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Topic Summary

Posted by: vorpal+5
« on: May 26, 2019, 04:19:32 PM »

Perhaps when the rest is done? But that would be useful that's sure...
Posted by: MarcAFK
« on: April 01, 2019, 01:47:42 AM »

@Steve Walmsley  have you tried or even played MANO (Modern Air Naval Operations) to see how they deal with the display of unit names and vectors? It can be very rapidly a mess, display wise and I think they did a few things right to de-obfuscate/unscramble display. I'm basing my observations on some screenshots, I did not play the game. But for example at a certain zoom level, individuals ships are replaced by a TF icon, and you can tooltip it. Will Aurora C# supports tooltip on the main map?
This would be a good idea, you might want to be able to select a display icon for each task group, with that and 3 or 4 letter abbreviation either selectable or based on the makup of the taskgroup displayed instead of the full name.
Posted by: Cavgunner
« on: March 31, 2019, 10:06:57 PM »

Hi Steve, this is looking great!  Very excited about everything here, particularly the naval org rework.

Small question, is there any possibility that in the future, colonies might possess unique environmental traits, particularly on those worlds that are potentially habitable (or have been terraformed)?  For example a warm ocean world might be home to native Sea-dwelling Megafauna, enhancing Luxury Food output.  Meanwhile, a newly-terraformed Mars might suffer from severe storms due to rapid climate change, slowing production capacity by a certain percentage.  Other worlds might be the home of semi-sentient beasts, viral outbreaks, aggressively hostile alien ecosystems, etc.

Just a thought.
Posted by: vorpal+5
« on: May 26, 2018, 08:15:53 AM »

@Steve Walmsley  have you tried or even played MANO (Modern Air Naval Operations) to see how they deal with the display of unit names and vectors? It can be very rapidly a mess, display wise and I think they did a few things right to de-obfuscate/unscramble display. I'm basing my observations on some screenshots, I did not play the game. But for example at a certain zoom level, individuals ships are replaced by a TF icon, and you can tooltip it. Will Aurora C# supports tooltip on the main map?
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: April 24, 2018, 10:16:35 AM »

Sounds cool. Just a small reminder that some suggestions & discussions about AI/NPR were made in the VB6 suggestion forum before a new suggestion thread in this forum was opened:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9550.0

Thanks, will take a look.
Posted by: alex_brunius
« on: April 24, 2018, 04:36:29 AM »

On those lines, I'm taking a different approach to the AI and how NPRs will function. I hope that will they will provide a better and more varied challenge. This would not have been possible in the VB6 version.

Sounds cool. Just a small reminder that some suggestions & discussions about AI/NPR were made in the VB6 suggestion forum before a new suggestion thread in this forum was opened:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=9550.0
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: April 24, 2018, 04:17:42 AM »

To be honest this has been much more then a simple rewrite though?

Judging from the information you have made improvements or optimizations to almost every mechanic you come across, in some situations like ground combat, logistics or command & control greatly expanding the scope of game.

If you spent the time working on the old Aurora code base it wouldn't have been a simple task to add all new features, probably have taken half the time of the rewrite at least, and some of the improvements ( like optimizations ) would be impossible to do without a rewrite.

Very true - I hadn't thought about it from that perspective.

On those lines, I'm taking a different approach to the AI and how NPRs will function. I hope that will they will provide a better and more varied challenge. This would not have been possible in the VB6 version.
Posted by: Marski
« on: April 23, 2018, 05:20:14 PM »

Yeah, Visual Basic is just so hopelessly outdated that you're actually getting a lot more done so much faster with C# than with VB if you'd had sticked to upgrading it.
Posted by: alex_brunius
« on: April 19, 2018, 07:51:20 AM »

Above post from March 2016. Optimistic as ever.

Although if I had realised just how much work was involved in the rewrite it would probably never have started :)

To be honest this has been much more then a simple rewrite though?

Judging from the information you have made improvements or optimizations to almost every mechanic you come across, in some situations like ground combat, logistics or command & control greatly expanding the scope of game.

If you spent the time working on the old Aurora code base it wouldn't have been a simple task to add all new features, probably have taken half the time of the rewrite at least, and some of the improvements ( like optimizations ) would be impossible to do without a rewrite.
Posted by: Hazard
« on: April 19, 2018, 07:35:48 AM »

Glad I am to hear to you did not know how much work would be involved.

