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[Areyar]

A bit less fire and rudeness would be appreciated.

I wonder how you design missiles...I came through a window that allowed some tinkering, but cannot find it anymore.
Weird that I'm able to build ships armed with size4 missilelaunchers with appropriate guidance, but still somehow lack the tech to design and thus make the simple rockets.

Having ships designed by the generator gives you some good examples to mimic, unfortunately it also tends to clog your designs list with a crapload of designs that are difficult to differentiate (because you didnt design them yourself, also the Tolkien naming theme sucks in this department.)

also, I believe there is a bug in  it. As in one game I have several shiptypes that require components I still have to research to build. AFAIK it is impossible to design in expectation of technology for players.

[Ampersand]

I think I'm starting to get a handle on this. Marginally. I'm in the process of colonizing mars, automated a freighter and colony ship. to carry industrial capacity and colonists back and forth between Earth and Mars. Then I hit the 30 Day button to see where I'm at in a month.

It's still calculating.

[KaelGotDwarves]

@areyar: 1. first you have to research all the necessary tech in the research tab.
2. Then you have to design a prototype at the bottom button where it says "design" after pressing F2.
3. Design what you need, then press "create"
4. Go back to research, and research the specific prototype tech you comissioned.
5. You can now use this component on your ship building. F5 "design view"

And I do agree, it's a design oversight to have a game that doesn't require much graphics capability & that much of the assured playerbase (of college students and nerds who would play on laptops) at the very least should have been designed with 1280x800 or smaller resolutions in mind. (If I were playing this on my laptop rather than desktop i'd be irritated too)

Though x1024 isn't large in the slightest if it isn't a laptop.

[Poltifar]

Though x1024 isn't large in the slightest if it isn't a laptop.

Too bad many people use laptops because having a huge screen isnt normally high on people's priority lists...

EDIT: Well I got it to work on a 6-year-old desktop with a 1024x768 resolution screen, which I can luckily set at a higher resolution and then scroll around the screen with the mouse easily (for some hardware reasons its not possible to do the same thing with laptop screens...)

But still, this makes playing the game a pain, because this old machine is falling apart and isnt nearly as practical as playing the game on my laptop would have been if it was possible

[KaelGotDwarves]

Well, I'm pointing out that it's probably a design oversight from the assumption that x1024 resolutions are fairly archaic in desktops, and then forgetting that a lot of people would want to play Aurora on a laptop.

I'l do a full writeup and review when I get deeper into the game and probably post it on the Aurora boards. This is great, just needs a much more friendly install, UI, and documentation. Even moreso than DF on those counts. (People were spazzing out over overwriting system32 files where I looked)

[Virtz]

Though x1024 isn't large in the slightest if it isn't a laptop.

My LCD monitor has a native resolution of 1440x900, anything bigger than that is unreadable, pixelated smudge. :\

Seriously, though, this is pretty inconsiderate. It's like making a game that won't work on anything other than an octacore processor. And the interface is grandscale bad even without the size issue.

[Aavak]

I have really been enjoying this game, from the get go it perked my interests, and with a few errors aside it's still extremely enjoyable. It's a shame so many people seem to be unable to play it properly because of the screen resolution issues, out of all the people I know who play PC games we all have laptops and none of us use them to game on... by and large because laptops are poorly suited to that role, we use them for work, or study, the gaming happens on our desktops which are generally designed with gaming in mind

In that regard, it's a fairly easy thing to assume others do too, that is use desktops to game, thus resolutions lower than x1024 not being an issue by and large. It sucks, but I can see it easily being the case and not, as some people seem to imply from their nerd-rage that the designer is intentionally insulting laptop users o.O It does suck if you can't play the game, especially if you enjoy these types of games, but calling the designer an idiot or getting angry because of the situation is just so far beyond reasonable it's sad to watch. I know the interwebs are powered by drama and rage, but seriously...

I would strongly recommend anyone who is having trouble register and post on their forums, just stating what you've tried, your laptop make, and what's happening and how it's making the game unplayable. The designer seems quite active and from the posts I've read he's quite willing to discuss problems. He may not intend to change things right now, because perhaps most people who've had the problem have resolved it with the various fixes, or they've resorted to desktops to play the game so it's not as high a priority as actually fixing bugs in the core game which effect /everyone/. But if you make yourselves heard then he might realise this issue is hitting a much larger chunk of people than he'd thought and maybe he'll shift his focus to redesigning the UI. At the very least all you've lost is 5 minutes writing a post, and potentially gain an awesome game when 4.8 comes out.

[Gabeux]

I agree Cernunnos, my monitor is LCD/wide and has native resolution of 1360x800 (i believe).
Changing resolutions is easy..but:

1) Install the game, possible overwrite of System32 dll's
2) Possible Windows glitching after install
3) Change resolution
4) Change "System Locale"
5) Possible bugs and glitches

Maybe the guy wants to focus on gameplay.
But he got a lot of issues to focus on already.
Really, the x1024 resolution thing is dumb IMO, these are issues he should focus before trying to get more features in the game or something.
A barely working game isn't treated as a game at all by the ones who have not played yet..

