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Author Topic: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)  (Read 19633 times)

ollobrains

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Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« on: May 27, 2013, 09:09:45 pm »

A lot of us know about aurora , the dwarf fortress in space 4x like game that is almost as difficult as dwarf fortress itself, aurora is closed source only programmed by steve wimsley however with steves blessing there are some followers of his game that have started development of a open source inspired game.  Alpha 1 is already out however they can always do with more c++ programmers that may have time to contribute, im starting a seperate thread as its a slightly different game and needs some publiciity and assistance.

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/board,169.0.html

there is a github link there but they havent got around to sourceforge, check it out anyway and maybe help out if u so wish.
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Mephisto

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #1 on: May 27, 2013, 10:23:50 pm »

Why would Sourceforge be necessary? As you say, the code is already on GitHub.

Also not too sure why they feel the need to rewrite an already free game.

Anyway, I'm not too horrible with C# so I may help out sometime if my other project falls through.
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Draxis

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #2 on: May 27, 2013, 10:31:16 pm »

Pulsar is going to do what Newtonian Aurora was going to be, back when that was being developed, and also work better than Aurora; it is also not near completed at this point. 

Also, correction, it is in fact done in C#.
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Neonivek

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #3 on: May 27, 2013, 10:40:44 pm »

It has been a while since I've seen my favorite type of game descriptions this board likes to give.

TAGLINE!
Pulsar 4x: It is like if Aurora and Dwarf Fortress had a baby!
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Mephisto

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #4 on: May 27, 2013, 10:50:42 pm »

what Newtonian Aurora was going to be

That might be the root of my question. Granted I haven't been keeping up on Aurora, but I thought it was still under development. If it's stopped, that's another matter.
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ndkid

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #5 on: May 27, 2013, 10:56:17 pm »

what Newtonian Aurora was going to be

That might be the root of my question. Granted I haven't been keeping up on Aurora, but I thought it was still under development. If it's stopped, that's another matter.

Steve works on Aurora when he has free time. It's a hobby for him. He isn't interested in having anyone else work on the code with him. He isn't interested on making it a full-time gig. There isn't a dev roadmap, there aren't timelines for releases, etc, etc. In addition, being written in VB6 and using an Access DB, Aurora has some built-in technological limitations.

Having a community-written, open-source project has the potential to therefore solve several of these problems.

In addition, Newtonian Aurora was a side-side project of Steve's that has received some model/rules thinking, but never reached the point of reaching a release, and original Aurora has become his priority again over the past year, so it's unlikely that Newtonian Aurora is going to see the light of day in the near-term.

Ergo, there's plenty of room in the market for a Newtonian Aurora clone. :-)
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ductape

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #6 on: May 27, 2013, 11:02:28 pm »

a great reason to do this even though there is Aurora is because the UI is also as bad as the DF UI, actually maybe worse. Lets hope that if DF and Aurora have a baby, there are some latent genetics in there that produce some sort of thoughtful UI design. IN other words, a bad cross of the 2 might produce a UI so horrific that the universe itself struggle under the strain of the frustration.
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Antagonist

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #7 on: May 28, 2013, 01:51:34 am »

Antagonist here.

I'm one of the admin devs of Pulsar.  I keep up with what is going on, tho its been a while since I've had time to commit anything.  Still, I'm more than willing to do some admin work for my beloved project so if anyone wants to take a look at the code and/or help out, they are more than welcome to PM me their details (github account and skype name) and I can add them.

The main reason for this project existing is that Steve has decided to continue with his VB6 codebase.  While he has managed amazing things with it, the majority of the speed issues and bugs with Aurora can be directly blamed on the VB+Access DB combo he currently uses.  He has stated that he will one day start work on Aurora 2 in C#, but who knows when this will be.  That is where we come in, trying to get something decent in a little earlier.  We have Steve's blessing and encouragement to do this.

As mentioned, this project is in C#, which has been interesting so far. We are aiming for cross-platform compatibility which means this should target windows, linux and mac. We've attemped UI design in winforms as well as GTK# and I can't say I'm happy with either libraries. Anyone with applicable UI experience is more than welcome to apply since the last person responsible for it went dark.  I do agree though that the UI is going to be one of the more important parts of a game like this to avoid the usability issues both DF and Aurora suffers.
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ollobrains

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #8 on: May 28, 2013, 09:14:55 pm »

I agree the UI elements are very important i looked at alpha 1 and it looks pretty good so far.  Good luck with it to look forward to future realises
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forsaken1111

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #9 on: May 28, 2013, 10:11:21 pm »

Ptw
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ollobrains

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #10 on: May 30, 2013, 05:17:22 am »

pass the w?
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forsaken1111

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #11 on: May 30, 2013, 05:23:54 am »

pass the w?
Posting to watch. It means I didn't have time to express how awesome I thought this was but I posted so that the thread would go on my watch list so I could look at it later. :P
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deoloth

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #12 on: May 30, 2013, 07:00:20 am »

Watching with Interest.
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Kaje

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #13 on: May 30, 2013, 08:22:12 am »

Watching with interest, and hoping it can be made far more user friendly than the original Aurora!
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Morrigi

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Re: Pulsar 4x ( a aurora open source like project)
« Reply #14 on: May 31, 2013, 12:37:24 pm »

Looks cool, looking forward to this.
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