ED's magnificent 3rd party tool infrastructure!

[GraXXoR]

Over the past five years, a surprisingly large gamut of tools have been made FREELY AVAILABLE to every commander including the noobiest Noob; hardcore billion credit traders looking to build their fortunes; rares dealers searching for the most exquisite of treasures; Vopal miners seeking untold riches; drug smugglers looking to find new audiences; racers trying to squeeze one last m/s from their screaming hardware; dedicated explorers searching the furthest, darkest reaches of the outer arms of the Milky Way; Hot shot PvPers and Min-Maxers trying to eke every last erg out of their vessels; Searcher and Rescuers seeking lost and endangered souls; Xeno hunters protecting humanity from the Thargoid Scourge; Cruise liners in the top 1%; and pirates seeking out all that tasty cargo...

There really are 3rd party tools for everyone

They include professional grade implementations built on solid, formalised APIs and have become a dizzying web of varied tools and websites to make this game more enjoyable and immersive.

The quality of many of the tools is outstanding, all built on the dual foundations of the ecosystem: EDSM (ED Star Map) and EDDN (ED Data Network).

I have never seen another game offer the sheer quality and variety of tools available for Elite Dangerous. Over the past half decade, I have had first hand discussions with many of the originators, creators and coders that run or support these tools and the sheer professionalism has blown me away! The dedication and skill that they have brought to bear is nothing short of outstanding.

Does anyone know of any other game that offers this insane level of 3rd party involvement?

I would just like to offer my sincere thanks to anyone involved in making the ED 3rd party ecosystem as rich and professional as it is and will continue to sponsor and support the tools I use!

Thank you so much!


TL/DR - 3rd Party Tools: Wow!

 

[Deleted member 38366]

To quote a certain unnamed, former Executive Producer "You don't need a spreadsheet to play the Game"(tm)

Yep, the dependency on 3rd Party Tools is absolutely extreme. Never seen anything like it.
Good tools though, many very professional fixes for the countless Information potholes left behind by Frontier.

 

[robbyp]

The diagram is a bit out of date!

 

[Adept Geraden]

I have fond memories (not) of manually updating google docs spreadsheets in the very early days of our PMF.
Today, we have grown, and without EDMC and the third party websites, it would be a nightmare to manage.

And yes, thanks for the prompt. I am overdue to make some more donations to our third parties.

 

[Factabulous]

Other games have lots of third party support as well - often called 'mods' and 'custom maps'.

ED does have good third party support though

 

[zimms]

Frontier hit the mother lode with this community. I guess player numbers would drop significantly if those 3rd party tools were shut down.

 

[CMDR GRAEME COWELL]

I think the 3rd party stuff is so good because players are looking at the game from outside and saying i want to track x, or i want to find y, and just making it happen the dev's are inside where the focus/direction for their works is set by FD targets `the game needs to be this Shape going forwards' 'focus on integrating this aspect'
Busy making the game and not able to see how it is being played ?

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

Other than occasionally hopping onto EDDB, Inara, or Coriolis, I've never used any standalone apps.
Can anyone recommend a thread or site that lists and explains some of these?

Thanks. o7

 

[Zieman]

Other than occasionally hopping onto EDDB, Inara, or Coriolis, I've never used any standalone apps.
Can anyone recommend a thread or site that lists and explains some of these?

Thanks. o7

Some pointers:

Player Tools & API Discussions

forums.frontier.co.uk

Release - EDCodex. The complete list of third-party tools for Elite Dangerous - Community driven website

Update 23th of January 2016. Brilliant news: On the 5th of January 2016, Zac Antonaci -Head of Community Management of FD- wrote in the "Open Letter to Frontier Developments" thread that usage of the iPhone companion app api is LEGAL. Source. Which makes the usage of tools which use this api...

forums.frontier.co.uk

Elite: Dangerous Codex

edcodex.info

 

[Anubite]

It's always a minor satisfaction seeing some station that has what you need, that was updated weeks, even months ago, and making sure it's fresh again for all to actually make use of. I make sure system scans get uploaded, too, always nice to contribute to an in-the-black jumponium refill or high-G exploration. Gotta love the "click to see your ship build on X" feature, too.)

While I wish there were more tools in-game, I'm glad there is a working API at least. I'm always so eagar to point the new pilots I've flown with to these tools because it can be daunting to share their ship build progress otherwise, and it lets them act as passive data collectors too. From there, I slowly introduce them to all the tools can do.

 

[VerticalBlank]

I'm not sure why EDDI isn't on that graph.

 

[Kelster87]

Personally, I don't like it at all. All what these apps are doing is to encourage lazy development and extremely precarious dependence from unknown persons, as you quite rightly already mentioned. At least the most important functions shouldn't be 'outsourced'. I shudder when I imagine the maintenance of EDEngineer would be stopped for instance. ED and we all will sooner or later suffer from this shortsighted mismanagement.

Well, you could always write and maintain your own, after all, the API is available..

I can play without the extras, no problem, but it is easier with them.

 

[Zieman]

I'm not sure why EDDI isn't on that graph.

ED Discovery seems to be missing too.

 

[GraXXoR]

The diagram is a bit out of date!

