To the Stars with Aurora 4X, Part 3: What is C# and Why should I care?
To the Stars with Aurora 4X, Part 3: What is C# and Why should I care? Hi ALl,Some of you might remember my previous articles on the subject of Aurora 4x, but if not, they can be found in this very forum, only a page or so back. That's because I had some trouble with he older version of the game, and I wouldn't blame anyone else who did as well, since it was written in a programming language from the late 90s. Why am I reviving this series now, you might ask? The game was just released in a new and shiny version, written in an entirely new programming language, called C#.Why does this matter to us as blind gamers? The new version of Aurora is about 90% more pleasant to use, including with NVDA, which was a critical issue preventing many users from enjoying the earlier release. I recommend anyone go grab the C# version now. It can be found on this forum. The latest version, as of May 2020, is version 1.93. To install it, you need to grab version 1.51, AKA the "full install," then 1.90, and finally 1.93. Hopefully, once the new game is more established, this kind of convoluted process won't be necessary. In any case, for the moment you need to download and extract each version separately to the same place, overriding as you go.Once you extract everything, you need to do one more thing before the game can run properly. This only applies if you're running Windows in a language other than English. The game is coded to work best with the period as a decimal separator, which is common in English but might be less so in other languages. You need to go into Windows regional settings and change the decimal separator to a period, or the game will display strange behavior. This is generally harmless and can be reverted back when you're done playing.Now you can actually run Aurora.exe. You'll be greeted with a game screen for Steve's test campaign, the Federated Nations. This is both a sanity check to make sure the release is working, and a nice starting point for your own games if you don't like the idea of starting completely from scratch. You'll be on the system map, and able to tab around to explore the various buttons.The new version of Aurora has a lot better support for tab and arrow key navigation than its predecessor. You'll need to use the mouse for a couple specific things, but most of the regular navigation will be with tab and arrows. For now, just open up the colony summary and get familiar with the way this window is laid out, you'll be spending a lot of time here.Steve has, as of version 1.93, a large population on Earth and a small fledgling colony on Mercury, which he's working on terraforming. The bulk of the data on these planets is found on the various tabs in the Colony Summary, including mineral information, data on the (many) on-going research projects his scientists are working on, and information on his shipyards and their construction work.The point of this tour is to get you familiar with the way Aurora presents information, not to really do anything specific yet. Just get used to reading the various lists, arrowing around, and such. I'll talk more about specific screens in future posts.For now, go back to the system map and find the buttons with labels like "5 seconds," "30 days," and such. These are the game's way to pass time, and I've described that system briefly in my previous article. It remains more or less unchanged from the earlier version. tHe one wrinkle is that there is an "auto turns," button, which you might find as you explore. This button is actually a checkbox, but Steve hasn't set the accessibility information quite right yet, as of this writing. Auto turns begins off, but if you turn it on and press one of the time increment buttons, the game will keep stepping the clock forward until something happens to interrupt it. This is usually something you'll want to pay attention to , such as a note that one of your research labs is idle, a ship has been built, or a new sensor contact has been detected.You can find out what's happened by hitting the "Events log," button, which will pull up a list of everything that has taken place in your empire since the last time you advanced the clock. This can be a considerable number of things, but is worth keeping an eye on just in case.Finally, before I close this part of the series I want to talk briefly about the game's current accessibility status once again. Aurora C# is undeniably more accessible than the previous game was, but there are still a few issues to note. The most pressing is probably the couple of screens which just don't have very good screen reader labels yet. These will, without doubt, be fixed in time. About 97% of the current game is playable, but the game mechanics are still quite complicated. I haven't really talked about them just because they are a subject on which I'm not as knowledgeable as some, and there is a great deal of help available on the Aurora forums. I will continue this series talking about
To the Stars with Aurora 4X, Part 3: What is C# and Why should I care?
