Offline Ship Editor

[jjaquinta]

Primary documentation for this tool is on the StarMade Wiki. It has install instructions, trouble shooting, tips, and instructional videos.

Briefly, to install and run:

1. Download SMEdit.jar fom StarMade Multiverse.
2. Double click SMEdit.jar to run. (Or java -jar SMEdit.jar from the command line if you roll that way.)
3. Enter in your StarMade directory if it asks.
4. It will automatically update with the latest files.
5. Do File -> Open, pick a category and pick the object to view.

It's pretty slow for the larger objects. But there are features that let you only display portoins of your ship. Code is embedded in the jar, or on the GItHub modding community.

Major shout out to quarenon for the majority of the File Format determination.

Feel free to post bugs and feature requests to this thread. Collaborators welcome. You can add your own extensions to the tool, and there are several XML files you can add to control its behavior. Details documented on the wiki.

 

[Racr]

A paint tool, where you can just hold down LMB, and drag your mouse to change the color of hardened hulls/hulls and both wedges/corners(this would only paint the visible blocks, only the hulls)

Of course this would also require some sort of export system. also, the ability to free your mouse while using the keyboard to change your view. (some keys to move camera, some to rotate it)

I\'d love if you could do this, I recently built and entire ship with grey hull and I really need to change the colors without manually re-placing 20k plus blocks.

Thanks.

 

[Mqwib]

ctrl to disable mouse would be nice

 

[Vii]

It wont load anything aside from the mkV

 

[GarretSidzaka]

hey i hope you dont mind that i reposted this on my front page!

http://starmadeblueprints.com

 

[jjaquinta]

I was going to stay away from making this an editor. I don\'t think I could do a better job than the game does. However, you bring up a use case that isn\'t covered by the game editor. I, also, tried to \"paint\" my ship. Very tedious.

I\'ll work on the read/write routines and see about this.

 

[jjaquinta]

I dont understand what you are trying to say. If there are no entries in a category, nothing comes up with you press the button. (And if you have a zillion entries in a category, you get a very ugly dialog.) I\'ll improve the user experience over time.

If you have a file that doesn\'t load, please send it to [email protected] and I\'ll have a look.

 

[jjaquinta]

Thanks for the shout-out. Indeed, I almost mentioned something about an applet version in the original post but thought, nah, no one is ready for that yet.

One option is to do an applet version. If you can embedd that in your forum and give it a url to a file in an applet tag then we would be set.

A slightly harder alterantive would be for me to deploy a servlet somewhere. You pass it a URL poinging at the ship, and it passes back WebGL code to render it in an iframe or ajax app.

What would work for you?

 

[Racr]

1. Lower sensitivity while rotating the ship.
2. Have a better list for selecting the blueprint you wish to view, mine completely fills up my screen multiple times over.

 

[quarenon]

Looks great jjaquinta, good work!

I also love this idea of having a web applet or similar that websites can use as a sort of blueprint previewer/thumbnail generator.

 

[jjaquinta]

1. My current Pixel->Radians constant is set to \"4\". Originally it was \"1\", which was way too much. So, should I make it \"8\"? That would make it rotate at half the speed. More? Less?

2. Sorry about the ship select. I\'ve been mostly concentrating on the functionality. I just used a standard Java class to let you pick. I\'ll tidy that up.

 

[jjaquinta]

You made it all possible. I\'ll work on updating it with your new meta file discoveries. If I\'m going to make it read/write, I\'ll need that.

In the next posting of the software I\'ll be putting in my standard \"begware\" plea. (I don\'t want people\'s money, I want them to read/download my novel!) If you have any requests for users of this software (Donate button, page to like, band to promote, etc), let me know and I\'ll put them in. I owe you my backend.

 

[Racr]

Some sort of slider for sensitivity. For some ships people would probably want more than others.

 

[jjaquinta]

OK. A new version is in place. The link above (and screen shot) should update automagically. Added:

• Using hull images for hull blocks
• Decreased mouse sensitivity
• Ship properly centers on screen
• \"Begware\" whine at bottom.
• Edit Hull Color!!!
  
