Release [Explorer's Application] Captain's Log
- Thread starter Genar-Hofoen
- Start date
Herbig are proto-stars, so PR
S stars I can't recall as I've just woken up and haven't had coffee yet - are they also protostars?
- - - Updated - - -
I need more information on your setup (e.g. Steam version? etc.)
Puzzling - since nothing has changed in the ED detection code.
Running CL as Administrator is recommended as it needs access to the Windows process list in order to detect ED.
Regards
Thanks for clarifying.
S Stars according to the wiki are: "...stars are a late-type giant star (similar to class K5–M)..."
But they appear on the galaxy map as S star, not M or K.
Last edited:
Thanks drkaii
Basically when I started out writing CL, I based the star icons on ED's classifications.
The database format, sneakily enough, does take into account each and every type of individual star (I think!), but at the time I thought it'd be better visually to just use ED's more general classification.
It also reduces the amount of icons needed to add stars.
Perhaps I'll add more star icons in the future, but I honestly don't see the need, as you can register your proto-star or carbon star count and if you want to you can keep a record of the specific type of protostar you found, in the system notes for that system. All the data you put into CL is included when you export that database to CSV.
Lastly, how are people finding the new planet input method? Feedback appreciated.
- - - Updated - - -
Water Giant works for me when I tested it - and I'm running the same version as you
Note that CL won't add a planet if the designation you enter is the same as an already registered planet for that system.
e.g. Say you have an HMC with a designation of 1. If you try to enter an ELW with the same designation, CL won't let you add it - in other words all designations per system need to be unique (which they are in-game anyway).
Regards
Last edited:
I only just started using the program, so I can't really speak much to the old method. I'm finding CL to be incredibly useful, and I wish I'd discovered it sooner. I particularly like the nearly-seamless method of interacting with it via the icon in the upper left--as well as how quick and easy it is to return focus to Elite; it's hard to overstate how important that is.
With that said, some usability feedback from a brand new user who just jumped into using this program:
1. Consider having the program default to the tab where you add new bodies rather than the statistics tab. I expended a lot of frustration on trying different ways of dragging and clicking the icons on the latter before I noticed the other. A brand new user to the program has no need to look at statistics that don't yet exist, so this is just a confusing place to start.
2. It's convenient that clicking the name of the system will copy it to the clipboard, but IMO it would be better to have it do that AND populate the text entry dialog with the system name (perhaps even followed by a space, since we have to add a distinct designation anyway). I have a mouse in the center of my HOTAS setup, but the keyboard is not as convenient to reach so the less manual text entry I have to do, the better. I suspect most players are going to want to name the body what they are in the game anyway.
3. The more I use this, the more I wish there was some sort of zero-value "Unscanned/Unclassified" planet type. I don't always scan everything in the system, and it would be really helpful to be able to keep track of which systems have how many unscanned bodies without a lot of manual note-taking. It's one thing to have a bunch of notes that you have to read individually; it'd be another to be able to just glance at the body icons in the jump list and clearly see the which systems had how many bodies for which you didn't gather data.
4. Is there a way to customize the UI chrome? Many of us have customized HUD colors and it would really help with the immersion and seamless integration if I could tweak the colors to match my HUD so that it looked like just another part of it.
Thanks for creating this!
Last edited:
Ah good - I spent a lot of time perfecting that one little bit. (And I do mean a LOT of time - like still up at 5am experimenting with different ways of doing it, lot of time
)Mmmm. I'll think about that - although the stats update during initial loading and populating of the jump table, which I rather like..
Oh, are you putting in the full system name in front of the "1", "1a", "ABC 1" etc. ?
You don't need to do that. All you need to do is enter whatever the designation letter/number sequence is as above.
When you export to CSV, CL will automatically prepend the designation with the system name. It was done this way to minimise the amount of typing required to enter a planet. I think I mentioned this on my CL homepage
I could do that - actually that's not a bad idea, and all that'd take is an addition to the planet types DB with no need to change the DB schema (which would render existing DB's unusable).
You didn't mention stars, but unscanned stars might be more tricky.
Good comment and I'll have a think about that.
It's all done with hard-coded stylesheets embedded in the UI and some in the code at the moment. Plus I primarily made CL for myself and I like the Gutamaya colour scheme
I have been meaning to implement such a feature, but it's no small undertaking and I'd rather get useful features and any bugfixes operational beforehand, hence that being on the List but at an extremely low priority.
Cheers
This latest release is a great improvement regarding planets.
One thing I would find extremely handy would be for the designation box (?) to auto-increment when you add a body. I know this isn't ideal for accurate mapping of systems, but I guess most people just enter 1,2,3,4,5... regardless of the planets order.
Another idea, add a first discovery tick box that applied the 50% bonus on the values?
Great app though, it runs every time I fly.