To the Stars with Aurora 4X, Part 3: What is C# and Why should I care? Hi ALl,Some of you might remember my previous articles on the subject of Aurora 4x, but if not, they can be found in this very forum, only a page or so back. That's because I had some trouble with he older version of the game, and I wouldn't blame anyone else who did as well, since it was written in a programming language from the late 90s. Why am I reviving this series now, you might ask? The game was just released in a new and shiny version, written in an entirely new programming language, called C#.Why does this matter to us as blind gamers? The new version of Aurora is about 90% more pleasant to use, including with NVDA, which was a critical issue preventing many users from enjoying the earlier release. I recommend anyone go grab the C# version now. It can be found on this forum. The latest version, as of May 2020, is version 1.93. To install it, you need to grab version 1.51, AKA the "full install," then 1.90, and finally 1.93. Hopefully, once the new game is more established, this kind of convoluted process won't be necessary. In any case, for the moment you need to download and extract each version separately to the same place, overriding as you go.Once you extract everything, you need to do one more thing before the game can run properly. This only applies if you're running Windows in a language other than English. The game is coded to work best with the period as a decimal separator, which is common in English but might be less so in other languages. You need to go into Windows regional settings and change the decimal separator to a period, or the game will display strange behavior. This is generally harmless and can be reverted back when you're done playing.Now you can actually run Aurora.exe. You'll be greeted with a game screen for Steve's test campaign, the Federated Nations. This is both a sanity check to make sure the release is working, and a nice starting point for your own games if you don't like the idea of starting completely from scratch. You'll be on the system map, and able to tab around to explore the various buttons.The new version of Aurora has a lot better support for tab and arrow key navigation than its predecessor. You'll need to use the mouse for a couple specific things, but most of the regular navigation will be with tab and arrows. For now, just open up the colony summary and get familiar with the way this window is laid out, you'll be spending a lot of time here.Steve has, as of version 1.93, a large population on Earth and a small fledgling colony on Mercury, which he's working on terraforming. The bulk of the data on these planets is found on the various tabs in the Colony Summary, including mineral information, data on the (many) on-going research projects his scientists are working on, and information on his shipyards and their construction work.The point of this tour is to get you familiar with the way Aurora presents information, not to really do anything specific yet. Just get used to reading the various lists, arrowing around, and such. I'll talk more about specific screens in future posts.For now, go back to the system map and find the buttons with labels like "5 seconds," "30 days," and such. These are the game's way to pass time, and I've described that system briefly in my previous article. It remains more or less unchanged from the earlier version. tHe one wrinkle is that there is an "auto turns," button, which you might find as you explore. This button is actually a checkbox, but Steve hasn't set the accessibility information quite right yet, as of this writing. Auto turns begins off, but if you turn it on and press one of the time increment buttons, the game will keep stepping the clock forward until something happens to interrupt it. This is usually something you'll want to pay attention to , such as a note that one of your research labs is idle, a ship has been built, or a new sensor contact has been detected.You can find out what's happened by hitting the "Events window," button, which will pull up a list of everything that has taken place in your empire since the last time you advanced the clock. This can be a considerable number of things, but is worth keeping an eye on just in case.Finally, before I close this part of the series I want to talk briefly about the game's current accessibility status once again. Aurora C# is undeniably more accessible than the previous game was, but there are still a few issues to note. The most pressing is probably the couple of screens which just don't have very good screen reader labels yet. These will, without doubt, be fixed in time. About 97% of the current game is playable, but the game mechanics are still quite complicated. I haven't really talked about them just because they are a subject on which I'm not as knowledgeable as some, and there is a great deal of help available on the Aurora forums. I will continue this series talking
To The Stars with Aurora 4X, Part 2: Begin at the Beginning
