[request] map editor tool

[St4n]

Since the whole universe consist of coordinates and connections it would be possible to create a tool which "simply" lets you create this stuff by drag&drop on a 2D environment, automatically creating the needed xml-files.
(Preferable with the xml-patch-method.)
It's very hard to type in coordinates by hand, writing them down, double check. The same goes for connections and stuff.

So instead of working with several files at the same time you would simply put a sector here some zones there, connect them with highways, "save" and the tool uses the preset rules and creates the needed files/entries.

I know this is not done in several days, but if someone has the skills to do this would be a creat addition to the currently available modding tools.

Note: I know that this would only create "raw" clusters/sectors/zones without any AI-jobs/stations/backround etc. But this would be a good start. This stuff could be added in later versions...

[ICO_hr]

This would be to good to be true if is posibble.

Btw ES should have something similar like world editor or something.I cannot imagine how they populate all the asteroid,nebulas or other zone volumes.How they even know where to place them or how big and so on.They have some tools i'm sure.I hope they will release them to the community at some point.

[Sujic]

It should be quite easy to write an XML exporter for a 3D package like Blender or 3ds Max, which exports the scene as a proper formated xml document...then you can place dummy objects in your scene, export it and the game should place the correct models at the respective coordinates...

[St4n]

It should be quite easy to write an XML exporter for a 3D package like Blender or 3ds Max, which exports the scene as a proper formated xml document...then you can place dummy objects in your scene, export it and the game should place the correct models at the respective coordinates...

This would also be a good solution.

[YorrickVander]

An SVG map via browser would be nice. Roguey's map is nice, but lacks resource info.

[brammie]

I might be able to work it out, when i got all stuff imported

Just need some easy to use 2d canvas to draw everything on, rest is just laoding xml and do number crunching.

SVG + REST should work, and the some system to "save" snapshots (in databe) and a export to create a mod (zip)....
I was even thinking of creating a maven plugin to create a default mod so the dir structure gets set up and default stuff gets generated...

mja, lots of work, lol

[YorrickVander]

Poking about for an easy(ish) solution, python, cherrypy and svgwrite would do the job nicely of parsing the xml to a map for use in the steam browser. Time to learn how to translate the connections to a nice looking map I guess...

[brammie]

yeah, i was thinking of http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/batik
same stuff, different language

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