Current installation process?

[liveware (OP)]

Greetings,

It has been a few years since playing the original VB version of this game and I was pleasantly surprised to find that a new C# based version is now available.   First and foremost, many thanks to Steve for his efforts to create this masterpiece of science fiction.   I have encountered few games with such depth.   

Now, I am curious what  the 'proper' installation method is for the C# version.   I tried originally downloading the v1.  51 'full version' but that appears to be missing some critical files, notably Aurora.  exe.   After some trial and error I downloaded the v1.  00 version and that seemed to work well.   I eventually decided to install all of the patches, and that works well up to version v1.  8.   However, when trying to patch to v1.  9, the game does not work very well at all.   I get a bunch of error messages about 'object not set to a reference of an object' or something like that and can't even get the game to run for even a single time increment.   V1.  8 seemed to work however so that's what I've been using.   

Any suggestions on how to get v1.  9 working from a clean install?

Edit: Also does anyone know how make the spaces after periods go away? I've tried fixing them twice now and they keep coming back.

[JacenHan]

The v1.5.1 full installation (here) should have Aurora.exe, if it doesn't there is a mistake somewhere. It doesn't really matter though, since Step 2 of install is to delete the AuroraDB.db and Aurora.exe files and replace them with the v1.9 patch (here); you don't need to add the patches in order. Then replace the new Aurora.exe with the v1.9.3 file (here).

[davidb86]

The spaces are a spam control measure.  They will go away after you get enough posts.  Erik Luken knows how many,  I thik it was 10 at one time.

[Froggiest1982]

The v1.5.1 full installation (here) should have Aurora.exe, if it doesn't there is a mistake somewhere. It doesn't really matter though, since Step 2 of install is to delete the AuroraDB.db and Aurora.exe files and replace them with the v1.9 patch (here); you don't need to add the patches in order. Then replace the new Aurora.exe with the v1.9.3 file (here).

install either 1.0 or 1.51
delete aurora exe and db file
install db from 1.9
install exe from 1.9.3

[liveware (OP)]

Ah, so deletion of previous files is critical.  I was simply overwriting them.  That is a curious problem. 

I will attempt another clean install and delete files before copying new files.  Will post back results. 

Thanks also for the answer to my space question also.  Need to work on generating some value-added posts.

[TMaekler]

I am still wondering why those files need to be deleted rather than overwritten? I mean, I am overwriting them since 1.0; and have encountered no issues at all... so where does this idea come from?

[liveware (OP)]

So, I went through bthe whole process again, this time manually deleting files prior to copying new ones.  However, I'm still getting the same problem with v1. 90.

I am beginning to suspect a problem with the v1. 90 archive file.  I downloaded the file again just now from Steve's v1. 90 patch post and when I extract the archive I get a warning about AuroraDB having additional data at the end of the archive.  I don't get this error from any of the other archive files.  I'm on a windows 10 machine and I use 7zip for extraction of archives. 

Any ideas?

[liveware (OP)]

So I also re-downloaded the v151 archive file just now and it does now contain Aurora. exe and the DB file.  So I am going to try using this as my start point for another clean install and see if that works.

[liveware (OP)]

Just so that I am sure I documented it somewhere, v1.  80 on my machine gives a "function 2786" error message after each of the first three time increments in the game.   Haven't played long enough to know if this problem persists later on or not.   

Said another way, the error does not appear after the first three increments are complete, and all increments I've observed after that do not result in an error message.

[liveware (OP)]

Ok, so I tried another clean install starting with V151 and then applied all patches up to v190.   V180 still seems to be the highest functional version I can get running (notwithstanding the error mentioned in previous post). 

I noticed that my DB file for the v190 patch is considerably smaller than the v180 and previous.   My v190 is about 8000 kb compared to v180 which is about 80 000 kb.   Is this normal?

[Garfunkel]

Make sure that you are not installing under Program Files. It's best to install Aurora to C:\Games\Aurora or something similar to avoid issues with Windows protecting files.

[Froggiest1982]

I am still wondering why those files need to be deleted rather than overwritten? I mean, I am overwriting them since 1.0; and have encountered no issues at all... so where does this idea come from?

I don't know, I remember Steve saying something on the database file back on VB6 that does not allow to overwrite properly so not sure on C#. I think for the exe it's not needed.

However he always saying to delete the files in all the releases, so there should be a reason for it.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11172.msg129477#msg129477

Make sure that you are not installing under Program Files. It's best to install Aurora to C:\Games\Aurora or something similar to avoid issues with Windows protecting files.

This is critical as well, thanks for remind it, I completely forgot to mention.

[liveware (OP)]

Ah, perhaps it is a windows thing.  Haven't actually used windows for quite a long time. . .  been hanging out in unix land for several years now.

Double checked my install path, it should be in a good legal directory.  But then again windows likes to misbehave sometimes.

Oh well I guess I will just stick to v1. 80 for now.  Am looking forward to maybe someday getting newer versions working as they have some interesting new features.

[liveware (OP)]

Holy frack I think I got v193 working.    Here's what I did:

1.    Download all necessary install files.    I used only the files that were being served by what I presume to be Steve's website (aurora2.   pentarch.   org).    The applicable archive file versions are: V151Full, V170, V173, V180, V190, V192, V193.   

2.    Extract each archive into a separate folder.   

3.    Before copying contents of each sequential patch into the V151 folder, delete any conflicting files in the V151 folder.    Repeat this process until you get to V193.    Copy contents of each patch into V151 folder after deleting conflicting files in V151 folder.   

4.    Once all patch files have been copied, run Aurora. exe from the V151 folder and you should now be running V193 of Aurora.    At this point you might rename the V151 folder to avoid future confusion about versions.   

The game is now working on my windows 10 machine error free thus far.    My previously reported V180 error message no longer appears.   

Anyway hope this helps someone else get this amazing game running properly.    It is worth the effort!

[Father Tim]

I am still wondering why those files need to be deleted rather than overwritten? I mean, I am overwriting them since 1.0; and have encountered no issues at all... so where does this idea come from?

It comes from "bad" Windows file management processes, which can 'version' the files instead of replacing them -- thus leaving Aurora silently running one or more of the old files.