Hi Empyrion PDA enthusiasts! After almost 1 year of development Hayawen and I am very proud to release our eWPDA tool! eWPDA | Main Features Create, Import and Export PDA files (yaml & csv) Reading the BlocksConfig.ecf and ItemsConfig.ecf file (for auto item suggestions) Reading the EClassConfig.ecf file (for auto NPC suggestions) Reading the Factions.ecf file (for auto Faction suggestions) Reading Dialogues.ecf file (for auto Dialogue state suggestions) Reading Localization.csv file (for translated auto item suggestions) Reading other related Scenario files like Blueprint .epb files (for auto POI suggestions) and Sectors.yaml (for Playfield auto suggestions) Merge conflict editor for PDA.yaml to choose what to import if there are changes detected Language chooser to easily translate your PDA to all supported languages Easy colorpicker and other bb-code formats for your texts Export normalizer to remove unused keys and strings from your yaml or csv And more to master the PDA! eWPDA | How to use? This is a Web tool, a website you can just visit with your Browser (Google Chrome recommended). That means nothing else is really required. Go to the following website to start your PDA journey: https://empyrion-homeworld.net/tools/ewpda Note: Even though this is a website it does not mean you work in any way remotely. All of your files are stored locally in your browser where nobody else has access to - it makes use of your browsers local indexed database. eWPDA | Tutorials To get you started I've created a video tutorial series going step by step with you through certain stages of the PDA and the tool. 1. Let's get started - Introduction to eWPDA. 2. Import / Export - How to import your files and export them. What "import" on this site means especially. 3. Usage & Tricks - Explaining the PDA structure and showcase a little example. 4. Examples - Playing around with more attributes and test them ingame. 5. Translation - Translating the previous example on the fly to other languages. eWPDA | Impressions Start from scratch or import your files Slick interface Translations on the fly Keep track of your PDA.yaml changes eWPDA | Contribution This tool is still in development! Feedback, Suggestions and bug reports are more than welcome! IF you are using our tool in your Scenario or Server, we really would appreciate to hear from you - especially if it turns out that our hundreds of hours helped you. A "Thanks" motivates us to keep working on eWPDA! Big thanks to Hayawen and his incredible coding skills, @Hummel-o-War for testing and providing hints descriptions!! Just in case you like our work or even find it useful, I would really appreciate a little "give back" for our time https://www.paypal.me/homeworldserver Disclaimer: eWPDA is provided “as-is”, without any warranty, and empyrion-homeworld.net or its owners disclaim any liability for damages or data losses resulting from its use. eWPDA is provided for FREE but accepting Donations to keep it up to date. There is NO guarantee that I will maintain eWPDA forever. This tool is NOT allowed for people who doing malicious things with it. For example creating Quests that intentionally ruins the experience of players or working on stolen content and claim it as yours with the help of this tool.
!!! Will it also support displaying keybinding and clickable http URLs for the text entries or are they manually created ?
Clickable http URLs on a website? For sure Just select your link and use the markdown editor. You mean like {keybind(PDA)}? It's only a string, so yes. But good idea to implement a button for that in the future maybe
So far I tried the Tool, Good Explained with the descriptions, very easy to use. The Local Browser DataBase is a nice thouch . Forgot to export the pda and closed Browser and then your stuff is still there . Also handy to just continue the next day without having to save or export every 5 min Nicely done @RexXxuS and Hayawen. Thanks for this awesome tool!!
04.10.2019 | v1.0.1: Fix that format options were missing for CompletedMessage for Chapters. Thanks @Exacute Note: as said we strongly recommend using Google Chrome for eWPDA! Firefox and the old Edge is just a piece of C... ookie. We try to polish few things for these cripples but use at own risk.
Just an fyi... In Firefox if you try to move the order of tasks or actions you get a white page saying "The address wasn’t understood". I've installed Chrome for now, but I do prefer Firefox...
05.10.2019 | v1.0.2: Fix that Firefox opens tabs for drag and drop tree elements. my condolences But I think I fixed this now. Please refresh the website @Bollen
OK, the only really annoying thing about it is that if you change anything in the CSV file, Empyrion doesn't seem to log it and you get errors or it just displays something like txt_CKiO0. The only way around it is to restart Empyrion, which is very time consuming...
