from the dock. Only to find that you have to download them as a .sment file or even a .rar or .zip compressed .sment file. How to turn that into a blueprint you can use ingame?

You use the Ships Catalog but man that is complex and cumber some. Let alone trying to explain how you even access the Ships Catalog and use it. Yeah it is nice for people in the know but most people are clueless. It also tends to open on the Desktop under the running window of StarMade. Some people think that hitting the Ships Catalog button does nothing. And when they close StarMade the Ships Catalog window closes to so they never see it.

Can StarMade please get a /sment folder into its directory tree. So that the game can auto import any file it finds in there at launch. It should not matter if the file is a .sment, .zip or .rar. Once imported it deletes or moves the imported files from the /sment folder so no doubles get imported on next startup.

It is so weird and needlessly complex that StarMade can not deal with its own created design files.

I am leaving sector saves .smsec files out of it for now. Since they are/work so differently.

 

[NeonSturm]

I'd like if folders are automatically mirrowed into .sment files.

BTW I forgot where to put templates to make them useful.

 

[Batavium]

BTW I forgot where to put templates to make them useful.

You add a templates folder to your StarMade installation.

yourstarmadefolder\templates

Drop the .smtpl files in there.

The folder does not exists in the default StarMade installation. Only when you save a template is it made. It should just be there by default with a little howto.txt file to explain how to use it.

To expand a little on my suggestion the .sment files for blueprints should simple be dropped in the \blueprint folder and then converted on startup. That is even better then having another folder.

 

[Crusade]

Rename sment to zip, open and place folder into blueprints. Launch game.

 

[Batavium]

Rename sment to zip, open and place folder into blueprints. Launch game.

Very nice that the game can do this if you rename the .sment to a .zip. But also a little strange.

StarMade must use a zip library to deal with archives. This libary must not understand what a .sment is. The game should be able to change the extension of any .sment file it finds in the blueprint folder into .zip. Since a .sment is basicly a .zip already you can open it with any packer that understands .zip. StarMade is way to uptight and precise in a lot of these things.

You also find a lot of .rar archives on the dock it would be nice if the game could deal with them to.

 

[jayman38]

I would recommend that it be a two-list selection system, where you can select the entire list of available blueprints to be imported, or just select one or just a few to import. Likewise, you should be able to remove the entire list from importing, or just select a few for removal.

Additionally, adding a selection-criteria field, so that you can look for specific text on either side of the import list would be very powerful.

As always, I suggest that the import/export tool be better at sorting blueprints into and from different "worlds" on the same server. Most people don't use multiple worlds, but since it is an option for the server, it should be handled in the support tools. World-selection could be another search-criteria for the selection system, so that you can choose one or multiple worlds for import/export, as well as picking specific blueprints.