Ephestos

==========

Ephestos is a collection of tools that tries to optimise Pharo to better fit my workflow which is about working with Unreal Game Engine and Blender

Requirements

You will need to have installed

• Pharo
• Unreal Engine
• Blender

You also need to know how to code in Pharo, Python, C++ and undestand the APIs of both Unreal Engine 4.13 and Blender 2.78

Ephestos is a highly technical tool trying to bridge extremely complex platforms, this was not, is not or ever will be a begineer friendly tool. Lack of knowledge of the above will render you unable to use Ephestos correctly and is not the goal of Ephestos to teach you any of the above. This is a personal project and not made for public consumption, I decided to make it free (MIT licensed) because it may be useful to people desiring similar functionality.

Installation instructions

First download Pharo 6, Unreal Engine and Blender. Then open Pharo and go to World Menu -> Tools -> Catalog Browser and Select Ephestos for installation. Ephestos will download and install all the relevant packages.

Current features

Ephestos can currently talk to python which is what I use for scripting Blender. It can both send strings with python code to python and generate these strings automatically using a very pharo friendly syntax. Ephestos also is able to detect python errors and trigger the pharo debugger displaying the python error and allowing the user to change the pharo code converted to python code and carry on. So the workflow of working with python is very similar to working with Pharo. That means also that Python code will not terminate on error allowing the pharo user to do live coding with Python the same way he/she can live code with Pharo.

Documentation

Documentation about Ephestos can be found at

https://www.gitbook.com/book/kilon/ephestos/details

Goals

Ephestos is far from finished , its still a baby , some of the ideas I have for it are presented bellow

• [ ] a component based environment similar to Delphi (one of the things I loved about Delphi). Basically Objects on steroids. See the alternative free software of Delphi called Lazarus

• [ ] An enhancement of visual coding experience in Pharo. Roassal could help here.

• [ ] The ability to use Emacs as an alternative code editor outside the box. Shampoo has accomplished this goal, but I have not tested it yet.

• [ ] Deep integration with both C++ and Python, this is more than a need since I depend both on Python and C++, this idea is the closest to materialisation and probably my most critical one

• [ ] Modular image = This one I am lucky enough that is already a Pharo goal and an ongoing project called Bootstrap

• [ ] A more powerful documentation system , Pillar could help here and the inspector / gtspotter

• [ ] Auto update in the background , not a high priority goal since I will be using the Steam API that handles updates but it would be nice

• [ ] Fragmentation of the image format, this one will be a combination of fuel (or custom format) and bootstrap

• [ ] Removal of any mid ground between Smalltalk code and Git , this is the idea I was talking early on

• [ ] Integration with OS tools , like file browsers, web browsers , system utilities etc

• [ ] Replacement of Morphic with QT, I already can do this at least in part with my python bridge but for now its a low priority

• [ ] Management of user analytics, that will be specific to my games and probably will utilise Steam's and Unreal's analytics for gathering information about the user , obviously with the permission of the user, most likely this will require minimum Pharo code

• [ ] Unification of Browser, Workspace , GTInspector, GTDebugger and GtSpotter under one tool

• [ ] More strict evaluation of potential errors and user mistakes

• [x] Python bridge

and many more. All those ideas are mostly long term so it may be years if not a decade before they materialise and probably will change along the process to fit practical needs.