[Magnnus]

I wonder how you design missiles...I came through a window that allowed some tinkering, but cannot find it anymore.
Weird that I'm able to build ships armed with size4 missilelaunchers with appropriate guidance, but still somehow lack the tech to design and thus make the simple rockets.

Having ships designed by the generator gives you some good examples to mimic, unfortunately it also tends to clog your designs list with a crapload of designs that are difficult to differentiate (because you didnt design them yourself, also the Tolkien naming theme sucks in this department.)

also, I believe there is a bug in  it. As in one game I have several shiptypes that require components I still have to research to build. AFAIK it is impossible to design in expectation of technology for players.

Missiles can be designed with the missile button on the same screen with the design button.

You can rename ships if you want with the rename button; even if they've already been designed (might have to confirm that).

And as for having ships requiring components you haven't researched; if you found ship components either salvaging other ships or in ancient ruins you can design and build ships with those components (but the components are used up) even if you don't have the technology.


As for everyone saying that Steve is being inconsiderate or not focusing on the right issues because he isn't accommodating your resolution keep in mind that he makes this game for the fun of programming and for his OWN enjoyment playing it. It's not a commercial game and hes not getting any compensation for it so be grateful that he has even released it for other people at all.

[x2yzh9]

As for everyone saying that Steve is being inconsiderate or not focusing on the right issues because he isn't accommodating your resolution keep in mind that he makes this game for the fun of programming and for his OWN enjoyment playing it. It's not a commercial game and hes not getting any compensation for it so be grateful that he has even released it for other people at all.

QFT

[Gabeux]

As for everyone saying that Steve is being inconsiderate or not focusing on the right issues because he isn't accommodating your resolution keep in mind that he makes this game for the fun of programming and for his OWN enjoyment playing it. It's not a commercial game and hes not getting any compensation for it so be grateful that he has even released it for other people at all.

It's not about that.
If the game is good, I concern myself with it and what it to get better.
The playerbase is never going to be HUEG with many issues.
Many people will not download it, at least.

If he doesn't what the playerbase to grow and the game is for himself, so who am I to say anything?

[a1s]

Actually in one thread Steve says he is working on this problem, but that scrolling sucks and there's just too much information. (I happen to think any of the screens can be decreased at least by 25% by shortening lists and rearranging buttons, but that doesn't really make it 640x480 (VESA standard for the minimum of what monitors have) readable)

That being said, there's a good reason why DF is more famous than Aurora, take a lesson from that stuck up freeware developers (better yet- go open source!)

[Magnnus]

As for everyone saying that Steve is being inconsiderate or not focusing on the right issues because he isn't accommodating your resolution keep in mind that he makes this game for the fun of programming and for his OWN enjoyment playing it. It's not a commercial game and hes not getting any compensation for it so be grateful that he has even released it for other people at all.

It's not about that.
If the game is good, I concern myself with it and what it to get better.
The playerbase is never going to be HUEG with many issues.
Many people will not download it, at least.

If he doesn't what the playerbase to grow and the game is for himself, so who am I to say anything?

I feel the same way you do, but being disrespectful, as many people are at this point, isn't going to solve it. I've started a thread on their forums about our concerns so he is aware of it; what he does now is up to him.

[DennyTom]

I agree Cernunnos, my monitor is LCD/wide and has native resolution of 1360x800 (i believe).
Changing resolutions is easy..but:

1) Install the game, possible overwrite of System32 dll's
2) Possible Windows glitching after install
3) Change resolution
4) Change "System Locale"
5) Possible bugs and glitches

Maybe the guy wants to focus on gameplay.
But he got a lot of issues to focus on already.
Really, the x1024 resolution thing is dumb IMO, these are issues he should focus before trying to get more features in the game or something.
A barely working game isn't treated as a game at all by the ones who have not played yet..

More and more it appears to me that only pleasant way how to play this is to have it installed on WM.

[Magnnus]

So, to get this all clear...

Installations requests the overwriting/addition of system32 files and the only way to deny it (and sometimes unsuccessfully?) is to tell it to keep all of your old files for a few hundred files?

The resolution of your screen has to be ---x1024, not 1024x---?

I don't think I'll give this a try if either of those apply. 

Regarding the system32 files: the setup file is not for the game, it is a Microsoft Visual Studio setup file that installs some dlls that windows doesn't come with, and it only asks to overwrite 3-5 files; click YES to NOT overwrite them. As for the resolution that is true; the game requires  ---x1024, but there are some work arounds.

Anyway, theres so much talk about problems with this game and not enough about some of the cool stuff. About a year ago some aliens came by earth; we managed to decipher their language, but we have yet to discover any of there planets. They seem to have hyperdrive technology and can zip away and disappear quite easily which makes it hard to find a planet to communicate with. However another thermal contact just stopped by Earth, and I managed to get a team to follow them. I have them on active sensors and hopefully they will lead me to one of their planets; I just hope they don't see this as hostile.

Update: Data just revealed that my team can travel faster than them so as long as they don't have a hyperdrive onboard, and don't fire back I should be able to tail them.