I assume you did not watch my tutorials Go to minute 17:15 Or well, type "pda rd" in the ingame console to fix it.
Of course I did my dear friend! And have indeed used the command but it ain't working... As it happened to you during the vid too.... I have also discovered that it's not always reliable. I've lost a bit of work twice today. I would export both files, run the scenario and I would get errors... I would check the line number in the yaml with Notepad++ and it would be making a reference to an inexistent txt_xxx. If I refreshed the browser then several titles and descriptions would vanish... It's a great tool nevertheless and I'm really grateful that you made it!
Ah sorry, okay Then I assume you work on your Scenario in Singleplayer, right? Do you know that your savegame does create a PDA folder? And that once you loaded your savegame, that only these files are respected? So to work on the correct files you would have need to export the yaml+csv from eWPDA to your savegame PDA folder. But even then, maybe it's a tool bug. Losing work is totally not good and I'm eager to fix this. I just need a bit more details. Like what did you do to trigger it? Removed a string in eWPDA? What error comes up in the game?
06.10.2019 | v1.0.3: Fixed removing strings still leave yaml properties behind and cause empty txt_xxx strings in the csv. Thanks Hayawen!
Hey @RexXxuS I'm glad you found the bug! I'll answer your question anyway in case they help: - The errors were encountered in both Firefox and Chrome. Eventually I settled for Chrome (despite the extra clicks) because Firefox wouldn't display font colour changes. - Yes this is a single player scenario. As a rule of thumb after I do any changes to the PDA I start a new game, delete all previous games of the same scenario and completely clear the cache. So I'm always working from the Scenario Folder. - Yes the errors occur only when changing already existing entries, even if this entries are totally rewritten (e.g. changing titles, descriptions, actions). When adding any new material (chapters, tasks or actions) the tool behaves fairly well. - A common issue I've ran across is that I'll assign an action or a trigger of some sort, I'll move to another task and when I go back the changes that I'd made are gone. I'm assuming this has to do with some sort action/error checking and whether or not they're plausible by the game. For example, I was trying out options to trigger the character interacting with an SV or HV, so I used combinations of InventoryContains > name of vehicle > device, DeviceUsed > SawAttachment or DeviceNamePowered, etc. Some of these were the ones that disappeared... Also WindowOpened > Name of base > ConstructorT1V2 I think I've decided that I'm giving up on this project. Your tool made it so much easier to make missions that it made me realise that the limitations are extensive! There's little that can be done with SVs and HVs, there's no workaround for making dialogues, the windows are fairly restrictive so I was forced to divide the background story into several chapters, which keep saying the annoying "congratulations, you've completed chapter blah, blah, blah". There's no autopilot and no way to transport the character to another location/playfield, which defeats the point of the story, because the character doesn't know how to fly yet and the society is more primitive than Empyrion's main storyline. Finally there's no bartering system, the PDA can't remove credits or items so I can't make the character work in order to progress... Sigh! Well it was a nice idea, perhaps one day I'll be able to create my own game... Be well and thank you for all your help!
07.10.2019 | v1.0.4: Fixed little style overlapping for export button and improve background save sync Sorry to hear about your decision but I totally understand this @Bollen The last 4 years I had tons of funky ideas but realized it's just not possible. Be it portable missions, keycards, dynamic dialogs, multiple active missions, etc. I think you were just too fast. My previous background save sync was about 1 second. I changed it now to 100 milli seconds. Hopefully it stores everything fast enough now. Some things require a focus somewhere else though. You can check this quick by pressing F12 and check the console when it is saved. Anyways maybe you can release some of your work nevertheless or want to work on something new? not yet... You're welcome and all the best!
Absolutely... That is not to say the devs might, perhaps implement these possibilities at a later time. So it's not like I'm leaving lovely Empyrion for good... But after all these years I feel I need to give it perhaps an equal amount of years rest... Ah! Good point... That is certainly possible. When I get inspired and the tools "seem" to be working I go at 100 KM/H! OK fair enough, I'll try to finish at least this chapter and release it (will involve lots of re-thinking how the character can progress), but you're right... At least a short story might be worth it. Oooo! Intriguing! All the best to you too!
