Aurora 4x
Other Games => Pulsar 4x => Topic started by: Rod-Serling on March 31, 2015, 09:37:47 PM
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NOTE: This post is the real update. Next post is the original, April Fools update.
(http://i.imgur.com/yhclxmw.png?1) (http://imgur.com/yhclxmw)
Here's a graph of our progress this month. (This is a fork of the repository with our two main branches merged into master so we can see the result.)
We lost a bit of steam over the ECS implementation details, and real life workloads. We're still moving however.
I would also like to thank JetBrains for approving us for a free ReSharper Ultimate Open Source License (Valued at $249 for a personal, individual license). The tools provided are already helping us be more productive and bug free. I love them.
Other than that, just read Snopy's wonderful update here: http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,7766.msg79110.html#msg79110
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NOTE: The following was the original APRIL FOOLS DAY post. Saved here for historical reasons.
Ok, so let's get the graph out of the way.
(http://imgur.com/651HZtM.png) (http://i.imgur.com/651HZtM)
So, looking at the graph, we've had no commits since February 22. You might've heard we lost some steam, but the reality is a little different.
We've actually decided to close-source the project.
With this, however, we're increasing our ambitions much bigger. We've finally decided on the new features for Pulsar4x 1.0
- A rich universe focused on epic space adventure, trading and empire building in first person.
- Massive Universe - Over 3 billion procedurally generated explorable systems.
- Actions of the players impact the universe and become part of its history and lore
- Fully dynamic economy driven by player actions
- Full, rich and dynamic 3D graphics powered by the latest technology.
- Persistent Universe (hosted by US) - No more offline or single-player modes
- No Subscriptions
- No Pay to Win - Cosmetic microtransactions only!
- Full rigid body simulation of all spaceships with Newtonian combat.
Check back in a few days to support us on KickStarter! I think I speak for both the developers and the investors when I say we're excited for our new direction and can't wait to show you what we've come up with.
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I sort of sad to hear you moved away from making a modern version of Aurora...
With that said what you want to do sounds intriguing nevertheless... my question are... how much of Aurora will pass into this project?
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Wait, yesterday was april first?
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Sigh, ignore Rod, its 1st April and he's an American.
The reason the graph isn't showing our work this month is because we have stared adhering to a new policy of all new development being done in a branch and merging that work in when it is completed. According to this github help page (https://help.github.com/articles/i-don-t-see-myself-in-the-repository-contributors-graph/) commits only show up on the activity graph when they are in the default branch, in our case that is master.
Here is a proper summary of what we have been doing:
- Nathan has been working on Shipyards in the Shipyard-Frontend-Finish branch, he almost finished with that and I'd expect that to me merged into master before then end of April.
- Rod, Se5a and Myself have been working on a better foundation for the Project going forward (the stuff Rod was talking about last month). This work is being done in the ECS-Switchover branch and on the irc channel. Some details:
- We have decided to go with a Entity Component System as the underlying framework of the game. We have drawing heavy from the Artemis (http://thelinuxlich.github.io/artemis_CSharp/) ECS for the design. It is worth noting that we have changed some normal ECS terminology for Pulsar, Components have become DataBlobs (or DBs for short) and Systems have become Processors. We did this to avoid confusion with Ship Components and Star System (it was getting very confusing). Rod has started implementing this.
- We have decided to use A message passing system for UI <-> Game Library communications, Se5a has done some excellent work on this.
- Other then arguing with Rod about entity Manger implementation details I've been working on Unit Tests for Rod and se5a's work.
- We have also come to decision on how other things will work, including how we will utilise threads, a new WPF UI and using JSON/BSON for saved games.
- In other news Rod has managed to get us approved for an Open Source License for ReSharper (https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/). Big Thank You to the guy from JetBrains for that :D
So that was March. the goal for April will be to make some serious progress migrating the existing code into our new ECS, which is looking like a major refactor and could take a while. Don't expect to us to get it all done in April is what I'm saying :P
Finally I'd just like to include a recruitment pitch, the new ECS system in many ways gives us a clean star (no matter how massy the git repo looks), so it is an excellent time to get involved in the project. We need people who:
- Are interested, seriously if you are interested then that is all you really need to know :), you can learn the rest "on the job".
- Can code C#, tho any language will do, we'll teach you C# (hell Nathan learnt C# to work on Pulsar)
- Have experience with WPF/XAML.
- Can do nice Art (we want to make a pretty UI)
- Can work with JSON (there is a lot of data to be setup, research, names, gases, etc.)
- Want to work on pulsar (seriously this is the important one, even if you don't know anything else YOU CAN LEARN :D)
If you want to get started I'd suggest logging onto the IRC channel #Pulsar4x on freenode, there are usually two or three of us online, and having a chat (you can do it in a browser (http://webchat.freenode.net/), just enter #Pulsar4x as the channel).
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So is Rod-Serling actually Chris Roberts? cos that sounded awful familiar...
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Yes, it was my April 1st joke. I was going to post a real update about now (hence the reserved post), but it looks like Snopy pretty much covered everything. I'll do it anyway...
So is Rod-Serling actually Chris Roberts? cos that sounded awful familiar...
Very good catch :P I definitely ripped the bullet points straight from https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cig/star-citizen/description
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Hey, good to see you guys still working on this.
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Well ive just spent a year learning C# and ASP.net at uni and im about 2 months from graduating uni, so in the summer I could possibly put a hand in and help out around the project when im not at work (free time usually consists of evenings and Weekends).
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Excellent!