Aurora C# Screenshots

[Erik L]

Pretty excited about this overall! One question: there doesn't seem to be any highlighting in the treeview showing which ship class you actually have selected - so that while on the "ships in class" or "ordnance/fighters/components" tab, it's going to be hard to tell which particular ship class one is looking at.

Would you be able to add some more UI hints (either adding a highlight of the selected class in the tree view, or some other adjustment) to make that clearer to the user? (I suppose one could flip back to the "Class design" tab if one forgot which class they were working on, which is not exactly a great hardship.)

Obviously they are Tribal II or Tribal-M's

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Pretty excited about this overall! One question: there doesn't seem to be any highlighting in the treeview showing which ship class you actually have selected - so that while on the "ships in class" or "ordnance/fighters/components" tab, it's going to be hard to tell which particular ship class one is looking at.

Would you be able to add some more UI hints (either adding a highlight of the selected class in the tree view, or some other adjustment) to make that clearer to the user? (I suppose one could flip back to the "Class design" tab if one forgot which class they were working on, which is not exactly a great hardship.)

By default the Tree view does highlight when you click on it but loses the highlight when focus moves to another control. Fortunately, there is an option to maintain the highlight, which I have now switched on

BTW, another effect of moving to C# is that instead of twelve 30-day months Aurora is now using real dates, complete with leap years, etc..

[ardem]

I will look at ground combat at some point - ideal would be actual maps like in Emperor of the Fading Suns. However, my immediate aim is to replicate the VB6 functionality in C#. Once that is done, I can look at new functionality.

Best game ever, if Aurora was able to do that all my dreams would come at once. I racked up so many hours with this game on my Amiga or C64 I forget. I have never see its like since but always dreamed there might be.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

love the new class screen - does the Fighters thing support FACs or other parasites?

[DIT_grue]

BTW, another effect of moving to C# is that instead of twelve 30-day months Aurora is now using real dates, complete with leap years, etc..

I hope that's not hardcoded, or it could get frustrating when someone wants a different calendar. (It's a lot easier to RP aliens standardising on something that's at least half-abstract, like the old one, than Earth's orbital period.)

[chrislocke2000]

Leaving the ship selected highlighted is just great. I know its a small item but its been one of those things that has bugged me for many years. Can't wait to see more and hope you can maintain this momentum.

[AL]

love the new class screen - does the Fighters thing support FACs or other parasites?

Would "other parasites" include a 10kt destroyer? Cause that's what I've got being lugged around in carriers in my current game. Maybe just allow any ship that would fit within the available hanger space to be added in the strike group as a catch all fix.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

love the new class screen - does the Fighters thing support FACs or other parasites?

I could enable that. At the moment it is restricting which classes are displayed so adding FAC or larger only involves altering the restriction. Perhaps an option to select largest ship by tonnage would be easiest.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I've moved on to the Economics window. First difference is a long requested feature. Populations are now named separately to system bodies, so you can have several pops with different names on the same planet. Pop names will default to the system body name unless specifically changed by the player.

There is an option to show system body names in the population tree, although to make the display cleaner the system body name will only be shown alongside the pop name if they are different. Also, species names will only be shown next to pops if they are different than the default species for that race.

[Zincat]

I will look at ground combat at some point - ideal would be actual maps like in Emperor of the Fading Suns. However, my immediate aim is to replicate the VB6 functionality in C#. Once that is done, I can look at new functionality.

I had missed this. Oh my god. Emperor of the fading suns, probably one of my favorite games ever. So much potential - wasted because of the incompetent AIs!

If you actually do something like that for Aurora... well, I have no words

[BwenGun]

All of this is awesome, I'm greatly looking forward to what this version of Aurora will allow you to do. Though I will confess I'm looking forward to how it will hopefully allow you to run your own campaign write ups on an even greater scale, without fear of lag making it impossible to carry on past a certain point, even more. Plus of course without the lag problems you can also add in new alien menaces to the game. Having a the option to have occasional Tyrannid Hive fleet analogue move into your quadrant of the galaxy and consume all life in front of them should be fun. Especially when you first see the hundreds (if not thousands) of sensor contacts popping up on the system map. 

BTW, another effect of moving to C# is that instead of twelve 30-day months Aurora is now using real dates, complete with leap years, etc..

Out of interest, would it be possible to change the default calendar system the game uses to reflect not starting on Earth? Such an option would be all but useless except for RP reasons, but if its not difficult to do it might be cool to have.

[AL]

Having a the option to have occasional Tyrannid Hive fleet analogue move into your quadrant of the galaxy and consume all life in front of them should be fun. Especially when you first see the hundreds (if not thousands) of sensor contacts popping up on the system map. 

You could just feed the star swam a load of wrecks and you'd get a similar effect.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

yeah, if you leave those damn swarm along long enough in a good system you might end up facing literally thousands of FACs 

[Desdinova]

I started out with C++ on Windows 3. 1 .  I have used WPF in the past and it is more flexible than forms.  However, I am a lot more familiar with forms and Aurora doesn't need the graphical advantages of WPF, so I decided it would be easier and faster to use forms.

If you wanted to be really crazy you could write the calculation-intensive sections in C++, maybe taking advantage of a GPU library to do the grunt work, as a DLL which is called by the C# GUI front end.

[BwenGun]

You could just feed the star swam a load of wrecks and you'd get a similar effect.

True, but the swarm are always somewhat constrained by their nature and the technological level they possess. Throw in a few more larger ships, maybe have them grow techology as their hive mind grows larger and more maliciously intelligent and potentially give them ground forces to consume planet-based resources and dealing them would become a lot more challenging and less monotonous than just blasting away at Swarm FACs with lasers just outside their own weapon range.