Author Topic: Alpha 2 Release  (Read 5203 times)

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Offline Nathan_ (OP)

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Alpha 2 Release
« on: December 24, 2013, 11:22:39 PM »
Hope I got this right, the download is here:
https://github.com/Pulsar4xDevs/Pulsar4x/releases/tag/v0.21-Alpha

Pulsar4X.UI.exe is the program, no Icon for this one. 0.2 features component and ship design, as well as beam combat under the Aurora TN ruleset.  There are two factions, and they start across from each other, all new taskgroups will appear where they both start. Unfortunately, this is just the Windows build, someone else will have to upload a linux build.

Components may be designed from the ctrl-f6 menu, SM must be enabled, and instant must be used to create them.

Designable components:
Code: [Select]
Active sensors / Missile Fire Controls( Missile combat is not implemented as yet but the MFC component can be designed. )
Beam Fire Controls
EM Sensors
Engines(Hyperdrives are not yet enabled in game but may be designed into engines)
Gauss Cannons
High Powered Microwaves
Lasers
Meson Cannons
Particle Beams
Plasma Carronades
Power Plants
Railguns
Shields - Standard
Thermal Sensors

All of these work, they are implemented in simulation with the exception of missile fire controls.

Ships may be created from the F5 menu. The new button, and rename button are functional immediately, and on creating a new unlocked design, the armor buttons and deployment time button become enabled. Likewise the design tab will become visible. Within the design tab, components may be added or subtracted from the design by clicking on them and clicking the add/remove button, or by double clicking on them, as per aurora.

On the ship design tab there are many as yet unimplemented components, these are included for internal tests and aren't yet ready for the sim, they are:
Code: [Select]
Wasp I FC
Size 1 Launcher
Mag S1

Cargo Handling System
Cargo Hold - Standard
Cargo Hold - Small
Cryogenic Transport
Cryogenic Transport - Small
Cryogenic Transport - Emergency

The industry and transport components merely await code to enable them(and the implementation of the planetary economic system), but missiles are still at proof of concept. Crew quarters are not added manually, and design errors are neither marked yet, nor required to be honored.

Ships can be added to taskgroups from the Shift-F9, This should lock the ship design so that no further changes can be made to it. A Ship BP total is provided, but not checked against as yet. Select the empire, taskgroup and shipclass you want, then modify the number to add, then click the add button. Adding a ship while its design screen is open will require a refresh to display the fact that the ship design is now locked. just close the tab and re open it, I expect this refresh issue to become a major pain.

Taskgroups may be created and ordered around with the F12 Taskgroup page. New taskgroups may be created by pressing the new button. the rename TG button will allow taskgroups to be renamed. This will not refresh the taskgroup name in the selection box, or the system map immediately. Speed may be set, location will be recorded, Time/distance will be calculated for the current or all orders, and movement orders may be issued to planets, contacts, waypoints, or friendly taskgroups.


Ship Information can be had at the F6 Ships tab. Ships can be selected on the left, their armour status will be displayed on the armour status tab. Damaged components will be visible under damage control(but damage control itself is not yet implemented). Miscellaneous holds a temporary textbox for the message log that I expect to do away with at a later date. Class design and combat summary both will display the relevant information, and the shield display(not part of any tab) is of course working. The main show is at combat settings. Individual active sensors can be enabled or disabled, shields can be raised or lowered, firecontrols can be set to open/cease fire, and weapons and targets can be assigned to the selected fire control. A ship must be detected on active sensors to be a valid target. Point defense is filled out with options, but PD is not yet enabled.

The system map will display all taskgroups for both players, there is no empire specific system map yet. Waypoints may be created from the map markers tab on the system map side document, and as time is advanced both time and tick value will be displayed on this tabs header. This is a kludge since I cannot get to the main form binding from the simulation yet. On the map itself there are several buttons that control time advancement, all of them work, but there are no interrupts, if you click 30 days, you'll get 30 days, with whatever unknown consequences of that. There is no line to last position implemented yet, just dots and text to mark location, and taskgroups that are on top of each other will interfere with each other's names.

Please report any bugs here or on github: https://github.com/Pulsar4xDevs/Pulsar4x/issues

Known Issues:
Only Faction 1 can create waypoints.
Taskgroup names overwrite eachother instead of stacking upwards.
« Last Edit: January 05, 2014, 02:29:05 PM by Nathan_ »
 

Offline ollobrains

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Re: Alpha 2 Release
« Reply #1 on: December 26, 2013, 07:40:41 PM »
good work so far, shame u havent got more help, im liking the taskgroup features its a good start, no bugs as of yet, looking forward whats the way forward for 0.3 ?
 

Offline Nathan_ (OP)

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Re: Alpha 2 Release
« Reply #2 on: December 27, 2013, 12:37:45 PM »
I'm not sure where 0.3 will go just yet, there is plenty to do all around. On the ship combat side of things though I haven't particularly well documented my architecture, so more people wouldn't necessarily be able to contribute to that, but I'd point out that large swaths of Pulsar were infact written by others including many of the features I've co-opted for my work. In the immediate short term I'll update the release once we get a feel for what bugs are there.
 

