Demiurge -- A Notes Manager and Extensible Database (Updated to v1.1)

[Enelvon]

Demiurge v1.1
by Enelvon​

 
 
Introduction
Demiurge is a program designed to simplify the management of the popular "Note tag" style of script configuration. It is also capable of acting as an extensible database if one possesses a basic knowledge of the way that JRuby interfaces with Java -- scripters can even make use of Swing GUI designers to create custom tabs, reducing both the amount of work involved and the knowledge of Java required.

For the average user, Demiurge can be considered nothing but a fancy Database addon. For scripters, Demiurge opens up an extraordinarily wide realm of options that were closed in the past.
 
Usage
Download and extract a release of the program -- it's about 20 MB, but you only need to download the whole thing once! Updates are a matter of kilobytes. For now, this is the most recent release -- you'll want to grab demiurge.v1.1.zip, not one of the source code packages or the update.
 
Installation
Download and extract the program archive. Place the contents of the loader.rb file (you can open it with anything that can open text documents, though I don't recommend Notepad) in your project below Materials but above all other custom scripts. Drop any plugins that you want to use (my bestiary, which is linked in my signature, has a plugin, and some other scripters have agreed to release some in the near future) into the plugins folder. Run demiurge.jar, open your project, and have fun! I would recommend reading through the guide (which is included in the archive) before you begin.

Credit and Thanks

• Enelvon
• The team at RPG Maker Source for the beautiful cover for the guide

Author's Notes
Demiurge is licensed under the GPLv2 (without the 'or later' clause). Feel free to play with the source and develop extensions! Future versions of the guide will go further in-depth on extending the editor, and I have an example extension that will be released in the near future.

 

[??????]

Thinking of using this and rewriting all my stat distribution style scripts to use this - when I get the time of course

Had to say though, this is very nice and I do hope to see more people making use of it. Good job!

 

[Enelvon]

Thinking of using this and rewriting all my stat distribution style scripts to use this - when I get the time of course

Had to say though, this is very nice and I do hope to see more people making use of it. Good job!

I'm glad you like it! I hope that, as it gets more widespread use, we'll all be able to work together to improve it and make it a must-have tool.

 

[♥SOURCE♥]

It's finally released! I love it! So much flexibility, so many new possibilities <3

 

[Enelvon]

It's finally released! I love it! So much flexibility, so many new possibilities <3

I definitely hope that people will recognize that and work to extend it. I do have something brewing to show off how it can be used in ways aside from Notes management -- that'll be released later this week!

 

[Enelvon]

Demiurge has been updated to v1.1! This is the first and only update that won't work with the auto-updater, because it fixes the auto-updater. It also further exposes the default Java GUI backend to Ruby, allowing for more GUI plugins than before. One such plugin is the Extractor added to External Text! Grab the demiurge.v1.1-update.zip file from here and extract it in your Demiurge folder so that the contents of its updates directory merge with yours. The update is complete!

 

[Enelvon]

Unfortunately, there was a small error with the v1.1 update -- not all of the fixes made it in. If you downloaded either the full or update versions before this post, please redownload and apply the update.

 

[FeaR616]

soo, without downloading and testing it yet...

how does this work? if I interpret your scrennshot right... this tool can replace all texts in database with external text files?

I think this texts are loaded during game play... so is it possible to make different files for different languages and is the engine (rpg maker) able to select the "right" files?

how many files are there? for every database category (e.g. items, actory, monsters, ...) one? or is everything in one file? can I edit these files and the rpg maker "knows" it and put the texts in the right place? or must I use this tool everytime I add new texts? 

what about texts in events? are those stored in external files too? and if so, how are they sorted? can I add/edit those too and the rpg maker knows it? does the events know, that the texts are external now?

oohh.. so many questions, I hope I don't sound stupid and they are answered somewhere...

but it seems like a very powerful tool to use!

 

[Enelvon]

Not quite. Demiurge is nothing but a framework -- everything it does is based on plugins. What you're describing is my External Text script, which now has a Demiurge plugin to extract all of the game's text. If you head on over to its topic, you should see that most (if not all) of your questions are answered there!

Demiurge's primary purpose is to serve as an extensible version of the Database, so that scripters are not held back by their inability to provide a GUI for their scripts. To that end, it has a powerful ability to edit Note tags as if they were Database fields.

There are few plugins at the moment, so it can't do much, but I do hope that scripters will see the potential of the tool and do more with it.

 

[FeaR616]

thank you, I'll have a look at this. =)

 

[Evgenij]

This is so perfect. I started writing own tools for some of my scripts to make the configuration easier, but with this I just can write an extension which will be less work.

Thanks for releasing this gem.

*edit*

I get following error when I try to start the programm:

 

[Enelvon]

Bizarre... I wonder if something that I updated broke in the jar that I uploaded? I'll test the build that's currently up and reupload -- everything's working 100% on my end.

Tested the uploaded build: works perfectly on a Linux setup, a Windows setup, and a Mac setup. Still uploaded a new version -- could you test that? You're the first one to report this problem, which is a little concerning. I hope that whatever's causing it is only temporary.

Additionally, it was reported to me that the java GUI backend files weren't in the repo for some reason. Corrected that! Scripters can now see all of that good stuff in the java folder. Take note of the way that a number of pieces of the GUI were done with a GUI builder -- I did this to demonstrate how easy it is to integrate something like that into the Demiurge workflow!

Edit: Probably a silly question, but could you please check your Java version and make sure that it's v7 or higher? It's not impossible that lower versions would have problems. I doubt this is the issue, but it never hurts to check the basics!

 

[Evgenij]

Thats strange, still get the error. Runned "java -version" in the console and got "1.7.0_80". Does the tool try to connect to the internet?

I will try it on my linux machine when I get home.

 

[Galenmereth]

This is looking really promising. I haven't had the time or opportunity to test it out yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it works

 

[Enelvon]

Found the problem -- it would only run under Java 8, apparently. Anyway, I've uploaded a new version for users of Java 7 -- just download the demiurge.v1.1-release_java17.zip file. Theoretically you should also be able to just grab the update_java17 file and use that, but that's not a guarantee.

Sorry about that! I was sure I had tested it under 7, but... apparently not. Sigh.

 

[Evgenij]

Thank you, will test it tommorow when I have access to my windows machine.

I have no problems running it on linux. But im using Java 8 there.

 

[Enelvon]

Glad it's working on Linux, at least! I hope the new build works for everyone using Java 7. I ran tests and everything seemed fine, but what do I know?

 

[Evgenij]

Ok, the programm starts now, but when I try to open a project I get an exception. Tried with completely new projects.

 

[Enelvon]

Hmm, looks like that happens if you don't have any plugins installed. How ugly. I'll fix that up for a new release at some point tomorrow, but I don't really have time at the moment -- grab this and stick it in the Plugins directory as a .rb file until then. That should solve it.

 

[Evgenij]

It works, thanks for your support. Time to play with the tool