Export for Overlay-Tool

[jensbuehl]

Idea: Use JSON based "graphical" output. Just skip the icons in the build steps for now. Mapping about like that:

`

"civilization": "{build.civ}",
"name": "{build.title}",
"author": "{build.author}",
"source": "",
"build_order": [
    {
        "age": -1,
        "population_count": -1,
        "time": "{step.time}",
        "villager_count": {step.villagers},
        "resources": {
            "food": {step.food},
            "wood": {step.wood},
            "gold": {step.gold},
            "stone": {step.stone}
        },
        "notes": [
            "Plain text here."
        ]
    }...

`

[jensbuehl]

merged in #41

[CraftySalamander]

Very nice work. Super fast, and seems to work well.

Here are some improvement suggestions:

• For the source, it would be nice to add the page url (e.g. https://aoe4guides.com/builds/DRGeGvP8AncxFxSAayRh), or at least "https://aoe4guides.com" (no impact on the BO, but better for traceability).
• When the time is not indicated (i.e. ""), better to not add the time field to the export (for this particular step), in order to avoid to have an empty time measure.
• When you have a resource (food, wood, stone, gold) set to 0, export it as 0 (and not -1). Resources are always indicated on the AoE4 UI, even when set to 0. It makes it easier to read (but keep "builders" to -1 when not indicated).
• If your website does not support lines return, maybe better to split in sub-notes at the end of each sentence (you can split with ". ". If you can edit the returns, better to keep it as it is.
• Here is an example ("convertTxtToIllustrated" function) to convert text to text mixing images, by analysing patterns, but you will need to adapt this dictionary for AoE4. However, since you have a task to add images (like in age4builder), better to keep it as it is for now.
• "builders" is part of "resources", not next to it.
• After the copy function to Overlay Tool, add a link to AoE4 Overlay (https://github.com/FluffyMaguro/AoE4_Overlay). You can potentially add a second link to RTS Overlay (https://github.com/CraftySalamander/RTS_Overlay).

In case you are wondering what is the difference between RTS Overlay and AoE4 Overlay: RTS Overlay is the tool that I developed, mainly for BOs. AoE4 Overlay is the tool from Maguro that he developed mainly for match stats. In order to avoid splitting the AoE4 community between these 2 tools, I ported the BOs code of RTS Overlay to AoE4 Overlay. In short, they use the same JSON format because they run the same code.

At the moment, the main differences are that AoE4 Overlay has more information about match statistics, while RTS Overlay has more QoLs for BOs (mouse extra buttons, fuzzy search...) and that RTS Overlay supports several games (AoE2, AoE4 and SC2 at the moment | others to come like Stormgate).

[jensbuehl]

Thanks for the additional information and testing! All valid points! I'll take a look. Might take a bit longer since the public holidays are history. ;)

[jensbuehl]

These were mostly very minor changes, so I did it rightaway. Included a link to your project page as well next to the button.

[CraftySalamander]

Great! :-)

[CraftySalamander]

Small extra details. When testing this BO.

I get this for the last step:

"notes": [
            "When white tower complete, balance based on composition.<br>Follow up ideas:<br>- open with knights + longbows<br>- transition into crossbow + spears<br>- build blacksmith and get upgrades<br>- gather relics<br>"
         ]

It would be better to split it like this:

"notes": [
            "When white tower complete, balance based on composition.",
            "Follow up ideas:",
            "- open with knights + longbows",
            "- transition into crossbow + spears",
            "- build blacksmith and get upgrades",
            "- gather relics"
         ]

However, when testing on RTS Overlay, it displays it correctly (so not a necessary change, only a cleaner one).

On the same BO, I also have this note: "Age up  with white tower with ~10 villagers from sheep". I do not know where the   is coming from.

Small detail, but you can add any extra field in the JSON format (will be ignored by the tool). So, you could for instance save the description in a "description" field, next to "author".

Other than that, it looks very nice on the overlay ;-)

[jensbuehl]

Splitting the lines is changed on dev branch already. The redundant "space" was indeed somehow part of the BO. I just removed it there...