Graphical Tech Tree Editor?

[Akira_R]

I'm going to preface this with the fact that I have zero experience in C# and my C++ experience was like two high school courses going on 9 years ago, so while I have a general idea of how this might work I have no idea how feasible it is.

The problem:       I run with a very large number of part mods, and I like playing realistic-ish progression career games. The problem is none of the maintained tech tree mods satisfy my particular needs as far as part progression go, I like the CTT but the way most parts are organized doesn't quite fit my needs, plus I always have quite a few mods that lack support and need to be patched into the tree, this is an incredibly frustrating and time consuming process and is one of the longest parts of me building out an install.

 

The solution?:      So while sitting at my desk staring at the tech tree in the R&D building thinking of ways to make this easier this is what I came up with.

• mod has it's own UI window and it loads all the data on the techtree, it would need to be visually structured similarly to the tech tree in the R&D building where you could see all the nodes, prerequisites etc. (it actually doesn't necessarily need it's own ui window, it could be done from the actual tech tree itself but I feel like for the functionality planned that would be harder to do than giving it it's own window)
• able to see what parts are currently in each node and their description and stats, if we can have images of them just like in the R&D building that would be super friggin awesome.

Now here is the nifty bit

• You are able to grab a part and move it to a new node in the tech tree
• have some "node" that contains parts that don't have a specified tech node or whose tech node is not present in the tree currently
• A "save" button that either writes out a MM patch file that would reassign the parts to the nodes you have them in or just some log file that gives the part names and the node they are in that you could use to quickly write a MM patch file.

This seems like it would be an incredibly useful quality of life tool not just for users like me with massive part lists but also modders that want to support multiple tech trees and modders that want to make tech trees.

Obviously this wouldn't be a simple save your config and everything works perfectly situation, I think of it as more along the lines of something like ubio's welding tool, it gets things situated but the end user will still likely have to go in and tinker with the config manually before everything works "flawlessly", but it will still be way way way faster than arranging things manually.

 

So my questions to the modding community is how feasible does this sound?

I would love to try my hand at it myself but as I said I will basically be starting from square zero with C#, while I have a general high level understanding of the coding process I have forgotten a lot of stuff and the most complex thing I ever wrote was a game of snake and a small 3D solar system you could move a camera around in, and that was 9 years ago, so it will likely take me a long while to even get started on it. So if any one else wants to try their hand at it then please by all means do so!!!

I could also see this being an external tool, like it doesn't actually have to be run in KSP, as long as it loads all the pertinent information you would need like MM patches and such, I don't know if that would make it easier or harder though.

Edited November 4, 2016 by Akira_R
I spel reel gud.......

[RaginCaucasian]

I think the objective you wrote is spot-on: graphical method for viewing and editing the tech tree. The idea for using a MM patch is good. I think this would work best as a standalone program (without needing to run in KSP).
 

I definitely have interest in this!

[mbartelsm]

This is a great idea, some mods are unbalanced, others are simply not balanced. Only a few have actually balanced parts in the tech tree.

[Akira_R]

Good to know I'm not the only one that sees a use for this.

On 12/2/2016 at 8:00 AM, RaginCaucasian said:

I think the objective you wrote is spot-on: graphical method for viewing and editing the tech tree. The idea for using a MM patch is good. I think this would work best as a standalone program (without needing to run in KSP).
 

I definitely have interest in this!

So for getting it to work outside of KSP you would have to make sure the program is loading all of the part .cfgs and all of the MM patches and applying those patches in the correct order and checking for any changes to the techtree and make sure those are loaded properly.

As I said my coding experience is fairly limited so I'm not sure which would be more complicated, dealing with KSP/Unity UI nonsense or writing an external editor that will load everything properly.

I'm hoping someone with more coding experience and knowledge could weigh in and give some pointers so I know what direction I should start in. Or you know to do it themselves and I can be like yay you're amazing!  lol