[TOOL] [DISCONTINUED] Empyrion Playfield Designer Alpha7 v1.36.1 [deprecated version]

Empyrion Playfield Designer:
A Tool for creating and editing custom worlds for Empyrion - Galactic Survival.

Create a new planet or a space playfield from scratch easily with some clicking. No need for you to struggle with yaml files and their formatting anymore.

LATEST RELEASE VERSION (v1.36.0) with full Alpha 7 Support:

Important!!
As this has been mentioned by users repeatedly:
Many Antivirus software false positively flags EPD.exe as virus/trojan. This is due to the code obfuscating software i use to somewhat protect the source code from disassembling. If you run into problems extracting and/or using EPD, please try to exclude the folder, where you ectract EPD into, from your antivirus software.
Sadly there is nothing i can do about it.

DOWNLOAD LINK (LATEST VERSION):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxUpWMGez5I0STZOZ0p4THpEMWs/view?usp=sharing

BIOME SETUP GUIDE:
https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-35-2.9789/page-29#post-170460

Full dialog based representation of the playfield yaml. Just, click, drag, edit.


Trader Editor:
Edit Traders (TraderNPCConfig.ecf) for easy customization of Traders and their items, prices, categories.


Preview Images of decoration and grass items:


Preview Images of textures:


CHANGELOG:
v1.36.1:
https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-36-0.9789/page-31#post-179035
v1.36.0:
https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-35-8.9789/page-31#post-176949
v1.35.8:
https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-35-7.9789/page-30#post-174543
v1.35.7:
https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-35-6.9789/page-30#post-174442
v1.35.6:
https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-35-4.9789/page-30#post-174071
v1.35.4:
https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-35-2.9789/page-29#post-173426
v1.35.2:
https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-35-0.9789/page-29#post-164315
v1.35.0:
https://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-34-7.9789/page-28#post-163806
v1.34.7:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-34-6.9789/page-26#post-156935
v1.34.6:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-34-5.9789/page-26#post-156802
v1.34.5:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-34-4.9789/page-25#post-156576
v1.34.4:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-34-3.9789/page-25#post-154617
v1.34.3:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-34-2.9789/page-24#post-151477
v1.34.2:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-34-2.9789/page-23#post-150234
v1.34.1:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-34-0.9789/page-23#post-149996
v1.34.0:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/tool-empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-34-0.9789/page-23#post-149542
v1.33.7:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-33-7.9789/page-22#post-144338
v1.33.6:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-33-3.9789/page-21#post-143932
v1.33.3:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-33-2.9789/page-21#post-142266
v1.33.2:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-33-1.9789/page-21#post-141644
v1.33.1:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-33-0.9789/page-20#post-141609
v1.33.0:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-33-0.9789/page-20#post-141485
v1.32.5:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-32-3.9789/page-18#post-133788

HOW TO USE LIVE RELOAD:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-22-6.9789/page-11#post-119379

BASIC INSTRUCTIONS TO USE 'SURPRISE ME!' FUNCTION:
http://empyriononline.com/threads/empyrion-playfield-designer-v1-10-2.9789/page-5#post-108667




/jmc


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[Original Post]

Hi fellow EGS players,

just wanted to let you get a glimpse at a new tool i'm working on, still pre-alpha and i'm not a professional programmer, so still a lot of work to do and i'm doing this in my spare time.

Empyrion Playfield Designer
A tool to open edit and save playfield yamls to ease the process of creating custom worlds.

The intention and premise to programming this is to help people out who don't know how to handle .yaml files.

The fact, that EGS ist still alpha and there may or may not be lots of changes to the playfield yamls in the future, i have to design the tool to be highly adaptive to changes.

Therefore, the GUI is designed to create itself mostly automatic from a given yaml playfield. But this design approach for me as a non professional isn't that easy to handle.

Although the program is already rather stable, there are yet a lot of features to program into before an alpha release, so don't expect too much in the next weeks.
As i said, I'm not a professional and hopefully i'm not stumbling across something in the process, i can't handle, but so far everything looks ok.

First alpha to be released will be simple importing, editing -> exporting.

Working so far:
- Empyrion Yaml Serialization/Deserialization. Empyrion yaml is not 100% compatible to default yaml. I learned that the hard way.
- Importing of a playfield structure and general mechanics of form auto-creation. But still have to do/adapt Biome-, POI-, Drones-, Creature- Handlers/Importers.
- Importing of playfield data into fields

Features planned for the future/TODO:
- Importing of all existing empyrion playfields in EGS content folder, extracting the data (i.e. Grass Names, Terrain Types, Decorations... into a database in order to fill comboboxes, etc to make easy selection of those items.
- Randomizer, maybe some kind of intelligent based on algorithm, but that's still some time to

But here's a pre alpha screenshot, of what to expect in early alpha:



The tool is supposed to be free, i'm doing this to help the community grow and boost custom worlds.

