Maintainer commands

These CLI commands regenerate data that ships with the editor. They are for maintainers preparing a release, not for everyday editing: you run them when a new game build or a wiki change means the bundled data needs refreshing, and you commit their output to the repo. Everyday CLI usage is covered in the command-line tool guide.

abioticeditor dump-registry -o registry.json        # dump the game's data tables (needs the game installed)
abioticeditor dump-icons -o assets/icons             # dump every item icon as a PNG (browser build only)
abioticeditor dump-art -o assets/art                 # dump every other picture the editor draws (browser build only)
abioticeditor download-wiki-images -o assets/wiki    # fetch the offline wiki-image fallback (needs network)

dump-registry

Dumps the game's item / recipe / skill / flag / fish / trait data tables to JSON. Needs the game installed (it reads the pak archives through the bundled type-mappings). This is the registry the editor falls back on, so regenerate and commit it when a game update changes the catalogs. Pass --all-cultures to write one registry per language the installed game ships (registry.<culture>.json plus the culture-less registry.json fallback); the browser build bundles every one of them, so this is the form to run before a release.

dump-icons and dump-art

The desktop app extracts item icons and other pictures (skill icons, trader portraits, chapter cards, sector maps, creature and pet portraits, the logo) straight out of the installed game on demand, so it never needs these dumps. The browser build cannot mount the paks in a tab, so it ships pre-extracted copies instead: dump-icons writes every item icon as a PNG into assets/icons/, and dump-art writes everything else into assets/art/ alongside a manifest.json the browser build consults to decide whether a picture exists before asking for one. Both need the game installed. Regenerate and commit both whenever a game update adds items or changes the pictures the editor draws, the same trigger as dump-registry.

src/AbioticEditor.Web.Wasm/AbioticEditor.Web.Wasm.csproj copies assets/registry/, assets/icons/, assets/art/ and assets/wiki/ into the browser build's wwwroot automatically at build time (see its CopyBrowserDataAssets target), so once these are regenerated and committed, no other wiring is needed for the browser build to pick them up.

download-wiki-images

Downloads the verified fish / vehicle / world-feature / door reference pictures from abioticfactor.wiki.gg into a folder the app and CLI bundle as the offline fallback. The live wiki is still tried first at runtime, so the bundled art only shows when the wiki is unreachable, and stays current otherwise. The command throttles its requests because the wiki rate-limits rapid bursts. The images are CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; see assets/wiki/README.md.

The bundled set lives in assets/wiki/. See where these pictures surface in the app under Reference pictures from the wiki.

Regenerating the bundled usmap

The bundled Mappings.usmap is validated for a known-good game build. Refreshing it for a new build uses the same dump-and-replace flow an end user follows to keep game data current, except the maintainer replaces the file bundled in assets/ and commits it, rather than dropping it in the per-user mappings folder.

The bundled UE4SS

The Windows desktop release bundles a build of UE4SS, the third-party mod loader live editing needs. tools/fetch-ue4ss.ps1 always follows upstream's rolling experimental-latest tag: it asks the GitHub API for whatever asset is published there right now, downloads it into live-agent/ue4ss/UE4SS.zip (gitignored), and rewrites live-agent/ue4ss/runtime.json (version/asset/url/sha256/size) to match. There is no manual pin to bump, and CI can no longer fail just because upstream renamed its asset. Ue4ssBundledRuntime in Core re-checks the SHA-256 in runtime.json against the bundled zip before installing it for a player, which still catches a corrupted download but not a bad upstream build.

Because nothing gates a new upstream build before it ships to players, periodically re-verify it in game: run pwsh tools/fetch-ue4ss.ps1 to pick up whatever is current, then run the local host, use This PC against a game folder with no existing UE4SS install, confirm the consent screen shows the version you expect, install, and confirm the game actually loads with the mod working. Commit the runtime.json changes fetch-ue4ss.ps1 made; UE4SS.zip itself is never committed.

Related screens

See the screenshot tour for the player-facing controls. Screenshots illustrate the interface; the schemas and behavior above remain the reference.

Updating documentation screenshots

Keep application screenshots in docs/public/screenshots/. Use PNG files with descriptive names and reference them in handbook pages as ![What the screen shows](/screenshots/name.png). VitePress adds the deployment base path. Repository READMEs should use a relative path to the same image.

1. Run the local host against a copy of a save. Use the browser to open the actual screen and select a representative item or setting.
2. Wait for names, icons and details to finish loading. Capture the relevant panel at a readable desktop width. Keep account IDs, personal paths and tokens outside the frame.
3. Add the image beside the steps it illustrates, with useful alt text and a short caption. Explain when a screenshot shows shared Windows controls rather than a different platform, and when a live screen shows setup rather than a connected game.
4. Update the capture date and coverage in the screenshot tour. Link technical or historical pages to the current tour rather than presenting a new screenshot as historical evidence.
5. Run npm --prefix docs run docs:build from the repository root. This checks generated page links and image paths. Preview the site and check image loading, click-to-enlarge, and narrow-screen layout.

The September 2026 captures use the Hazard Orange theme and copied saves in the Windows local host. Live captures cover the mode choice, local helper setup after UE4SS detection, and the remote form with an empty token. They are not evidence of connected-game behavior.