One thing I would find extremely handy would be for the designation box (?) to auto-increment when you add a body. I know this isn't ideal for accurate mapping of systems, but I guess most people just enter 1,2,3,4,5... regardless of the planets order.
Another idea, add a first discovery tick box that applied the 50% bonus on the values?
Great app though, it runs every time I fly.
Last edited:
Autoincrement wouldn't be as useful as you suspect - a lot of explorers are rather pedantic chaps and chapesses, as am I, and have different ways of doing things. For example, I won't enter anything into CL until I've finished scanning everything in a system I'm prepared to scan. Then I'll bring up the system map at the end of that scanning session and fill stuff in. Others may fill CL in as they go along, case in point, CMDR EUS below....
I do have one idea whereby I add another entry box and a tickbox to prepend whatever's in that entry box to the number designations - this might come in handy for planets orbiting a Barycentre in a multi-star system. e.g. Say there's a bunch of planets all beginning with the designation ABC. You'd enter ABC into this new entrybox and tick the tickbox and when you add a planet, ABC is auto-prepended to the "1", "1a" "2" and so on.
Yes. I think that might just work. When I get the time I'll drum up some code for that and give it a try.
Last edited:
Couple of quirks I'm having since the upgrade to 1.1.0
Both Rocky(TC) & Water Giant does not function, when I click them, I see them "move" a fraction of an inch, but they won't do the next step of getting to the designation screen.
Also, I get this upgrade msg at startup.
Both Rocky(TC) & Water Giant does not function, when I click them, I see them "move" a fraction of an inch, but they won't do the next step of getting to the designation screen.
Also, I get this upgrade msg at startup.
Attachments
Last edited:
Whoa. There is some crazy stuff going on with your installation right there!
Can you please uninstall CL, remove the CL 1.1.0 installer, and re-download CL?
Thing is, the way my update notification works is that it checks the version number stored in a file on my web server.
I just checked what that file says and it definitely still says "1.1.0"
I also know that my copy of CL - both the source code and the finished binary - work fine on my PC.
So something screwy is definitely happening somewhere!
Try re-downloading CL and reinstalling. No need to remove DB files or anything.
Regards
EDIT: The only ways I can see your upgrade notice symptom happening are either your ISP is using a transparent web proxy (saves them bandwidth and might have the effect that CL is being served a stale version of the version file), or..... hmmm taking into account the weirdness of the button behaviour, somehow your download of CL is slightly corrupted?
Last edited:
Hi All,
At Genar's request, here is something i was thinking about CL :
After reading the topic, it looks some explorer pay great attention to the naming convention.
As i have to enter a name, i always put the real name of the object "1" ... "2" when there's a single star, and things more complicated for big system "A 1" ... "AB 3" ...
But to be honest, i don't really care about the name, if i want to know where is the ELW i discovered, i just copy/paste the system name in the galmap and type on search button as much as needed. Then i have the system map to see exactly how this sytem looks.
May be if we can choose between 2 modes in CL :
- the full mode : same mode as we now have
- the noob mode : where you don't have to enter a description.
At Genar's request, here is something i was thinking about CL :
I know the title might be misleading, but please don't get me wrong. The tool you did is simply amazing. I can't start ED without starting Captain's log as well. And i start ED almost every day.
I mostly play by night, which is great for immersion... but not really for finding letter on keyboard and entering all planets info. (There's not a lot usually a single number, that's ok. But when it comes to letter + number it makes things harder... and i won't talk about an "ABC 3 F" moon.
So the main... well... may be the only... concern i have with this tool is just type a "name" for the planet.
As you understand it's not a massive problem, i'd more say it's a boredom.
Your last update improve a lot the way we enter planet, as there's no more drop down menu.
But i still have to enter the name.
I thought about this since your last update, and i see only 2 possible workaround :
- either we don't really care about the position of the planet in the system, and so we can just count the number of planet. (If the galmap search function was working i'd directly vote for this one cause i could just search and click the system to access the sysmap)
- either we could imagine some sort of drag and drop the "stellar-object" on the "stellar-object" it is orbiting, and your tool makes the naming by itself. (No idea how to deal with the "AB 1" stuff).
That's just 2 cents about your work.
If you can't do anything about this, no problem at all, i'll still be using Captain's Log.
After reading the topic, it looks some explorer pay great attention to the naming convention.
As i have to enter a name, i always put the real name of the object "1" ... "2" when there's a single star, and things more complicated for big system "A 1" ... "AB 3" ...
But to be honest, i don't really care about the name, if i want to know where is the ELW i discovered, i just copy/paste the system name in the galmap and type on search button as much as needed. Then i have the system map to see exactly how this sytem looks.
May be if we can choose between 2 modes in CL :
- the full mode : same mode as we now have
- the noob mode : where you don't have to enter a description.
ROFL...Rep added because Im having a S^%&^ day at work and this made me laugh!