To The Stars with Aurora 4X, Part 2: Begin at the Beginning Hi, All.This is part two of my guide on how to play Aurora 4X, a complex, deep space strategy game. The first part can be found here. My objective for this second part is to go over the very basics of how to start a new game and explain a bit about how Aurora’s screens are organized. Navigating the vast amount of information available is a big part of the learning curve for players, whether blind or not. I'm also going to touch on some important game mechanics, such as how game turns work, and a bit about research. I assume you have managed to download Aurora from the link in my previous guide and have started the program. What happens now?You’re greeted with the “Game Details,” screen. Aurora stores its saved games, and a ton of other information, in a giant Microsoft Access database. This is important because occasionally errors related to access or the database will occur, and it’s worth keeping backups. The database is stored in the file SteveFire.mdb, and if you choose to use the aurora Wrapper program, it is automatically backed up every time you start the game. For now, hit alt+n, or tab to New Game, and activate the button.The Game creation screen has a lot of controls, which you can explore with the tab key. This is one of a few areas where you can tab, so enjoy the chance to read over all the options. Many of these settings are fine if left at defaults, and the New Game page on the Aurora Wiki, explains all of them in great detail. For now, I will only mention a couple. For the purposes of this guide, I would turn off "Assign starting tech points automatically," if only because it will let me explain research and start us off at a consistent place in the tech tree. Also, don’t turn on "Create ship systems and ship designs," because we’ll eventually be walking through the ship design window. Finally, don’t be tempted to turn on the Extra-galactic invaders, they’re as dangerous as their name suggests. Just hit "“Create Game," after supplying a game name, and let the game do its thing. You’ll have about 40 seconds or so, during which you’ll have to hit okay on a couple of dialogs, and then be back at Game Details. Pick the game you just created and hit alt+E, or tab to "select."I’m going to take some time now to explain the way a lot of Aurora windows are set up. They tend to be divided into a few areas, with information and controls at the top, a bunch of tabs in the middle, which you can cycle between, and a row of buttons at the bottom. The Population and Production window, which we’ll meet soon, is pretty much like this. Some of the tabs contain mostly reference information, some of them are big tables, some you’ll almost never touch. You’ll be using the Jaws cursor to review all of these, because the controls aren’t laid out in any sensible way when you use the Tab key to go through them. There are a few exceptions, mostly in smaller windows, which I’ll note as we come to them.For now, press F2, or go to the Empires menu and choose Economics. This is the Population and Production window, and it’s probably the most important window in the game, and arguably one of the most cluttered. Jaws will land on a button it calls "5 seconds." This gives me a chance to explain how turns, and time, work.Basically, in Aurora you’re playing out the life of a civilization in, almost, real-time. The game divides up into seconds, minutes, hours, and so on. The catch is that you have the control over the clock, you can choose how much time passes, from 5 seconds all the way to 30 days at a stretch. No time passes until you hit one of the buttons on this window, or a near-identical set on the System Map, which I’ll get to later. You can design ships, give orders, arrange for research and so forth, before hitting a button to pass time. The wiki page has more info on times, turns, and interrupts. I’ll just note here that events in this game generally follow a realistic time-scale, research projects can take years, and terraforming a new world can easily take a decade or three. Moving back to the Population and Production window, if you route the Jaws cursor to the PC cursor and explore around, you’ll find that you’re at the top of what turns out to be a pretty large screen. This is the summary tab, and it’s displaying all the information about your population on Earth. Once again, the wiki page on this window has more information. For now, just get used to navigating around and explore the way Jaws lays out the tabs. Find the Research tab and click on it to follow along.Research is, of course, a fairly complex subject in this game, but for now I’ll just say that research projects are lead by chief scientists, who are all named. You can assign a number of research labs to a particular project under a particular scientist, and they will eventually finish work on it if you give them enough time. There are many areas of research, but for now the one
To the Stars in Aurora 4X, Part 1: What is Aurora?
To the Stars in Aurora 4X, Part 1: What is Aurora? Hi All,I've been aware of Aurora 4X, a complex, in-depth space strategy game for years now, and always meant to write up or record a guide to getting started with it as a totally blind player. This game is unlike anything else available on the accessible games scene, but has a very steep learning curve. This is planned to be a multi-part tutorial on how to play. I'm going to divide this up into a few posts, beginning with an answer to the question, what is Aurora 4X, exactly?If you've ever heard of games for mainstream audiences like Galactic Civilizations, Master of Orion, or Space Empires, you might have a leg up on knowing what Aurora is all about. It's a big, open-ended game in which you play as one or several space-going civilizations, go out into the galaxy, and meet all kinds of alien life who may or may not want to kill you. The things which distinguish Aurora from the other games I've mentioned are sheer depth/complexity, being largely text-based, and being written in Visual Basic 6, (yes, seriously.) There is a new version being re-written in a more modern programming language, but that's beyond the scope of this tutorial since nobody but the designer is able to play it yet.What sorts of things can you do in this game? Pretty much anything in a military sci-fi bent. You can build up a space navy from nothing, send