Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: linkxsc on July 08, 2016, 09:37:45 AM
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As the 7.2 mechanics thread has myself and a couple people talking of concepts for a multiplayer aurora being somewhat possible. I feel we should instead have a single thread dedicated to the concept.
TBH I was actually contemplating building something like this from scratch for android as a project. Instead of trying to ram some archaic spaghetti code half assed system that sends commands to a computer chugging along trying to play aurora with 100+ memory hacking processes running trying to make tweaks.
Instead something new.
My thought would be. Earth (UN) in general would have just gotten into TN tech. First long range lasers and TN missiles. First nuclear pulsed engines and such.
The players themselves would be agents of various spacegoing earth nations (with some backstory). Having access to some slightly better techs here and there based slightly in the nations backstory.
From there players can head out to mine and trade among-st earth and humanity's member colonies (and other race's who aren't at war), Explore new systems, and wage war against enemy forces.
As players earn money and resources, they can spend that buying new "pre-made" ships (UN premades are generally decent average designs with all the tech all nations have, but are cheaper. Factional premades require the player to play a bit and get some standing with them. They are more focused to rely on the bonuses of their own national advantages and more expensive) Or build their own.
Building your own takes you to have high enough standing with various nations to get access to their techs.
And also real time.
Though since you are using "premade" modules. It wouldn't take quite as logn as constructing a brand new ship. I mean, an average 6kt destroyer in aurora, being made from scratch vs having everything premade is quite noticeable. Also, one could technically design their own off the bat, as they have access to all UN techs... But the real reason for it comes in when you can start getting higher tech stuff from multiple groups to make outright better ships.
As players do stuff be it war or trading, they can affect the world. Move a lot of infrastructure to a colony? Now they have a demand for colonists. Move enough colonists, oh look the planet has more people and their demand for other trade goods jumps up, while the supply of the ones they produce becomes cheaper.
I dunno. I have a lot more thoughts, and some might be out there, but some I don't really see as too unfeasible. But I've gotta go to work so I'll fill in more later.
After I'm done with the android shpeal I also have another concept for how a regular multiplayer PC aurora could be handled in part.
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I think unless the game reaches the stage where it's played in pause-able real-time instead of set time increments, multiplayer is never going to be very enjoyable. If I hate sitting through game slow-down for 2 NPRs fighting eachother I'm still going to hate it if it's another player and an NPR or even two players.
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I concur, time-step based games like this are terrible for multiplayer.
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I'm pretty sure aurora used to run in continuous increments, But there's no reason it can't, as long as the move to C# gives a significant increase to turn processing rates. Even if it doesn't it would just mean periods of either waiting for input, or perhaps additional automation is needed, ie default orders, better AI that's able to handle player designed systems, etc.
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One great way to produce a multiplayer Aurora would be to simply have a button that produces jpgs of the standard screens for a empire. That would save hours running a Multiplayer game.
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One great way to produce a multiplayer Aurora would be to simply have a button that produces jpgs of the standard screens for a empire. That would save hours running a Multiplayer game.
I can see why you want this, would make community games a lot easier to run I suppose ;D A bit OT, but this could maybe be doable with an external application as long as all the windows are open. Might even be something I could have look at some day.
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Thats true, I could see that being really nice for community games as mentioned.
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Also, ways to export/import ship designs?
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Also, ways to export/import ship designs?
Export ship designs you can do. Click the button that says "Text File" at the bottom right of the Class Design screen.
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I think he means in a format that can then be re-imported back into the game.
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I would think that if you were interested in creating an interface to manage a community game, it would be fairly easy to create an application that took the data from one Aurora database and insert it into another. I'm sure you could update not only the ship designs but also the personnel, research, fleets, orders, etc.
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Yes with database access it would be easy to do a more community game friendly display of a lot of data. But I think I read somewhere the database is password protected and off-limits?
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Thats correct. Also, there wont be a database as of next version (unless he does save files via a database, which would be unusual).
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Thats correct. Also, there wont be a database as of next version (unless he does save files via a database, which would be unusual).
Umm what?
I think you need to read again
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{quote author=QuakeIV link=topic=8811.msg95040#msg95040 date=1469527282]
Thats correct. Also, there wont be a database as of next version (unless he does save files via a database, which would be unusual).
I was under the impression that the database was being switched from Access to MySQL or similar, not eliminated.
