Switch to abbreviations in date strings

[DeMatt (OP)]

All these ellipses annoy me:

Can you please change the format of date strings in these tables to, say, "Mon, Dec 04, 2030"?  Instead of having them be too long for the column and becoming cut off?

[Zhatelier]

That is due to your Windows settings, set your long date format to not include the weekday and it'll show fine.

[DeMatt (OP)]

That is due to your Windows settings, set your long date format to not include the weekday and it'll show fine.

That... does not make sense.  The game does not select its font based on what version of Windows I'm running, it does not let me set the width of the column, so why should it be formatting the (ingame, not real) date based on my system preferences?

[skoormit]

That is due to your Windows settings, set your long date format to not include the weekday and it'll show fine.

That... does not make sense.  The game does not select its font based on what version of Windows I'm running, it does not let me set the width of the column, so why should it be formatting the (ingame, not real) date based on my system preferences?

You are entirely correct, it does not make sense.
But it is true.

[alex_brunius]

It's in the known issues in the C# Bug Reports forum:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10637.0

• "Aurora is a hobby project coded for use on a UK computer. Therefore, you will need to change your decimal separator to a period, rather than a comma, for optimum performance. Otherwise you will suffer invalid string errors."
• "Date formats. Some users see the day of the week in displayed dates, which means there is not enough room. This can be fixed in by changing Windows date to shorter format in settings."

Basically I would consider this a quirk of the game being available for free

[Garfunkel]

What I find hilarious is that DeMatt went to the trouble of making an animated GIF to illustrate the problem but did not check the Known Issues thread nor the twenty dozen other threads talking about this issue and how to fix it.

No offence mate, just that this illustrates perfectly why Steve was and is concerned about bug reports coming from modded games. There are people constantly reporting non-existing bugs because they don't know how the game works and don't bother searching the forum for an answer OR because they insist on not changing Localisation settings despite it being advised, again, on multiple different threads. Now imagine this chaos quadrupled with folks posting about how their mod-playable Star Swarm cannot use mod-introduced Hyper Engines and so on.

[wedgebert]

This is easily fixed though. All the UI formatting (date strings, period for number separators, etc) are controlled the locale .NET is using. By default it uses whatever the current user has set for their computer. However it can be set via code to override that use and a fixed locale, such as EN-GB.

[Father Tim]

This is easily fixed though. All the UI formatting (date strings, period for number separators, etc) are controlled the locale .NET is using. By default it uses whatever the current user has set for their computer. However it can be set via code to override that use and a fixed locale, such as EN-GB.

It can, but that also forces the decimal separator to be a period and the 'money' symbol to be £.  Personally, I'm in favour of that but Steve's nicer than I am and wanted "the other half" to be able to use the comma.  I'm sure he now thoroughly regrets that choice.

[SaberSnail]

This is easily fixed though.  All the UI formatting (date strings, period for number separators, etc) are controlled the locale . NET is using.  By default it uses whatever the current user has set for their computer.  However it can be set via code to override that use and a fixed locale, such as EN-GB.

Not only is the date easily fixed, but Steve is already doing exactly this on the Shipyards screen down at the bottom in the Create Task area where the Completion Date is listed in green.  I would just love it if the game consistently forced the formatting in the other places as well.

[SaberSnail]

The script here might make it less painful to switch formatting settings before and after running the game: hxxp: aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php?topic=11237. 0

[Ruisert]

I just started a new game and noticed this same problem.  And posted about it in another section.  Baffles me why this shouldn't be hard coded in the game instead of requiring a user to find and change a computer setting that may have system-wide implications. 

[Scud]

It really always has been this way. Years ago, the only way many of us could play VB6 was by finding a missing .dll online and installing it ourselves.  For many years I had to manually set my resolution higher because my monitor did not support 1024 pixel height natively.

I’m not saying “get used to it”, but it’s important to understand that Steve develops, tests, and plays the game all on his own computers, for his own use.It is, essentially, a personal project. Any personal project is going to have little local dependencies like this.

VB6 eventually gained a “reduced height windows” option for those of us with small screens, and the bugs with .dll dependencies were fixed with the wrapper. Steve’s development priorities have always been Fix bugs> features> user experience.

Steve will probably fix it someday (the amount of erroneous bug reports related to separators was/is driving him up the wall, he may eventually just fix it to stop these reports) but for now it’s on the back burner.

[twice2double]

This issue, along with the comma decimal separator issue, are addressed in AuroraMod: hxxp: aurora2. pentarch. org/index. php?topic=11382. 0

[Steve Walmsley]

The reason I haven't 'fixed' it is that the date displays in the local language. If I force a certain data format that works fine in English, it may not work in other languages and I would have taken away the user ability to change it.

Aurora isn't 'localised' in the same way as commercial games, but you do have the option to change to a display that suits your own preference.