Something to See for Inspiration

Charles Lewis · Post by **Charles Lewis** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 3:10 am

Steve Walmsley has built a campaign engine based (loosely) on Starfire and has full automation tools available for it. You have to register to download it, but most of the forums are viewable unregistered, including screenshots. Worth a look!

http://aurora.pentarch.org

Charles Lewis · Post by **Charles Lewis** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 5:41 am

For those of you uncertain, Steve Walmsley is the guy who did the Rigellian diary from an epic Starfire game. The last update I read was 700+ pages long.

jygro · Post by **jygro** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 4:13 pm

I thought I had heard that name/campaign before. Took a look about the forum and that is a pretty sweet program! You got to admit that a computer program that could keep track of fleets, maintenance, ship classes and maps (along a host of other things) for a VBAM game would be awesome! Just imagine how much easier a solo campaign would be!!

-Bren

Charles Lewis · Post by **Charles Lewis** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 6:46 pm

Mike Riddle is currently working on such a project - his posts regarding the battle resolution stuff is related. That kind of functionality is what we're ultimately shooting for, but I can only imagine the kind of work Steve put into his tools. I haven't been accepted yet (as they wisely do moderated account creation) so I haven't had a chance to really "kick the tires."

It's a good thing Starfire makes my head hurt, or my productivity would be in serious jeopardy.

Feralkoala · Post by **Feralkoala** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 10:42 pm

He also did the Starfire Assistant, which the Rigellian Diary was generated from. An impressive bit of Excel programming there!

The Aurora program looks very interesting, going to take a look at that more in-depth.

And you're right, if VBAM had something like this, it would rock

Charles Lewis · Post by **Charles Lewis** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 11:15 pm

Let's just say we now have a gold standard on what to aspire to.

jygro · Post by **jygro** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 3:53 am

Haven't gotten to check it out either, but it looks sweet from the screenshots that I have seen. It's cool to have that someone is working on that for VBAM, I think it would make things run quicker for a CM (which means more games available)...

-B

mwaschak · Post by **mwaschak** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 5:47 pm

Charles Lewis wrote:Let's just say we now have a gold standard on what to aspire to.

Oh the possibilities!

-Jay

Bandit · Post by **Bandit** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 7:08 pm

I have been saying for years now, why not just shoot for a full blown PC game on the scale of Masters of Orion or Birth of the Federation. There is a market there.

andstrauss · Post by **andstrauss** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 4:16 am

Bandit wrote:I have been saying for years now, why not just shoot for a full blown PC game on the scale of Masters of Orion or Birth of the Federation. There is a market there.

Flexibility. VBAM is a lot more customizable than these two (out-of-the-box).
I think assistants are the way to go.

Cheers,

jygro · Post by **jygro** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 4:59 pm

I would love to see an assistant for VBAM. I can only get into about 20-40 turns before it's too 'unmanageable' for me. Keeping track of fleets, maps, systems, OOS levels and the like on an excel sheet and a word document is just too much data for my little brain! I start forgetting something and it goes downhill from there....

Now, I have taken a look at the aurora game assistant and I think I would get too lost in that rule set to make it effective. It's an awesome resource for those players who want to play an in-depth game (and I got to admit, the ship construction and amount of research is amazingly cool).

-Bren

vizpub · Post by **vizpub** » Sat Feb 09, 2008 7:37 pm

mwaschak wrote:
Charles Lewis wrote:Let's just say we now have a gold standard on what to aspire to.
Oh the possibilities!

-Jay

Definitely! Then again once you build this its ALL you do!

Which is not such a bad thing. A beautiful piece of work: the question remains how much detail is too much detail. Its like computer speed: at what point is the screen refresh rate so fast that the human eye cannot distinguish between processor speeds?

I think VBAM has a much more workable framework, and felxible, that can be MUCH more easily adapted to a similar interface. The division of developmental functions for assistants becomes the question. I might suggest starting with these gross categories as concepts:

1. creation, maintenance and engagement systems for armies and navies; integration with 2 and 3 below (Mr. Riddle is well started on a section of this!)

2. maintenance and development systems for logistical resources centers and transportation nodes; integration with 1 above and 3 below

3. establishment, maintenance and evolution of governmental organizations (including interacing with alien oragnizations, i.e. diplomacy); integration with 1 and 2 above

Everything integrates but I thnk the three chunks above might be a place to start at any given moment. Well its already started I suppose...

Oh my, I did go on there, forgive me...

Tyrel Lohr · Post by **Tyrel Lohr** » Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:11 pm

Aurora has been interesting to watch the past year or two during its development. It represents a game that is a bit more than I would want to play for fun without an AI to play against, though. There are a lot of interesting concepts, but to me it is more of a "software toy" than anything else. I can't imagine playing a game where I have to keep track of that many colonies and installations, not to mention I don't care for rules where planets are quickly "drained" of their resources. Stars! did that, and despite being an otherwise fun game (horribly broken, but fun) its similar implementation of minerals wasn't very much fun. After 100 years in Stars!, most planets were stripped clean and it became pretty difficult to build anything or replace losses.

Still, a lot of neat ideas! And if it does what Steve wants it to do, then it is perfect

He just has to start writing his next great campaign narrative to appease the masses!

jygro · Post by **jygro** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 10:45 am

when I looked into the game, I noticed that planets had finite sources of 'special' minerals. At first I was a bit taken back, but then I realize that it was a mechanism for expansion.

I played a game back in the day called Universe! that your population was continuously growing (like 4-10% of the population on a planet per turn). Since only some planets could produce food (at different ratings as well), you had to find someway to feed your ever-expanding population. The easiest way was to expand your borders which is a great way to find conflict.

Universe! was a decent little game when tracking different types of production was the norm (4 types plus special resources that had to be shipped about with frieghters). Of course, I think my biggest empire had but 14 settled worlds in 5 systems!

Imagine a VBAM game where your census will grow by 4-10% per turn, but you can't go over the maximum CAP of any planet/system without major morale issues. Add Tyrel's food consumption rules and you got the interesting little problem!

-Bren

Charles Lewis · Post by **Charles Lewis** » Tue Feb 12, 2008 2:48 pm

I'm rather indifferent to the rules themselves - I was never big into Starfire, but I am hugely excited at the tool - it's the kind of thing I hope we can build for VBAM someday. If I had something like this for VBAM, I can guarantee I'd be cranking out the epic campaign journals as the time management factor would be taken care of.

I've had a chance to play around with Aurora for almost a week, now, and while I'll never fully understand all the nuances of the game, I'm totally enjoying the flow of information.