If there is anyone out there who i can contact for help, if i get stuck somewhere in the process of creating this, leave a post. i'd be very thankful. The code is in c#.

So what do you think?

Regards

 

This is Amazing keep up the work i hope to use this one day ^__^ looks easy to use

 

The form creates itself by looking at existing files... I never would have thought of that.

Is there a way you can add notes?
For instance, sky color doesn't change the color of the sky... It changes the color of fog.

 

Didn't know that. So that's why my sky never changed, when i had no fog enabled.

Should work with Tooltips on hovering, but don't know if that's the best implementation.

I do have already added a description attribute to every yaml Property in the code, so the place for entering additional information is prepared.

Thx for the info

 

I am really intrigued by this. What a massive undertaking. Hopefully you get some support from the devs. Anything that makes content creation more accessible for the average user is worth it's weight in gold.

 

I'm really looking forward to this as my servers have 80+ custom playfeilds between the two... when big things happen I have to go through many of them and make changes or add new game content on the fly. This looks like it would save me hours of time and save me $$$ on my coffee bill. Awesome work!

 

once your far enough along, i can do testing for you, just lemme know this will make my life so much easier once its complete lol.

 

A hard days work...

• learned Windows Presentation Foundation WPF in 6 hours from scratch by coding lots of small code snippets and lots of testing out. I have never used/programmed WPF before, but it will be the future and is more flexible in design matters. A lot more than Windows Forms was/is.
  The decision to use Windows forms in the first place was, because i had already used it for years and didn't want it to slow me down or break everything completely.
• After 18 hours of coding all of the GUI code is now transitioned to WPF (hopefully bug free)
• refactored the whole thing in the process completely.
• moved Resources, Biome, ... to the according tabs for clarity.

So feature/functionwise nothing really new to tell for now. Some simple adds like Special Effects Editor GUI automatics.

Next steps will be:

• still have to rewrite some of the colorpicker code.
• Design a new colorpicker from scratch or maybe there's some templates around the net. WPF doesn't come with a colorpicker control.
• Then the Biome/POI/Creature/Editors......that's gonna be a rather hard ones.
• After that the next thing will be adapting input validators/parsers for the TextBoxes from old WinForms code to new WPF tool.
• after that informationcollection routines and exporting into new playfield.

Brain needs to rest NOW!!!
- shutting down

New WPF GUI, nothing really more to see:



gn8
jmc

 

Yea let me know and I will jump on the testing wagon for you. currently I have 27 custom planets with there own playfields and making them unique is hard enough already. Thanks for all your hard work making the lives of those trying to find help easier!~ Now if only we could get it to run linux xD

 

Hi guys,

ColorPicker BuilderModule reworked completely.

I used a new ColorPicker Template From WPF Extended ToolKit. I think it fits in nicely with the GUI and makes picking colors sooo much easier now.


StandardColors:

Advanced ColorMixer:


When picking a color now or even while sliding the RGB Sliders or moving around the ColorSwatch, the code automatic recalculates and updates the textbox live with the according EMP ColorValues.

/jmc

 

I'd also like to throw my hat in the ring where testing is concerned.

 

looking good love the color picker i really cant wait for this ^_^

 

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!

 

Up you go.

 

Why aren't we funding this? lol. I love the work you have done. I have my own server, but it's the original content. Once I found out that you could make custom playfields I was excited, but then I realized all the extra configuring I would have to do and honestly I didn't want to put more time in it because I usually play on another server. I just use my server for creating bases, creating ships and testing.

 

so far so good...

thx for the positive feedback.

What happened since the last update.

• removed rest of the old Winform code. cleaned everything up. The code was a heavy mess already from switching frameworks.
• reading and writing of yamls should work for the most playfields now. But still some isolated issuess. Shouldn't be a problem. Just some minor fixes to the yaml parser TypeConverters.
• refactored whole content creation algorithms to a more sleek WPF kind of thing.
• a nasty bug was keeping me busy the last two days till i figured it out today morning, that didn't allow the playfield data in UI to be overwritten by imported yaml. But as almost, it's the human that's causing the problem. .... STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!
• hopefully i can finally start working on the more complex interface stuff like Biomes, POIs, and so on in the next days. But I'm rather busy at work as well, so not very fast progress.

At the same time i still have to dig a lot deeper into WPF designing and coding to get the interface right. Got myself 1200 pages of lecture today about that topic. That's also keeping me a bit from coding, but hey...​

...rome wasn't built in a day...​

/jmc

 

Take your time this is a amazing tool and i thing its going to be worth the wait

 

Yo you should make a go fund me. I'd make it rain a few dollars for this. And thanks for the effort you are putting in.

 

I would make a rather decent donation as well if you put up a go fund me, of course I would request early access peeks at it as it becomes more and more usable. I would love to be able to randomly generate world's and systems for my server. For me the hardest part is biomes and fauna and flora. Everything else is easy as hell