Well it is generated from EDCODEX's live data, so I guess the tool developers haven't bothered to add their tools to the codex.

 

[Cmdr Eratosthenes]

To quote a certain unnamed, former Executive Producer "You don't need a spreadsheet to play the Game"(tm)

Yep, the dependencies on 3rd Party Tools is absolutely extreme. Never seen anything like it.
Good tools though, many very professional fixes for the countless Information potholes left behind by Frontier.

I remember that comment well. I told him he was myopic at the time (when they banned said tools). Things didn't work out so well for that person ;-)

 

[GraXXoR]

I'm not sure why EDDI isn't on that graph.

People, Yes, I get it. Not everything is visible on the graph.

That's because it's an autogenerated DOT Graph generated from EDCODEX's onboard data... It's also done with a random layout seed and no hinting. If the tool is listed on EDCODEX it's in the graph: Most likely the tool you're looking buried under something else... It took me several attempts just to get both EDDN and EDSM showing simultaneously.

DOT and GRAPHVIZ are excellent tools for data analysis and visualisation, which I used to use a lot when I was doing my postgrad research but they need a lot of careful tweaking to get visually pleasing results... Most graphs are then imported into something like Omnigraffle to manually rearrange.

↑　EDDI IS SLAP BANG IN THE MIDDLE OF THIS ONE.

↑ EDDiscovery is TOP CENTRE in this render.

 

[GraXXoR]

Personally, I don't like it at all. All what these apps are doing is to encourage lazy development and extremely precarious dependence from unknown persons, as you quite rightly already mentioned. At least the most important functions shouldn't be 'outsourced'. I shudder when I imagine the maintenance of EDEngineer would be stopped for instance. ED and we all will sooner or later suffer from this shortsighted mismanagement.

I'd have to disagree with you there. Creating a solid, working API was what the 3rd party devs clamoured for. They even went on a well deserved strike when FDEV refused to play ball. But now, the API that FDEV maintain is at the centre of a vibrant ecosystem used by tens of thousands of players on an almost daily basis.

It is concerning that some of the front end applications are maintained by a single person (eg. Artie in the case of INARA.CZ) so it's very likely that Real Life (TM) will at some future point get in the way and the app will disappear, much like the once excellent and vibrant EGO (ELITE GALAXY ONLINE) site that used to aggregate a sort of Guinness Book Of Records of Stellar Discoveries from player data suddenly vanished without a trace and without (AFAIK) contact from the developers.

Thankfully the core tools like EDSM and EDDN are maintained by groups of people so should be more robust and there is a group of coders called EDCD that cooperate and have a lively Discord to help each other out and keep in touch with the players and each other.

But the coders will likely only continue so long as:

• There is demand for their tools.
• It remains simple and interesting for them. (API does not play silly b*ggers, end users don't start getting arsy).
• Development continues to be fulfilling and satisfying for them. (They feel they are learning or growing as coders?)

And (possibly) most importantly,

• People continue to show their support and appreciation with paypal/patreon donations!

 

[GraXXoR]

I see where you're coming from, but there are already quite a lot of 'if's and 'when's there. And when looking at those graphs I shudder as nothing could illustrate better how the whole chaos of extern apps has long gone out of control. I'm of course totally aware how popular these apps are and this whole development is unstoppable by now. That's why I'm certainly not going to debate this stuff and trying to win an argument. I just want to express that I feel quite uncomfortable when interpolating this development into the future.
For now... everything seems fine. Get back to me in say 3 years or so, then we'll see if either I was too pessimistic or you too optimistic.

Btw, not sure if you can imagine how this situation might look to a new player who's already facing one of the most steep learning curves of all existing games. How would you as a new player possibly decide what's helpful, necessary or just playful junk? How would a new player possibly understand that at least in his first weeks he doesn't need anything of that?

It's far from out of control though, and certainly doesn't need one to shudder for it.

There are three layers.

The Elite API
EDDN / EDSM
End User Applications

Heck, sometimes the end user applications don't even need access to EDDN or EDSM and use the API directly.

That is all. the rest is just some end user applications using more than one service or piggybacking on other major software's APIs.
It's really not as bad as the undirected DOT graph makes it look.

The keys are really EDDN and EDSM. So long as they continue to function, the ecosystem will be fine... Luckily, they are well supported by developers and people seem to be donating from time to time.

 

[Darth Ender]

Anything that has you leaving the game for a good reason to play the game illustrates a failure of the game.

If fdev wanted to rely on third party developers to create functionality, they should have designed a mod system within the game so these things can be streamlined within the game.

I don't celebrate any of these third party tools. I find them to be evidence of failure... Every single one

 

[rhiz]

It’s one of my main gripes that so much of the info required to make the game tolerable is provided by third parties. I shouldn’t have to spend half of my time in the browser, especially as someone who plays in VR. Quite apart from addressing the issue, many of FD’s decisions actively exacerbate it. The fact that local Material Traders needed to be visited before they show up on the Galaxy Map just blew me away for example, or the whole pinning system (why not just let us view all of the various mat requirements in game - clean and simple like Inara?). I spend so much time faffing around, sometimes I just throw my controller down in disgust.