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@Hecter94 may also be interested/have something to offer. |
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This is certainly feasible, since endless-ships seem to parse the data files to create the tables. We can easily create a build job on the website's repo that runs daily, downloads the repo, updates the tables and publishes.
I think that's a good idea! (On an unrelated note it seems like the boot-clj is not maintained anymore, but oh well). The code is GPL so it's not an issue. |
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I prefer spreadsheets, simply viewing the data is generally not enough to do any work with; most of what I use tools such as these for, and what I've seen most others use them for, is directly comparing outfits/ships and using them as tools to balance new content against existing content. To that end, you need the ability to edit the data and build your own functions to insert in. As far as I'm aware, the tool created by 7even cannot do that. There's a lot more information available in the spreadsheet as well, which I think is information that a lot of your general players will find useful, like Combined HP, Fighter/Drone Bays, Max Bunks, Loaded Cost, etc. One question I have for @Zitchas, you mention
Could I ask what's user-unfriendly about the spreadsheets we have? They're hosted online like 7even's tool, and the layout and functionality seem very similar between the two. 7even's tool seems to be mimicking the look, style, and functionality of a spreadsheet: And they're both viewed/sorted the same way. One difference I note is that the way 7even has the filtering set up seems more user-friendly than what I have. Though mine can also filter by any value in any column, it's a more powerful tool at the expense of that user-friendliness. With all that said, I feel like the spreadsheet is just better; it has more data, more options, more customizability, seems similarly user-friendly (in my opinion), and even looks very similar to 7even's tool. It seems like there are two options, then:
Of those two options, I'd lean towards the second option as I think having a single tool with all the functionality we need is better than maintaining two separate ones that cover two different use cases. Though that depends on whether it's possible to update the spreadsheets to be user-friendly enough or update 7even's tool with all the functionality spreadsheets provide. |
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I think that running the site generator from a github workflow is a great idea. There is a recent PR that adds Docker support which may simplify the process of building it if you're okay to deploy it as a Docker container; though it is targeted at people who just want to build the site for the most recent release of the game. The manual building process is also pretty straightforward but right now it requires installing a lot of different tooling which is not exactly necessary. I want to get rid of both The ability to compare ships (or even outfits of the same category) side-by-side was always near the top of my wishlist for endless-ships but it requires some time to think through and implement. Another feature I would love to see there is some kind of a ship constructor where you can select a particular ship, then fill it with outfits of your choosing and see the resulting stats. These two features could even be combined into one screen so that you can compare 2 different ship builds. Now to the more down-to-earth problems. Ease of maintenance: yes, when a new faction is added to the game, it needs to be added to the site generator code (otherwise its label will look like white text on a white background, i.e. invisible). Everything else depends on the data extracted from the game's data files, so no other manual work should be needed. Versioning: it would be great to have the ability to switch between any game versions but I'm not sure that modern versions of endless-ships will work with old versions of the game. Once again, factions are the source of the problem - there is no link between a ship/outfit and a faction that produces it in the game data. The only way to get it is to make some mapping between names of game data files and corresponding factions - this is how ships' factions are determined right now. But file names can change between the game's versions, and I wouldn't really like to track filenames over all versions of ES. One solution to this problem would be to introduce some kind of a convention, like "all ships and outfits described by files inside the With all that being said, I think I will continue working on the project, so I suggest keeping from forking it for now. |
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What has happened on this front? I use 7even's tool (dev version) all the time. In my opinion, I would use his tool over a spread sheet 90% of the time. However, spread sheets can be made to be much more user friendly, but most creators like the spread sheet look, and are very comfortable with it, so they don't take the time. I agree that there may be a few bits of useful data missing from 7even's, but it is real close to be 100% and would not require to much work to add the extra data columns. As an added benefit, I have discovered some new game content I was unaware of just by looking at the tool. I saw some new weapons that suddenly appeared after his latest update and then went to investigate in the game. I mostly use the sort feature to find which outfit that will "just fit" into the space I have. I really hope someone pursues this further. |
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Just to mention here, For other flags see a full man page https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/noble/en/man6/endless-sky.6.html (source is a bit unreadable on Github). I guess participants of this discussion know about this feature, but I came here from the search engine results page, and it will be nice to have a note about where related data could be acquired, such a great idea to include its export to the game binary. |
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Currently, there is a website called the "Endless Sky Encyclopedia." It's an extremely useful reference for Endless Sky's ships (including built-in ways to filter based on factions and categories), along with outfit lists that can be sorted conveniently.
Currently, two versions exist:
http://endless-sky.7vn.io/
http://dev.endless-sky.7vn.io/
The first one was historically kept up to date with Endless Sky's stable release.
The second one was updated periodically to continuous.
Unfortunately, 7even is busy and/or otherwise hasn't been able to update it in a while. So I have two questions:
It is an extremely useful resource, and much more user-friendly than pointing people at spreadsheets, and its appearance is such that it would probably fit right into our website with minimal effort. Ideally, I'd like to see it on https://endless-sky.github.io/ , probably listed between the link to the "Manual" and the link to the "Wiki" on the left sidebar.
(As for rights/usability - the fact that it has a "fork me" with a link to the github repository and instructions on how to build it are probably fairly clear indicators that people are welcome to do so...)
The pages in question both link to https://github.com/7even/endless-ships
Which includes full instructions on how to build it. From the instructions, it appears to build a complete website that just needs to be uploaded somewhere. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar with boot-clj or yarn, and lack a webhost to try it on.
@quyykk You've been mentioned as one of the people who'd probably best know if this is feasible.
@7even As this is your creation, we'd love to have you stay involved with this and offer your opinions/thoughts on it. Your tool is too good to keep hidden or let it fall into irrelevancy due to lack of updates. Thank you for making it!
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