And to be honest, any one man project is going to take a long time at best.
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: April 19, 2018, 04:46:55 AM »

No specific time-frame - will depend on my level of enthusiasm but I hope months, not years.

Above post from March 2016. Optimistic as ever.

Although if I had realised just how much work was involved in the rewrite it would probably never have started :)
Posted by: swarm_sadist
« on: March 31, 2018, 12:28:42 PM »

No, as your sensors can't detect those.
Sorry, I should of been more clear. I was looking at this image.



I was wondering where the loaded parasites will be displayed?
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: March 31, 2018, 08:47:30 AM »

Sorry, I wasn't very clear :)

All the data in the current C# database is from the Starfire.mdb used for the VB6 Colonial Wars campaign (although modified and ported to SQLite).

While C# should retain the destroyed ship data on this window, the current discrepancy exists because the data being displayed in the screenshots was created using the VB6 code. Once a C# campaign is up and running, the number of units and the known ship list should match (with some of the ship list potentially being listed as destroyed). I can't retrospectively fix the Colonial Wars data as it doesn't exist any more.
Posted by: sloanjh
« on: March 31, 2018, 08:06:05 AM »

The difference in number of units vs ship list is a VB6 problem that (I hope) is corrected by C#. In VB6, when a ship is destroyed the intelligence display can no longer reference it. In C#, the alien ship records should be maintained independently. I'll keep an eye on it during play test.

I'm assuming DIT_grue saw the same thing I did, and want to make sure you (Steve) are seeing and referring to it too.  In the first screen shot, in the "Selected Class Observed Attributes" panel it says 6 units are known.  In the "Last Location for ..." panel it has names for 5 ships.  In the second screen shot it's even worse: 14 units known, but only 3 in the location panel.  Since this is a C# screen shot, it appears that this is either experimental evidence that the VB6 bug has not been corrected or there's an intentional discrepancy between the counts in the two panels.

If it's not simply a bug, then it seems like knowing the name of a ship (i.e. being able to identify the instance/unit, not just the (ship, not C# :) ) class) is a higher level of information - for some contacts the player will know the unit, for others the player will only know the class, while (presumably) for others the player might only know the owning empire.  My concern (and I suspect DIT_grue's) is that there should be a way to see the last location of all Sao Paulo destroyers, not just the ones that are individually identifiable.  I that case, I think:

1)  It seems like the "Last Location ..." panel should be "Most Recent Sightings of Class Members" and include generic Sao Paulo contacts as well.  For example in the 1st screen shot there would be an additional "Sao Paulo 6" listing.
2)  This leads to the problem that the same (class-only) ship could produce multiple "most recent sightings" (e.g. if a contact is lost momentarily then seen again).  My inclination would be to go ahead and let the intel system "cheat" and auto-prune these extras completely based on the true identity of the contact (from the database).  Barring that, the player should have an easy way to prune the contacts himself.
3)  For destroyed ships, I would add an extra line "Number destroyed" to the "Selected Class" panel.  As someone said, destroyed ships could show up in the location panel in red - (I think this is what you mean by "flagged").

John
Posted by: Steve Walmsley
« on: March 31, 2018, 04:31:02 AM »

Well, you don't have any examples showing that flagged status, but also - Huh? I'd been guessing that the lower number of Last Locations compared to Number of Units was because they'd seen some destroyed, and had intended to suggest that knowing where those ships were killed could sometimes be important, but... Is the Number of Units peeking at the alien race's database, then? Otherwise how does it determine number of ships built as opposed to the number of individual ships seen, which is the information you'd expect to see in this context.

Edit: Another potentially useful distinction just occured to me: dead ships could be flagged differently depending on whether you found a wreck or saw it blow up - which would affect the implications of the dates attached to the sighting.

The difference in number of units vs ship list is a VB6 problem that (I hope) is corrected by C#. In VB6, when a ship is destroyed the intelligence display can no longer reference it. In C#, the alien ship records should be maintained independently. I'll keep an eye on it during play test.

There is already a 'Flag Destroyed' button, so I could add some extra information to be provided there.