Progress Report ....

Thought I would drop a line to the Patrons of some recent work on the app.Time TrialsEDCoPilot’s Time Trial features have recently been a large focus, owing to a surge in popularity for the feature.Distant Worlds 3 just concluded and was an excellent tour of remote parts of the galaxy, which unexpectedly as a side-initiative spawned a whole racing community who wished to race at each of the Distant Worlds waypoints.

We had 400 commanders participate in EDCoPilot Time Trials created by a group of commanders who would move ahead of the fleet carriers, get to the next waypoint, scout locations and then build time trial events ready for when the fleet carriers arrived.  An amazing tour!

We now have 140 time trials available in the app, and I anticipate many more to be spawned in the Bubble, now the commanders are returning with a thirst for racing.

Given the uptick in interest for Time Trials, I implemented some enhancements while on the DW3 journey.

Firstly there are now options to race Ship Launched Fighters. This proved to be very popular in later Time Trials, mainly because commanders can race “risk free” (they just reappear in their ship if a fighter crashes, and can relaunch 5 times before the ship runs out of replacement fighters)

Secondly I added a “personal best” tracker, which when racing and hitting waypoints will compare your current time to your personal best time. Very handy if you are trying to improve your times (and also great at making you push yourself on)

Lastly I implemented some new filters which allow you to view leaderboards based on overall best times, best times by small / medium / large ships, or even by specific ship type, and finally to see all your own completed personal times for each race.

EDCoPTER

For those not aware of this, I have been providing support to Commander Woodbark for his excellent EDCoPTER UI. EDCoPTER is an alternate GUI for EDCoPilot that lets you run the UI on any browser on any device in your network (your game PC, an Apple or Android tablet, a separate touch screen PC, or even your phone). He's done an amazing job on supporting all the EDCoPilot panels, and has even added some extras of his own. The controls panels for Ship, SRV and OnFoot are all customisable, and look fantastic. Check it out here https://edcopter.net/

Other updates

In addition, I have also been reworking some code and expanding its features and ease of use.

Added the ability to import a Galaxy Plotter route from Spansh – great for long routes where you can use Neutron Stars to supercharge, but also plans for refuelling stops. To use, you have to create the Galaxy Plotter route in Spansh (which needs your ship spec info to be imported from EDSY), create the route, export it, then import it via a button on the EDCoPilot Bookmark Groups panel. Worth trying if you are planning a long trip across the galaxy!

Initial setup of keybinds has always been a challenge  for new users. I have rewritten the binds handlers and implemented some additional checks for the more common issues that cause course plotting to fail, which appears to have quelled a lot of help requests on the Discord.

Fuel warnings – now 2 levels of warnings are catered for, and the ship no longer tells you to consider refuelling if you set a warning at a higher than necessary threshold.

Current focus

At the moment I am working on improving some error detection and reporting logic, to make things more user-friendly (especially for new installs), and addressing a bunch of crash log reports to make the app and the UI more stable.

I’ve also recently replaced my development PC as the old one was a bit long in the tooth and starting to exhibit signs of hardware failure. As part of the migration from old to new I have built the development environment in a more flexible manner, which should help when I come to upgrade the Python versions.

Next upIn addition to supporting the user base, and stamping out bugs, my next mini-project is improving the experience for users playing the game in non-English language settings.  When I started writing EDCoPilot, I overlooked its multi lingual aspect, and have been playing catchup ever since.

I have a module sketched out that will “learn” non-English names for materials, weapons, ships, commodities etc, so that they can be used and displayed correctly in the app (today there is a mix of English and non-English items reported on some of the panels). 

Wishing you all a great summer. Thanks again for all your support, encouragement and suggestions!

Razz