  Select color from left
• Click block to set the color
• Right click and drag to \"paint\" many blocks
• Click \"All\" to change ALL hulls to current color

[*]Applet support added.

• 
  Base class = jo.sm.ui.RenderApplet
• Set parameter data1 to URL to .smd2 file.
• Set parameters data2, etc, if multiple .smd2 files present

Have not added:

• Images for other blocks
• User defined mouse sensitivity
• Begware message is supposed to stop after 3 iterations
• Edits not saved yet :-(
• Only hull blocks edited. Not wedges or corners.

As always, let me know your feedback.

 

[Doomsider]

Awesome work, would love an applet. I got thousands of ship files I don\'t feel like taking pictures of so this would solve my current dilema (Nass gallery 3 - going through and taking pictures of over 2.000 ships)

For some feedback, currently available ships in blueprints are opened up on a very long horizontal window. Since I have hundreds of ships in my catalog it is very very loooong. Perhaps have a window that you can scroll through if it would be workable.

 

[heskey30]

I really like it! Have you tried getting it published?

 

[jjaquinta]

Publication is a difficult thing. Publishers are still mired in a print-media world. Then, and agents, are looking for the Next Hugo Winner. I think my writing is a fun romp (and, IMHO, better then many things I\'ve seen published). But I\'m realistic enough to know it isn\'t going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. From what I\'ve seen of the industry (and a serious friend of mine spend years trying to get her stuff published) how good you are as an author matters a certain amount. But mostly what matters is how good you are selling yourself. She goes to all the conventions, works to be on personal name terms with all the buyers, flys across the nation to attend \"writer\'s workshops\" to get in the good books of certain writiers. I\'ve got a life, a wife, two lovely kids, and a day-job that pays more than I\'d ever make even if I won a Hugo. Ain\'t nobody got time for that!

So I sit and patiently wait for the disruptive change that has to happen to the industry. The first digital-only publisher who pops up and starts selling ebooks the way software companies have been selling software will wipe the deck with them all.

I keep meaning to get that novel up on an ePublisher. (Probably Smashwords.) But I haven\'t found an ePublisher yet who is taking the medium in the way it should be. All are just poor facsimiles of print media. If you follow the link to the Facebook Page for The Raider\'s Lament you\'ll see a bit of discussion and commentary in-character from different characters in the book. Now imagine if, while reading this as an eBook, you could flip on tracks, like a DVD. One might have author commentary, explaining what I was thinking when I wrote different bits, or what I couldn\'t work in, etc, etc. Another might have alternative versions, stuff that got cut out, different directions I considered for the plot. Anotherm might have character commentary; the characters talking about the scenes they are taking part in. Etc, etc. You can\'t do anything like that in a print book. But it\'s pretty trivial from an electronic one.

Anyway.... Enough of me ranting about the publishing industry. I\'m glad you like it. A sequel to that one has an outline, and I have several more of a similar sort, but with different characters. That\'s the only one I\'ve turned into an audio-book. If you read the comments, everyone bitches about the sound quality. A good microphone costs $200, and since I\'ve made about $7.50 in two years on it... it may be a while before I record one of the other ones.

Back to StarMade...

 

[jjaquinta]

I\'ll transition the buttons to menus. Probably tomorrow night. (Tonight is D&D night!)

You can use it as an applet already. It works fine from the dev environment. But I had a little difficulty getting it to work from a browser. I haven\'t messed with applets since they deprecated the tag. If you have experience with applets and HTML-5, you\'ll probably work it out no problem. Here\'s what I was testing with:








Applet failed to run. No Java plug-in was found.





That might get you started. If you find the magic parameters that get it to work, please post them here for others to use. Note: the fancy hull textures don\'t come up for the applet. But I might be able to accomodate if you think it\'s worth it.

 

[Racr]

can\'t wait for the paint to be fully usable

 

[quarenon]

Apparently not every browser plays nice with any of the object/embed/applet tags...you might try deployJava.js which is supposed to pick the most reliable method based on the browser you are using