Captain's Log 2.x Documentation

Up to date for version 2.1.7

 

 

Support questions should be asked on the Captain's Log Discord server: https://discord.gg/F7CJDTM

 

Please also look at the Frequently Asked Questions page if you are having problems.

Summary of Hotkeys

ALT-B : Toggle display of the Bookmarks Panel

ALT-C : Toggle the display of the main window if in Overlay mode

ALT-D : Toggle the display of the Set Target Destination Panel

ALT-E : Toggle the display of the EDSM Panel


How Captain's Log 2 Works...

The game generates what's called a Player Journal, which is a file containing various Events generated during the course of a player's actions within the game.

The Player Journal is usually located inside a user's Saved Games folder. Captain's Log 2 will try to automatically find this folder during its First Run configuration.

It is usually to be found in C:\users\<username>\Saved Games\Frontier Developments\Elite Dangerous  

CL2 needs to know the correct location for the Player Journal files, otherwise it simply will not work.


Index

Click the links to the sections below. Use 'back' on your browser to jump back to this index...

1) Installation

2) Upgrading

3) First Time Run

4) The Captain's Log Main Window - a summary

5) Configuration Manager

6) The Main Window Interface Explained

7) The EDSM Panel

8) Setting a Target Destination

9) Obtaining Scan Data For Known (Bubble) Systems By Way Of A Nav Beacon Scan


1) Installation

Download the installer and double-click. The default values are recommended.

2) Upgrading

It is recommended to:

3) First Time Run

If this is the first time Captain's Log has been run, you will be presented with a Configuration window.

001_CL_Trip_DB_location.png

Captain's Log Trip Database Files Location

This is where your Trip databases will be stored. Click Change to bring up the directory selection dialog window.

The default is to the Captainslog2 directory located in your %LOCALAPPDATA% folder, and in most cases, this default location is fine.

Player Journal Files Location

This is the location to which the game generates its Player Journal files - these are the files which Captain's Log and other 3rd Party applications use in order to operate.

The default value should work, but if you know that this location is different for your particular installation, then click Change to bring up the directory selection dialog window.

Once the location has been selected, click on Finish.

You might be presented with an Update Available window. You can click on the URL shown in that window and it will open up the Captain's Log web site in your browser.

You will then be presented with the Captain's Log Main Window...

4) The Captain's Log Main Window - a summary

000 MainWindow.png

 

There are a number of buttons and checkboxes at the top of the main window.

001 MainWindowTop.png

There are also a number of panels...

On the right hand side, there is a large section, which is used for displaying more detailed information about stars, planets, and will be used for other things in future versions of Captain's Log.

 

At the botton of the main window, there are the following items...
008 MainWindowBottom.png

5) Configuration Manager

When you click on the Configure button, the Configuration Manager will appear.

It has a number of tabs : 009 ConfigurationManagerTabs.png

Select your desired configuration area by clicking on the relevant tab.

5a) Databases

010 TripDatabasesTabs.png

On the left is the list of all the trip databases created. If this is the first time CL2 has been run, there will only be the one, v2default trip database. If you do not create any more databases, all jumps will be recorded to this one.

To the right is the DB Tasks area.

Here, you can create a new trip database. Simply type in the name of your new database, and either press Enter, or click Create. You cannot create a new database with the same name as the existing one.

Duplicate entries will not be created, so this is a safe operation. Although normally, you would scan and import to a blank trip database.

 

 

5b) Screenshots

004_CL_Screenshots.png

Captain Log's Screenshot Monitor is configured here.

Captain's Log can monitor the directory where the game saves its screenshots to. Screenshots are created by the game via pressing the F10 key in-game. Captain's Log does not take screenshots. The game saves its screenshots as BMP files, which is a picture format which results in a very large file size per picture, and if you take many screenshots, this can very quickly fill up your hard drive. Captain's Log can convert from BMP format to either PNG or JPG format.

Once CL2 has detected that there is a new sceenshot created, it reads that BMP image file in, and converts it to either of the two other formats. It then renames them to a format of your choice. A default naming scheme is already configured, which you can alter to your own tastes.

There are two directories to set up - the defaults should suffice.

 

 

Filename Format Section

Here you can configure the filename you wish Captain's Log to save the converted screenshot as. There is a preview of the name below the format entry box.

005_CL_ScreenshotFilenameFormat.png

To change the format, use the entry box. You can completely remove all the existing format and start from scratch. There is a Format Helper box with pushbuttons you can click to assist you with the format...

