FTL Thruster Editor

A graphical editor for positioning and exporting animated thruster effects for ships in FTL: Faster Than Light.
This tool allows you to place animated sprites on a ship image, preview animations, apply symmetry, and export to XML for FTL modding.

🧭 Overview

This project provides an intuitive interface to create and manage thruster or hull animations for FTL ships.
Key features include:

• Load ship background images
• Add animated spritesheets
• Place and manage animated "plumes"
• Automatic vertical mirroring
• Save and load layouts as .json
• Export to FTL-compatible XML
• Integrated logging console

🚀 Usage

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8 or later
• Required Python libraries:
  • tkinter (bundled with Python)
  • Pillow (pip install pillow)

Launching the Editor

python3 editor.py

Controls

• Left Click: place a plume at cursor
• Left Click + Shift / Drag: move selected plume
• Right Click: select plume
• Arrow Keys: move selected plume
• Ctrl + Arrow Keys: move background ship image
• Delete: delete selected plume
• F12: open log console

Interface Buttons

• 🖼 Load Ship Image: load ship background (PNG format)
• ➕ Add Spritesheet: load an animated horizontal spritesheet
• 💾 Save Layout: save current plumes to layout.json
• 📂 Load Layout: load a previously saved layout
• 📤 Export XML: export plume positions to export.xml
• 🧩 Export Anim XML: generate animations.xml.append for animations
• 🪞 Mirror Plume: create a vertically mirrored copy of the selected plume

📁 Project Structure

ftl_thruster_editor/
│
├── FTL_Thruster.py        # Main script (the provided code)
├── output/                # Auto-generated export directory
│   ├── layout.json        # Saved layout of plumes
│   ├── export.xml         # XML export for plumes
│   └── animations.xml.append  # XML export for spritesheets
├── requirements.txt       # (optional) Python dependencies
└── README.md              # This file

📝 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.