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Kokua is a Trade Wars 2002 assistant with the goal of being very easy for the user to customize for their use. Every screen is defined in user-modifiable XML user interface files similiar to HTML. All actions are written in JavaScript, the scripting language of web pages, eliminating the difference between scripts and normal application behaviors. The initial emphasis of the project is to explore visualization and data mining.
Kokua was born out of a desire for an open source, Linux-compatible TW2002 helper, and a frustration working with the J-TWAT source code. J-TWAT was/is a great helper, but in an effort to build the ultimate helper, code organization was sacrificed to make way for development speed making it difficult to build upon. While Kokua borrowed many of the ideas of J-TWAT (like stream lexing triggers), Kokua is a complete rewrite. To encourage development, pains have been taken to cleanly separate functionality and push as much code into external scripts as possible. While JavaScript is used by default, many other scripting languages can be used. Furthermore, all Trade Wars-related code has been separated from the main application to support other text-based games or applications.
Kokua is NOT an attempt to create the ultimate TW2002 helper or scripting platform. In fact, it has been built to work explictly with TWXProxy (latest version at Google Code. Other helpers, like SWATH, have way more features than Kokua will probably ever have. In particular, Kokua does not focus on scripting, leaving that to the faster and more capable TWXProxy. Not that I'm against the idea of a fully-featured TW helper, I just don't have time or motivation.
This code is still in the early stages of development and is not meant for actual use. Use at your own risk
In the meantime, the following capabilies are either completed, in progress, or planned:
| Feature | Status |
|---|---|
| Terminal emulation | Since 0.1 |
| Multi-session support | Since 0.3 |
| Macros | Since 0.1. Can record, stop, and replay |
| Scripting support | In progress. Currently, scripts can be written in JavaScript and display XUL forms. Use TWXProxy for real scripts. |
| Status display | Since 0.1 |
| Text parsing | In progress. Most obvious information is gathered, but much more needs to be scraped |
| Sector visualization | Since 0.2 Sectors can be customized by embedding attributes in the sector notes and using popup menu. Needs a lot more work to be really usable. |
| In-game chat | Since 0.4. Fedspace and subspace work fine, still working on private messages. |
| TWXProxy integration | Tested as of 0.4. Buttons on the toolbar script common TWXProxy script executions, and TWXProxy 2.0.4 comes with the Kokua distribution. Yes, TWXProxy can run in Linux with Wine. |
| Data storage | Since 0.1. Data is stored as serialized objects, but backed up as xml. When a new build is discovered, the data is loaded from the xml backups. |
| In Game Help | Since 0.5. Currently only game guides, but will add Kokua usage help if ever a need. |
Version 0.7 - June 16, 2007
Kokua requires Java 5 or greater to be installed.
Kokua comes as a completely self-contained jar file. For Windows users that have Java 5 installed, you should be able to just double-click on the file to run it. You can also execute the jar by running "java -jar kokua-VERSION-standalone.jar" at a command prompt where VERSION is the version you downloaded.