Ultimate Editor

Ultimate Editor; support/discussion/questions

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DCER
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Ultimate Editor

Post by DCER »

Ultimate Editor


Introduction:

Ultimate Editor is an editor for the game Birth of the federation written in Java.

It is able to open various game files such as stbof.res, alt.res, .snd music files and saved games. It also has some useful tools such as the tool for converting images to 16-bit tga, the calculator for converting values to hex code, the tool for creating botf ani/cur files...

The editor is still a work in progress and will be updated in the future.

Ultimate Editor is free sofware. The license used is the GPL 2. Please read the license to see what rights it grants you.

If you want to help with fixing bugs or adding features, please contact me.


Download & instalation:

To be able run the editor you will need to install Sun's latest Java Runtime Environment (JRE).
You can find it here.

You can find the latest release of Ultimate Editor as well as some of the older ones here.

Each release comes with two file archives. The one with "source" in their name contain the source code for the editor. This file is useful only for those who want to see the editor inner workings or want to help. The file without "source" in it's name contains the editor.

After you download the file, just extract it to a folder - and the editor is "installed".


Usage:

Double clicking on UE.jar or UE if the extension is hidden runs the editor.

When you run the editor, at first you get an empty grey window with the menu bar on top. You can find the tools there and start using them right away. For all other things you need to open the appropriate files.

To open a file go to File->Open, select a file then click Open. If everything worked, then you should now see additional options in the Edit menu.

No changes you make will be saved until you click the File->Save button.


Versions:

What do the numbers and letters at the end mean?

At the time of writing this the current latest version is 0.6.3f

Each increase in letter means bug fixes, while an increase in number means added functionality.

This means the next released version with new functionality will be 0.6.4, then when a bug is fixed, but no functionality is added it'll be 0.6.4a, then 0.6.4b and so on...


Help:

1. For further information consult the accompanying readme.txt and faq.txt files.

2. If you can't find the answer there, search the forums first.

3. If you still can't find an answer to your question post your question on the forum.
Last edited by DCER on Sun Apr 27, 2008 9:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DCER
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Post by DCER »

I thought I'd post this in a separate post.

I'm looking for a volunteer who would be willing to translate UE into german. Other languages are welcome as well.

Although not needed, knowing how to find your way in the source code and being able to determine where each string is used will make it easier for you to do the translating.

You won't need to compile or anything and I'll help if something doesn't make sense, so have no fear to volunteer :)
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sean_west
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Post by sean_west »

Are you planning to add the ability to modify ship stats to your next version
Like the bad guy from so many horror films,

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JeanLucPicard1
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Post by JeanLucPicard1 »

You can already do this with the current version
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sean_west
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Post by sean_west »

Sorry,I mean can you edit the ships you already have in a save game,for example, can you rename a ship you have in sector 1,a for example?
Like the bad guy from so many horror films,

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Post by DCER »

Editing ships in a saved game will probably be added in the future.
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Post by TrekMage »

Dear DCER,
DCER wrote:I'm looking for a volunteer who would be willing to translate UE into german. Other languages are welcome as well.
One question: is it about translating the UE GUI, e.g.

Code: Select all

	/**Addds a new SavEntry to the file.*/
	public void putNextEntry(SavEntry se) throws SavException{
		if (E_OUTPUT != null) throw new SavException("You need to close previous entry first!");
or about translating the ingame(?) text used in the editor in file

UE\Data\User\Descriptions\English.dec ?

-> In the first case, using a property file including all GUI text would be a very nice thing for localization - would make it even easier to create future dutch, swedish and polish versions of UE also... ;-)

A tool for this might be: http://propedit.sourceforge.jp/index_en.html

There might even be a plug-in for Eclipse to make the use of external properties easier for developers, but I am not sure - my current state of Java knowledge is more than rusty, unfortunately...

And BTW: I might see what I could do with the german translation :-)
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DCER
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Post by DCER »

Hi TrekMage,

Yes, it's about UE's gui. Siggi volunteered and already translated almost all of the text already. A couple I added later aren't done yet.

I'm using eclipse's built-in localization support and all the strings are in property files.

If you want you can translate it into another language, just let me know, so I'll send you the files :)
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Post by Thunderchild »

Hi DCER. Is it possible to make a function where you can edit one shiplist for AI, one for human players, and than you can tell the editor to create a shiplist with this options? This way could solve many problems how to arrange a shiplist where you don't have to make to much compromises.

I hope you understand what i mean.
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Post by DCER »

I'm not sure, but Joker's launcher might do what you want. Don't know what other mods have it, but Joker's building mod should have it.

It allows you to make AI ships stronger than yours, iirc.


In UE you can edit a shiplist then extract it without saving to stbof.res. Once you make two or more shiplists, you can add the one you pick to stbof.res and save.

Otherwise the game can use only one shiplist at a time.
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sean_west
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Post by sean_west »

The AI chooses ships based on the ship function.

Look in the shiplist, and for each ship, it is character 105
The avalible types are:
Scout
Destroyer
Cruiser
Strike Cruiser
Dreadnought
Colony Ship
Outpost
Starbase
Alien (random event)
Troop Transport

If there is a way of expanding this list, we would be able to improve the AI's ship building. DCRE - any ideas Mr wizzard

One point to note, the AI is logical (in theory), so why build light cruisers when it can build command cruisers, yes high maintainance, but better ship.




<EDIT>
Siggi's UDM, has outposts upgrading to starbases, does this mean that his starbases function code is classed as an outpost??
If so, this will give us and extra ship function slot which can be used to improve the AI maybe????
Like the bad guy from so many horror films,

I have returned
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Thunderchild
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Post by Thunderchild »

DCER wrote:I'm not sure, but Joker's launcher might do what you want. Don't know what other mods have it, but Joker's building mod should have it.

It allows you to make AI ships stronger than yours, iirc.


In UE you can edit a shiplist then extract it without saving to stbof.res. Once you make two or more shiplists, you can add the one you pick to stbof.res and save.

Otherwise the game can use only one shiplist at a time.
I don't want stronger AI ships. What I want is a shiplist which can be different for every mp-game, which depents from who is playing which empire, the AI or a human. For the human players i would do a shiplist without upgrades. For the AI the upgrades are necessary because otherwise it would only build a few ships from what it could, and would be easy to beat. But it would be a lot of work to make a new shiplist everytime you want to play a new mp-game. So i thought, it would be good to have 2 shiplists, one for human, the other for AI players. Than a menu where you can which empire is played from a human, and which from AI. And after you have set all this, a shiplist will be created, mixed from the 2 shiplists(and shiptech.sst as well).
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Post by Malvoisin »

IIRC that's exactly what Joker's launcher does, creating a new shiplist each time you launch the game with different settings.
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Post by Thunderchild »

Malvoisin wrote:IIRC that's exactly what Joker's launcher does, creating a new shiplist each time you launch the game with different settings.
Yes, but it doesn't influence the upgrades, does it?
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Post by Malvoisin »

I'm not sure. I believe one can set auto-upgrades on for all races, don't know if one can set it for each race separately.
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