Endless Space Development Kit (ESDK)

A tool to make free mods for Endless Space.

This program will de-serialize xml game content for editing and is written in C# using windows forms.



A little about my mission..

I hope one day this will lower the barrier of entry for new and novice modders. For the veterans out there, you already know how complex total conversions and overhauls are to develop. I hope one day esdk will make these kinds of mods feasible.



I will be using this thread as a dev journal for this project. I plan to post status updates such as screenshots, videos, ideas, and even current development woes. Its very interesting for me to be able to look back at a project timelime. ESDK is also a joint project for my 'ES Eve Online' mod which is still in development. And now Ill get this thing rollin with the first entry.







April 2014

This screenshot is from the first week. Right away I was able to make a functional NEW mod wizard. At this point, esdk allows a user to fill out an easy form to generate a index.xml the game could load straight away. Very cool, this encouraged me to commit to the project.

Screenshot





May 27 2014 #

Now today I have a better look with this video. Simulation data is now browsable on a datagrid/tree with editing not far behind.

http://youtu.be/oXB8Sxvxalc





June 2 2014 #

New preview today. Ive sorted out my xsd issue from the previous post and added support for more xml element types

I also got basic linking for some sub records in, which is the focus of this preview. Enjoy the video

http://youtu.be/IHcKEHUblkU

Pretty cool. I'd love for modding to pick back up on this game--I come back to very few games, and Endless Space will be on my desktop for years. Looks great!

This looks amazing! Can't come soon enough.

Heres a tiny status update.

I refined the application flow a bit this weekend and Im much happier with it. Heres a diagram to show how it goes..









With this part of the project out of the way for now I can shift my focus back to the data. So far I have only written a handful of serialization classes. This could take a while because I have not generated xsd schemas for the data (which would be way better).

I am having issues generating the schemas for some simulation files where XSD throws this error

[CODE]A column named 'Description' already belongs to this DataTable: cannot set a nested table name to the same name.[/CODE]

[CODE]



MovementWormhole1







%MovementWormhole1Description





%FleetWormholeUnlockTitle







[/CODE]

I think this stackoverflow describes something like my issue where the Gui:escription and Tooltip:escription conflict. Anyway, Im sure Ill figure it out but if the answer is obvious to anyone please let me know

New preview today. Ive sorted out my xsd issue from the previous post and added support for more xml element types

I also got basic linking for some sub records in, which is the focus of this preview. Enjoy the video



http://youtu.be/IHcKEHUblkU

Excellent, looks great! Pretty impressive work, this will make modding take considerably less time. It would be awesome to see people being able to make their own mods without taking hours to learn the xmls.

While I'm far from the most experienced set of hands on here, if there's anything I can do to help, just ask!



I also had a few questions, if you don't mind...



Will this check to see if we've made an error with a directory? If I tell something to look for "SuchAndSuchDes" and that doesn't exist yet, will the SDK let me know?

Will the SDK be capable of making XMLs from within? Or do we make them in folder first, then open the SDK after?

Any release ETA? (And yes, I know I'm totally being "that guy")



Looks awesome, can't wait to get my hands on this. Hopefully the devs take notice and throw it up on Steam as an update. Will really help expedite modding.

Im an info graphic junkie so heres this.

Will this check to see if we've made an error with a directory? If I tell something to look for "SuchAndSuchDes" and that doesn't exist yet, will the SDK let me know?

The editor handles everything to do with file management. There shouldnt even be a need to open windows explorer. If there is an error such as someone decides they want to delete their entire mod while its open in the editor it may even be possible to recover it from the copy stored in memory. In any case there absolutely WILL be popups, lol

Will the SDK be capable of making XMLs from within? Or do we make them in folder first, then open the SDK after?

Yes, the editor works on a virtual copy of the mod data as it stands today.

While I'm far from the most experienced set of hands on here, if there's anything I can do to help, just ask!

Unless anyone wants in on the source code the best way to help is to just use the editor and report things that dont work. Im probably more excited for a release than anyone else but that will not happen until I get all functionality working end to end even if its bare bones. ETA? Eventually..

ETA Eventually? Gosh, is it nice working for Blizzard?



Thanks for the reply though, I'm really excited for the potential of this, and I can't wait to get my greedy little hands on it.

This project sounds amazing. Are you still working on it?

Yup little by little as real life allows.

Looking forward to try out the program at some point.

Wouldn't mind testing any alpha or beta versions.