006_CL_ScreenshotFormatHelper.png

The buttons are self explnatory; if you want the Year to be added into the filename, click once on which Year format you'd like. Same for the Month, Day, Hour, Minute, and Seconds.

You can also choose to prepend or append the system name - the system name is taken from the current system your ship is in, in the game. This will either be the last system name loaded into the Trip Jump table, or the last system you have jumped to in the game. You can alternatively choose not to add the system name. This is accomplished by activating one of the three radio buttons surrounding the format entry box.

 

 

Output Options

007_CL_ScreenshotOutputOptions.png

 

 

Enabling or disabling the Screenshot Monitor/Converter

008_CL_ScreenshotEnableMonitor.png

Simply check or uncheck. There is a corresponding indicator on the main window which you can also click to check or uncheck to enable or disable this feature.

All of these options are saved to a configuration file and will be recalled and set whenever CL2 is loaded.

 

 

 

5c) Imgur

NOTE: Imgur has a file size limit of 20 MB, therefore Captain's Log will not upload pictures larger than this limit. Also note that Imgur themselves will convert PNG files larger than 5MB to JPGs.

010_CL_Imgur.png

 

Captain's Log can automatically upload converted screenshots to Imgur. You can upload either as an Anonymous user, whereby the pictures will not be under your Imgur account and will be standalone links, or you can choose to upload them to your Imgur user account's area.

 

Configuring for your Imgur user account

Select Imgur User at the Upload As option...

011_CL_ImgurUploadAs.png

If this is the first time you have run Captain's Log, or if for some reason your Imgur authorisation has been lost or become invalid, then a button will appear to bring up the authorisation page...

012_CL_ImgurAuthBtn.png

Click this button to begin the authorisation process. A new page will appear, showing on the left side a built-in web browser and the Imgur authorisation page for applications...

013_CL_ImgurAuthPage.png

 

 

Method 1 : Authorisation Via The Built-In Web Browser

You can give your copy of Captain's Log authorisation by entering your user name and password into the provided web page and clicking allow. Captain's Log will wait for a reply from Imgur containing the authorisation keys, and will automatically store and use these keys for subsequent use. The keys are tied to this specific authorisation and your account. They do not allow Captain's Log to know about your Imgur username or password.

 

Method 2 : Alternative Method

If you don't trust Captain's Log's built-in web browser not to steal all your details, you can use this alternative method. Click the button in the Alternative method section as shown above. A new browser window will open on your PC. From there, Log into your Imgur account.

Imgur will give you a Pin number.

014_CL_ImgurAuthAlternate.png

Paste that PIN number into the entrybox in the Alternate Method area and click on Submit PIN button. Captain's Log will save the authorisation for subsequent use for uploading to your user account on Imgur.

 

 

Queue Mode

There are two modes; Queue Only, or Upload

015_CL_ImgurQueueMode.png

 

Enabling or Disabling Imgur Uploader

This is done by checking or unchecking the Enable Imgur Uploads checkbox. There is a corresponding Imgur checkbox at the top of the main window which you can use to enable or disable this feature

016_CL_ImgurEnable.png

 

Manually upload files to Imgur

You can also manually add files to upload to Imgur by clicking on the button marked Select file(s) to upload. A file selection dialog window will appear, and you can select one or more picture files to upload.

 

Uploaded Images Handler

017_CL_ImgurUploadedImages.png

All successfully uploaded images will be listed in this area.

You can highlight a picture and the imgur link will be displayed on the Single-click-copy-to-clipboard widget at the bottom centre of this section. If you click on this, the link for that picture will be copied to your clipboard, and you can quickly paste that link to a web page or messaging forum.

You can also open that picture in your web browser by clicking the button called Open in Browser.

You can remove that picture from Imgur by clicking the button called Delete from Imgur.

 

 

5d) Colour Customisation

018_CL_Colours.png

You can customise the colour scheme of Captain's Log.

Click on Border ColourText Colour, or Text Background buttons. This will bring up the colour selector widget on the right hand side. As you select a different colour, the Preview Window will show a preview of the colour changes on the various types of GUI widget used in Captain's Log, to give you a fair idea of how your changes will ultimately look.

019_CL_ColourSelector.png

NOTE : You need to click on the OK button in the colour selector widget as shown above before you select a different Captain's Log colour to change.

After selecting your desired colour, remember to click OK on that colour selection dialog window.

When you are happy with your altered colour scheme, click on the Apply Changes button, which will apply the colour changes to the Captain's Log window, and also save this colour scheme for subsequent use.

You might find that tables don't properly change colour - in which case, simply exit Captain's Log and restart, which will properly change the table colour.

