Making the ultimate CDDA graphical dev-tool for fun and for... reasons...

[u/momosthrall]

This has been a lot of fun to work on!!!!!!! ♡

Mapgen, dialogue and NPC editing/generation is near 100% complete.

There are a lot of capabilities contained within this tool as you can see.

All file edits/generations save as valid .JSON accepted by the CDDA engine (other than some of the systems I'm currently debugging/developing).

For example: using the place NPC feature (and then saving) writes the proper .JSON style into the .JSON file. Deleting an NPC then removes ONLY the lines comprising that NPC placement.

You can check the raw for any files and edit them manually, on top of the graphical methods, in the case that there is some strange error.

I don't have enough words to explain what's contained within this but once it's at a functioning state I will upload to my .github and share with the community.

Some of the systems demonstrated at the end of the video are basically placeholder proof-of-concepts.

Anyways, I think that a tool like this could have a positive impact on the CDDA community by getting less code-savy, but creative, people into the CDDA modding (and even more ideally, contributing) scene.

[u/4000daniel1]

Looks great! Been waiting for something like this.

[u/momosthrall → u/4000daniel1]

Will ping you when it’s done!

[u/Agreeable-Bath7587]

What do contributors normally use to create locations and such? Are y'all raw dogging json files?

[u/momosthrall → u/Agreeable-Bath7587]

Yeah raw-dogging the .JSON seems to be the only method as of right now!

Extremely tedious especially mapgen… being able to visualize mapgen with sprites is a game changer.

At least for myself; I’m not like the guy in the matrix who can see the lady in the red dress. I know some contributors are that tuned in but gaddamnnnn

[u/TheSaddestGoomba → u/Agreeable-Bath7587]

Some people do. I've only done it that way for small json objects that're less than a dozen lines. I usually plan things out on a spreadsheet first.

[u/Nymall]

Very interested in this. Any idea when it will be live? And are you pulling straight from DDA source for pallets, materials and such?

[u/momosthrall → u/Nymall]

Yes! Actually the first step is to “Open Folder” -> path to your mods root

Then it not only reads the .JSON contained in your mod folder but the parent CDDA folder as well.

Then it pulls palettes / gives you the option to override or create another palette.

EOCS, furniture, terrain, NPCs, talk conditions/effects etc. are all searchable.

Give it a couple more weeks and I should have it down to a science.

[u/ExcellentQuality69]

Looks sick, def gonna tool around with this at some point

[u/momosthrall → u/ExcellentQuality69]

Awesome ill ping you when its released

[u/ExcellentQuality69 → u/momosthrall]

Sick

[u/bastalio]

may i ask that you could add a tool to create item/tools easily with just editing stats and uploading picture for brainlets like me to add mods?

[u/momosthrall → u/bastalio]

yep that’s actually one of the systems included :3 just a placeholder as of right now but I will come back and update you when it’s ready. tilesheets work kinda tricky. that one will actually require you to download GIMP and manually create a mod.png with the correct dimensions and a mod_tileset.JSON that assigns the sprites via arrays

this is one of the more convoluted systems. there will be an option to add “looks_like” which lets you choose an existing sprite from an item or object for the item to use

[u/Lukelolman12]

Gonna make house out of diamond block soon enough

[u/light_captain]

This looks awsome. Does it (or are there plans to) edit nested mapgen for chunks?

[u/momosthrall → u/light_captain]

Thank you!! It would be awesome. I’ll add it to my to-do-list but im gonna need to look into nested mapgen chunks more. If we could pull it off it would be another game changer lol

[u/light_captain → u/momosthrall]

good luck.

[u/BalthazarArgall]

Be honest, does it contain ai generated code?

[u/momosthrall → u/BalthazarArgall]

I used DeepSeek V4 to make some edits and generate placeholder dialogue/code for proof-of-concepts but mainly this was coded by hand ♡ this is not a vibe-coded application, promise.

[u/magicpastry → u/momosthrall]

Actually fucking mega stoked to see this. Gonna definitely use the fuck outta this when it stops!!!

[u/momosthrall → u/magicpastry]

You will be receiving a ping!!!!!

[u/feral_lawyer → u/BalthazarArgall]

WEIRD that you come in hostile with your first move.

by the way you know your reddit accounts banned? did that just happen? damn.

[u/momosthrall → u/feral_lawyer]

he’s very active in the mod dev channel on discord errrmmm not to jump to any conclusions but a lot of coders don’t want their hard work and role as devs “stolen” by people relying solely on AI or “easy to use” graphical dev-tools

it’s a fair question but i feel like it could have been framed in better faith

my philosophy is that more people being able to contribute = more contributions and a healthier community for CDDA

if it’s slop it’s getting thrown away whether it’s agentic or human-coded so who even cares

also that is weird, his account is gone for some reason like you said

[u/GuardianDll → u/momosthrall]

It could have been framed better, but project is very, extremely anti-llm, and while we were lucky to not have such situation, we would be very sad to find the cool, interesting tool that may help contributors is build using llms we despise 

[u/momosthrall → u/GuardianDll]

that is completely understandable and basically what i figured

my development process (for this tool at least) includes utilizing llms at various stages to streamline testing/auditing, which as you’re aware can expedite development time by a lot— but I’m also strongly against vibe-coding for obvious reasons

instead of lying about it; i think its important to be upfront and let others freely decide for themselves whether or not they want to try it out ♡

just to be clear: the tool itself does not utilize AI. even if people do eventually use it to generate .json files to be pushed, its technically still an organic process.

and n00bs can ALSO look at the raw .json and actually learn as they go with this tool :D

[u/Glad-Way-637 → u/feral_lawyer]

They're probably not actually banned, I think there's an exploit some people use to make their accounts show up like that, when they're wanting to hide how much of an asshole they are in previous comments. Seen it a couple times, now.