Offline se5a

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Re: Alpha 2 Release
« Reply #3 on: December 29, 2013, 01:27:08 PM »
looking good, keeping a close eye on this one.
 

Offline Nathan_ (OP)

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Re: Alpha 2 Release
« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2014, 02:26:56 PM »
Ok, the economics bug, dropdown update bug, and main timer bug have been resolved, the others will be a little more involving however, and unless any more simple to fix bugs come in there likely won't be a release for a while. The new release is here:
https://github.com/Pulsar4xDevs/Pulsar4x/releases/tag/v0.21-Alpha

As before, this is the windows release, someone else will have to upload a linux one.
 

Offline Rod-Serling

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Re: Alpha 2 Release
« Reply #5 on: January 15, 2014, 05:24:49 AM »
I'm just noticing this and would like to help out, I have a bit of C# knowledge, but more importantly, I have an excess of free time with nothing to do. 

It might take a few days for me to get my feet wet in the source, but is there any area that's not really being worked on that could use some love?

Also, what's the license on this? I haven't seen anything, which would indicate the source is All Rights Reserved.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2014, 08:39:42 AM by Rod-Serling »
This post is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
 

Offline Nathan_ (OP)

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Re: Alpha 2 Release
« Reply #6 on: January 15, 2014, 12:25:55 PM »
I'm just noticing this and would like to help out, I have a bit of C# knowledge, but more importantly, I have an excess of free time with nothing to do. 

It might take a few days for me to get my feet wet in the source, but is there any area that's not really being worked on that could use some love?
Pick an area that you want to work on. Right now I am working on the TN rules set, the NA one is on hold for the time being I believe. The planetary economics portions are essentially untouched at this time so that is totally new territory if that is what you are looking to do. if you want something "simpler", then implementing the CIWS should be "fairly easy".

Quote
Also, what's the license on this? I haven't seen anything, which would indicate the source is All Rights Reserved.
That is a good question, we'll have to decide what to do with licensing.

We have a skype channel that we use(occasionally) do you have a skype id?

 

Offline Rod-Serling

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Re: Alpha 2 Release
« Reply #7 on: January 15, 2014, 12:41:32 PM »
Quote from: Nathan_ link=topic=6657. msg68754#msg68754 date=1389810355
We have a skype channel that we use(occasionally) do you have a skype id?

Unfortunately no, and it's not possible for me to get it.

To be honest, contributing to the project is going to be difficult due to my internet restrictions (Deployed US Military).  This means I can't install GIT and my dev computer is actually completely disconnected from the internet.  I have to transfer source files via CD-RW.

I think I'll work quietly and keep my code up to date with the master branch, and when I have a good amount to push, I'll PM you. 


Quote
Pick an area that you want to work on.  Right now I am working on the TN rules set, the NA one is on hold for the time being I believe.  The planetary economics portions are essentially untouched at this time so that is totally new territory if that is what you are looking to do.  if you want something "simpler", then implementing the CIWS should be "fairly easy".

I've been looking through the source for the last 7 hours (Almost straight, I have eaten a few times though. . . ), and the biggest thing I want to change is the way entities respond to Simulation Updates.  I mean this completely as constructive criticism, but the current implementation seems quite hacky.  Additionally many of the Entities themselves could benefit from a slightly more OO approach.  I've been tooling around with expanding the OO, and using events to drive the simulation updates to each individual entity rather than handling them all in the one function inside SimEntity.

I feel like using a more event-driven system for the entities would allow us to implement further features more easily.  Final Fire PD for example could be handled in a task group's "HitByMissle" event for example.

Let me know if this is something you want to steer clear of for some reason though, I'm still getting my feet wet in the source and I'm not sure what you guys have planned.

This post is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
 

Offline Nathan_ (OP)

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Re: Alpha 2 Release
« Reply #8 on: January 15, 2014, 08:04:33 PM »
Quote
Unfortunately no, and it's not possible for me to get it.
We only use it for chat, not voice, but ok, we also have a dev forum, I'll ask around to get you added to it.

Re:reworking advanceSimTime, I'd be interested in hearing more. some of the stuff has to happen in the sequence it is in so that part can't change. And CIWS-wise I meant making the component, adding it to ships, UI, damage et al, missile combat is still being worked out. I don't believe that it can change, atleast not in a meaningful way though. AdvanceSimTime is controlled by user input from the system map.

and you should have dev forum access now.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2014, 08:51:18 PM by Nathan_ »
 

Offline Hydrofoil

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Re: Alpha 2 Release
« Reply #9 on: January 18, 2014, 08:53:05 AM »
Is there any screen shots of this?
 

Offline Nathan_ (OP)

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