 

 

5e) Directory Locations

You can set the directory location of where to store CL2 DB's, and also manually set the location of where the game stores its Player Journal files, if that location is different from the default.

Changing the database locations now has an option for CL2 to relocate all the .db files from the current location to the new location.

This option is a checkbox which is ON by default and will read "Will relocate DB files to new location".

If you wish to NOT have CL2 relocate those files for you, clicking on the checkbox to deactivate the option and will read "Will not relocate DB files".

To change the DB location, click on the button marked Change

A Windows folder selection dialog window will appear. Create and/or select a folder to which you wish CL2 to keep and reference your DB files.

Once you have selected a folder, CL2 will ask if you are sure you wish to go ahead...

040a_CL_DatabaseLocation_AreYourSure.png

 

CL2 will provide feedback whilst it moves the DB files if you chose the default option to move them...

040b_CL_DatabaseLocation_Relocating.png

The EDSMStarData.db file will be rather big and will take a while to transfer to the new DB location.

 

After this task has been completed, CL2 needs to be restarted. A dialog window will appear...

040c_CL_DatabaseLocation_Restart.png

Click on Restart and CL2 will exit and restart, with the new configuration.

6) The Main Window Interface Explained

Once you start using Captain's Log, and as you start jumping around the galaxy, scanning stars and planets, the program begins to start displaying lots of useful information...

014 MainWindow.png

 

Trip Jumps Table

015.png

This section shows a record of your FSD jumps to systems. Time/Date, System Name, the distance you jumped in LY, A count of any stars you scanned, a count of any planets you scanned, System Notes, and Jump Notes.

 

Bookmarks

Bookmarks are a useful way of taking note of a certain system - maybe you found something really awesome at that particular jump/time and want to be able to quickly reference it.

To add a bookmark, select the desired row and double-click the Time Of Jump cell. That row will be added to your Bookmarks list. Additionally, a small popup dialog will appear and you can either enter a Bookmark Note or not - either way just press the Close button to remove this dialog...

028_CL_BookmarkAdd.png

Once a jump has been bookmarked, it will show up as a different colour, in the Jump Table...

029_CL_BookmarkAppearance.png

 

Bookmarks List

To retrieve a list of all your bookmarks, click on the Bookmarks button. A panel will appear with the list of bookmarks...

030_CL_BookmarkManager.png

To go to a specific bookmarked jump on the Jump Table, highlight the relevant bookmark and click the Go To Jump button. The Bookmarks panel will close.

To remove a bookmark, highlight the relevant bookmark and click the Remove Bookmark button.

Another way of removing a bookmark without using this Bookmark Panel, is to double-click the Jump Time cell of the relevant row in the Jump Table (which you used to add the bookmark).

To close the Bookmarks Panel, click the Close button.

There is also a single-click-to-clipboard widget, which displays the system name of the currently selected bookmark - clicking on this causes it to flash, indicating it has copied the system name to your clipboard where you can paste the text somewhere.

 

 

System Notes

System Notes are unique to each system. make a system note for the Sol system, and this note will show up for every row in which the Sol system is displaying.

To make or edit a system note, simply double-click on the System Note cell of the relevant row of the jump table. An edit window will appear, and will display any existing note within it if one exists, or it will be blank, ready for you to enter text...

022_CL_SystemNotes.png

Once you have finished adding or editing your System Note, it will be saved when you press the Done button, and this window will be closed.

 

Jump Notes

Jump Notes are unique for each FSD Jump. Adding a Jump Note is exactly the same as for System Notes - double-click in the Jump Note cell of the relevant row of the table. And like the System Notes, an editing window will appear, where you can edit or add your notes. Again, clicking the Done button will close this window and save the Jump note to the database.

 

Info Panel

016.png

Currently, the Info Panel is used to display useful information such as;

If you have scanned landable planets and there are no suitable materials for those two types of Synthesis, these panels will not be displayed.

There are three grades of synthesis;

These icons are clickableWhen you click one, the large panel to the right of the main window switches to display the System Materials Panel.

 

System Materials Panel

024.png

 

This panel appears when you click one of the 025.png  icons.

This panel tells you the first two planets in that star system with the highest % of the synthesis materials required for that particular grade of synthesis. In the example above, it is displaying the first two planets in BadBadzist with the highest % of materials available for the AFMU Refill Premium synthesis recipe.

The numbers in green show you how many of these materials you currently have.

 

 

Stars Panel

024_CL_StarsPanel.png

The Stars panel shows a table of the stars you have scanned in a system. Information displayed is Star Designation, and an icon for the star's Type

 

When you click on a Designation row, on the right hand side of the main window will be displayed a Star Information Panel, containing more detailed information about that selected star...