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At the moment, it is the same Access database. However, I have set the data class up so I can easily switch DB in the future.
My intention at the moment is to have a separate DB file for each save so you can reload previous save points. There will be no writing to the DB unless the user actively saves the game.
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At the moment, it is the same Access database. However, I have set the data class up so I can easily switch DB in the future.
My intention at the moment is to have a separate DB file for each save so you can reload previous save points. There will be no writing to the DB unless the user actively saves the game.
It would be nice if we could turn on autosaving every month or so, I'd imagine I'll close the game many times once the new version comes out expecting it to save on its own.
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Or alternatively if possible the game should save before exit.
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Or alternatively if possible the game should save before exit.
This would also be good, but in the interest of saving in case of crashes, I would prefer monthly. Or both.
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At the moment, it is the same Access database. However, I have set the data class up so I can easily switch DB in the future.
My intention at the moment is to have a separate DB file for each save so you can reload previous save points. There will be no writing to the DB unless the user actively saves the game.
I'm curious Steve, couldn't users then shared saves. For example, if I wanted to run a community game, couldn't I create a game with say four playing races and then email each player the save? The players could assign orders, set up research and develop ships and then send their save back to the gm for time to increment. It would be possible to create a parser that would then read back the individual game data from each save. Not trivial work of course and I'm sure more difficult in code than it is in my mind, but certainly possible.
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Having a discrete savegame file should definately make play by email possible.
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I'm curious Steve, couldn't users then shared saves. For example, if I wanted to run a community game, couldn't I create a game with say four playing races and then email each player the save? The players could assign orders, set up research and develop ships and then send their save back to the gm for time to increment. It would be possible to create a parser that would then read back the individual game data from each save. Not trivial work of course and I'm sure more difficult in code than it is in my mind, but certainly possible.
Make it so each player is assigned a password by the sm. That way individual players can only see their views.
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Well, I think that would be the right approach. Also, I think it would be kind of cool to send out x number of identical saves to the players, and recieve x back. Then pull the correct individual save out of each individual save. combine them all into a single save and then let the GM increment the time. That seems better than passing the same save around player by player.
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Yes I agree something like this would be the best solution that can realistically be implemented without too much extra work for Steve.
In the meantime for the current version (and for our current community game) I'm experimenting with an external application that will run through the Aurora windows and take screenshots automatically. Made some progress on it, will see if it turns out to be usable.
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A simpler solution might be looking at how Aurora writes to the DB. It's already possible to load up multiple copies of the client that hook into the same DB and have each one set to a different race, but it tends to write wonky stuff to the DB. If that's fixed it'd probably be the simplest and closest to complete solution.
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Biggest issue of all though. Time.
Whrn it comes to development and colony management, stuff takes incriments of weeks or months, and people could just issue yearly orders, or orders on pauses (cause ships were built or whatever). But how would you manage combat?
As handing files back and forth every 5 or 10 seconds ingame seems... slow.
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I guess you still need the admin to run most of the combat increments and only stop for orders on key moments.
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Biggest issue of all though. Time.
Whrn it comes to development and colony management, stuff takes incriments of weeks or months, and people could just issue yearly orders, or orders on pauses (cause ships were built or whatever). But how would you manage combat?
As handing files back and forth every 5 or 10 seconds ingame seems... slow.
. . . slow is an understatement. It would be really cool to try to set up a web method delivering xml or json to Steve's data class from a website reading a GM's database. To really make it work, you'd need to make changes to Aurora's source code though and the GM would have to be reasonably tech savy. It would also take something of a time commitment.
Whether or not it coukd work though really depends on what you are interested in accomplishing. Sharing save files would be a good way for a GM to import tech levels, ships and research into a community game but wouldn't really work for allowing player managed combat or game time incrementing. I think you'd want to establish sops and let the GM manage most functions.
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I have been playing around a bit with an application to help out the GM in a community game like the one we have now. It is a separate application basically just opening Aurora windows by sending keyboard input to the main process, then taking screenshots of them and saving to a folder. The idea is to automate as much as possible and get more screenshots per turn than we currently have with less admin work.
Got everything to work except the actual screenshot part, cannot manage to capture windows like the economics tabs. Not sure if there is something special Steve has done that goes outside the regular windows form stuff because it captures everything else on my screen, just not the Aurora windows I wanted.