025_CL_StarsInfoPanel.png

 

 

Planets Panel

026.png

When you scan a planet/moon in a system, this table will become populated. It shows the body's Designation, Type. If it's a landable planet, this will be indicated, and showing the planet's Surface Gravity.

027.png

Landable planets always have a selection of Materials on them, which depends on the planet Type. Materials are shown as icons with the material's type shown as how they are known on the Periodic Table.

028.png

 

If you are unsure which material is which, move your mouse over that Material icon, and shortly thereafter a tooltip will display the name of the material in full.

 

When you click on a planet's Designation row, on the right hand side of the main window a Planet Information Panel is displayed, containing more detailed information about that planet...

027_CL_PlanetsInfoPanel.png

At the bottom of this panel is a donut chart which shows the percentage availability of each of the available materials.

Navigation Feature

Captain's Log 2, from version 2.1.7 onwards, has a full navigation system.

With the introduction from Elite: Dangerous 3.0 onwards, full navigation to a target Latitude and Longitude location on a planet surface is possible in real time, as the game now provides live update of your current Lat/Lon coordinates.

This is enabled by way of using the Bearing & DIstance Panel. Inconjunction with this is the Lat/Lon Bookmarks facility, which allows you to bookmark any number of Lat/Lon coordinates per landable planet, and add or edit a note per bookmark.

Also, the Captain's Log 2 Overlay will display a NAV panel any time Lat/Lon coordinates are provided by the game. When you have a Target Lat/Lon coordinate set, this NAV panel on the Overlay will guide you to your destination, which includes directional arrow indicators.

Bearing & Distance Calculator Panel

029.png

To enable full navigation to a set of coordinates on a planet's surface...

1) Select the correct planet you intend to fly to, from the Planets Panel

2) Enter a set of Destination Latitude and Longitude coordinates into the Latitude & Longitude entry boxes of the Target Position area as shown in the above screenshot. If the Lat/Lon coordinates entered are valid the indicator next to each will turn green.

3) Now fly to your destination planet!

Immediately upon current Latitude and Longitude coordinates of your ship become available, the Bearing & DIstance Calculator will indicate the target's Bearing, which you should turn your ship towards, and the distance to your target coordinate.

Distance to your target coordinate is based on either your ship's altitude (i.e. if in Orbital Cruise or flying in your ship above a planet surface), or if you are driving in your SRV, your ground distance to target.

 

 

Overlay

Captain's Log 2 has an overlay, which provides a number of useful features.

031.png

NOTE: In order to use the Overlay, you must configure Elite: Dangerous to be in Windowed mode. The overlay will not appear if the game is in full screen graphics mode - this is because in fullscreen mode, the game takes complete control of the graphics card, overriding any other Windows applications.

Activating the Overlay Mode

To activate the Overlay Mode, click the Overlay checkbox at the top of the main Captain's Log 2 window.

If Elite: Dangerous is not running, the Overlay will not be shown, and the main window will show as normal.

The overlay displays once the game is running, and the main window will be hidden.

To recall the main window, press ALT-C - the main window will then be displayed.

 

Automatic Overlay Hiding

The Overlay will automatically hide itself when the ship is docked at a starport.

Once undocked, it will reappear.

 

Changing The Position Of The Overlay

The Overlay can be dragged around the screen by way of clicking anywhere within the Overlay area - this is the dark area as shown in the above screenshot. The only exception to this is the Tgt Lat/Lon entry boxes.

The Sections Of The Overlay

1) General information section

032.png

This shows:

 

2) NAV Section.

033.png

This shows:

The NAV section will only appear if current Latitude and Longitude coordinates are available to the ship - this is either whenever the Planetary Flight HUD appears on your ship, or when driving in an SRV.

 

3) Planet Information Section

034.png

This is basically a cut down version of the main window Planet Table. It shows the information for the selected planet, and also has the % availability of materials on the planet, plus information on the Terraforming status, Volcanism type, or Atmosphere type of the planet, if there are any for that planet.

 

Latitude & Longitude Bookmarking System

The Lat/Lon Bookmarks Panel contains any and all bookmarked surface locations for a given planet. There is no limit to the amount of bookmarks you can add, per landable planet.

035.png

This Panel can be accessed either by clicking the Lat/Lon BM button in the main window Planets Panel, or by clicking on the lat/lon bookmarks icon which appears on the planet's row in the Planet Table, if there are Lat/Lon Bookmarks stored for that planet.

 

Adding A Lat/Lon Bookmark

This can be achieved in a number of ways..

036.png

037.png

 

Editing A Lat/Lon Bookmark

Highlight the lat/lon bookmark you wish to edit, and click Edit Bookmark. You will be presented with the Edit Lat/Lon Bookmark Panel...

038.png

Click on Edit to store your changes, or Cancel to exit editing without saving.

 

Setting a bookmarked Lat/Lon as a target

Highlight the desired bookmarked lat/lon and click on Set As Target. This will input the stored Lat/Lon coordinates into the Bearing Widget. The Bearing widget will then be displayed, with the new coordinates...

039.png

 

Deleting a bookmarked Lat/Lon coordinate

Highlight the bookmark you wish to delete, and click on the Delete button

 

Copying a Lat/Lon Bookmark to the clipboard

Highlight the desired bookmarked lat/lon entry and click on Copy To Clipboard button. The bookmark will be converted to text and placed in the clipboard. You can then paste this text as per usual cut'n'paste operations to any other application or web site.

 

Finally, the Close button on the top right of the Lat/Lon Bookmarks Panel, will close this panel.

EDSM Panel

031_CL_EDSM_idle.png

This panel adds the beginnings of EDSM support to Captain's Log.

At the moment, you can download EDSM's Nightly Dump. This is a very large file containing all the star systems and their coordinates, known to EDSM (submitted to EDSM by users of various other 3rd party tools).

From this, CL2 will import all these star systems and coordinates to a standalone EDSM.db database. This can then be used to search for star systems/coordinates when setting a Target Destination in CL2.

NOTE : The size of the EDSM Nightly Dump is quickly increasing every day. At time of writing, it is 814MB. The EDSM.db database created from this file is 520MB. Make sure that you have sufficient hard disk space to accomodate a download and an import.

To initiate a download and import a Nightly Dump from EDSM, simply click the pushbutton "Download and Import Nightly Dump of star systems + coordinates".

032_CL_EDSM_downloading.png

The download will begin. When this is done, CL2 will scan the file and count the number of star systems+coordinates within it...

033_CL_EDSM_counting.png

After counting, CL2 will now import these systems+coords into a standalone database called EDSM.db ...

034_CL_EDSM_adding.png

When all systems have been added - the additions to the EDSM database will be commited to the hard drive...

035_CL_EDSM_commiting.png

At this point, the download and import operation has been completed.

These operations are performed as background tasks, so you can click the close button of the EDSM Panel once you have initiated the download/import operation and continue to use Captain's Log 2 as normal.

Lastly, whilst the download/import operation is running, searching the EDSM database will be disabled, until this operation completes.

Setting a Target Destination

Setting a target destination allows you to see how far away you are in LY from your current galactic position to that target system.

To do this, click the pushbutton on the Info panel or press the keyboard shorcut of ALT-D. The Target Destination panel will be displayed...

036_CL_TargetDestination_idle.png

A) Manual destination input

You can type a destination name in the field marked "Dest. Name", then input Galactic Coordinates in the X, Y, and Z entry fields. Once done, you can click Set Destination. CL2 will then display that name and the distance to there on the main CL2 window and the Overlay widget.

 

B) Searching for star systems

Type a partial name of a star system (minimum of 3 characters), or a whole sector name, or a specific full system name, and press RETURN in order to start a search.

Captain's Log will search its own GALAXY.db database for this name or partial name and display the results in the table.

 

If you have previously downloaded and imported an EDSM Nightly Dump, then the checkbox called Include EDSM DB will be displayed (except whenever there is a EDSM Nightly Dump download and Import operation taking place in the background). To include searching in the EDSM database, make sure the box is checked before you initiate a search. CL2 will let you know that it is searching which databases.

037_CL_TargetDestination_search.png

The time it takes to search depends on your search term and number of items matching the term

 

To pick a specific system name from the search results, click on that entry in the results table and then click Set Destination...

038_CL_TargetDestination_results.png

 

Captain's Log will then set that destination and will display it on the Info panel on the main window and on the Overlay...

039_CL_TargetDestination_set.png

 

 

Obtaining Scan Data For Known (Bubble) Systems By Way Of A Nav Beacon Scan

Captain's Log can obtain all the scan data for a known system.

i.e. Bubble systems for which your ship already has the scan data on stars and planets, and for which you can't re-scan the star or planet to get the data into Captain's log.

This is achieved by fitting a Detailed Surface Scanner, and visiting the system's Nav Beacon. Target the Nav Beacon and wait for the scan to complete.

Captain's Log will then obtain all the star and planet scan information for that system. This may take a while, depending on the amount of stars and planets in that system.