colonists to Mars or the moons of Jupiter or far-flung stars, watch as those colonists are killed because you forgot to supply them with adequate life support for their new homes, and so forth. The game has no over-arching goal, and in some ways can be very slow-paced, especially if you opt to avoid starting with lots of technology. There is no time pressure or twitch factor at all.What do you mean, text-based? There are graphics, including various maps, but they aren't required to play. You can do research, design ships, fight aliens, and the like all from a variety of (admittedly very cluttered) screens. More over, a lot of the game information is presented in the form of text-based reports, such as ship and component designs, details about stars and their planets, and so forth. What do you need to play Aurora 4X? The answer is, patience, enthusiasm, Jaws for Windows and a computer with a fairly specific screen resolution. This might seem weird, especially as most of us here are blind gamers, but the screen requirement is definitely a real thing. You need a minimum screen resolution of 1280x800, something like 1366x768, common on laptops, won't cut it. This is a large part of why I found it hard to play this game for quite a while, my machine didn't have the proper screen size.Regarding my mention of jaws for Windows, I'm afraid it really is a requirement. NVDA doesn't play well with some of the displays the game uses. It's possible someone could write an add-on to change this, but I have not investigated in depth.Where do you get Aurora 4X? There is a dedicated forum here. The portable release is likely the easiest to install. It should be a simple matter of downloading either the executable installer or the zip file. Once downloaded, you can just run "Aurora.exe," or the wrapper, "aurora_wrapper.exe," if you want the admittedly very nice music that accompanies it.What's next? I will write up a tutorial in the next while explaining how to get started, where to find some documentation for Aurora itself, and how best to explore the game screens. Hint: You will be using the Jaws cursor a lot. I hope everyone enjoys, and I'm more than happy to answer questions if I can. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/375118/#p375118 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
To The Stars with Aurora 4X, Part 2: Begin at the Beginning
To The Stars with Aurora 4X, Part 2: Begin at the Beginning Hi, All.This is part two of my guide on how to play Aurora 4X, a complex, deep space strategy game. The first part can be found here. My objective for this second part is to go over the very basics of how to start a new game and explain a bit about how Aurora’s screens are organized. Navigating the vast amount of information available is a big part of the learning curve for players, whether blind or not. I'm also going to touch on some important game mechanics, such as how game turns work, and a bit about research. I assume you have managed to download Aurora from the link in my previous guide and have started the program. What happens now?You’re greeted with the “Game Details,” screen. Aurora stores its saved games, and a ton of other information, in a giant Microsoft Access database. This is important because occasionally errors related to access or the database will occur, and it’s worth keeping backups. The database is stored in the file SteveFire.mdb, and if you choose to use the aurora Wrapper program, it is automatically backed up every time you start the game. For now, hit alt+n, or tab to New Game, and activate the button.The Game creation screen has a lot of controls, which you can explore with the tab key. This is one of a few areas where you can tab, so enjoy the chance to read over all the options. Many of these settings are fine if left at defaults, and the New Game page on the Aurora Wiki, explains all of them in great detail. For now, I will only mention a couple. For the purposes of this guide, I would turn off "Assign starting tech points automatically," if only because it will let me explain research and start us off at a consistent place in the tech tree. Also, don’t turn on "Create ship systems and ship designs," because we’ll eventually be walking through the ship design window. Finally, don’t be tempted to turn on the Extra-galactic invaders, they’re as dangerous as their name suggests. Just hit "“Create Game," after supplying a game name, and let the game do its thing. You’ll have about 40 seconds or so, during which you’ll have to hit okay on a couple of dialogs, and then be back at Game Details. Pick the game you just created and hit alt+E, or tab to "select."I’m going to take some time now to explain the way a lot of Aurora windows are set up. They tend to be divided into a few areas, with information and controls at the top, a bunch of tabs in the middle, which you can cycle between, and a row of buttons at the bottom. The Population and Production window, which we’ll meet soon, is pretty much like this. Some of the tabs contain mostly reference information, some of them are big tables, some you’ll almost never touch. You’ll be using the Jaws cursor to review all of these, because the controls aren’t laid out in any sensible way when you use the Tab key to go through them. There are a few exceptions, mostly in smaller windows, which I’ll note as we come to them.For now, press F2, or go to the Empires menu and choose Economics. This is the Population and Production window, and it’s probably the most important window in the game, and arguably one of the most cluttered. Jaws will land on a button it calls "5 seconds." This gives me a chance to explain how turns, and time, work.Basically, in Aurora you’re playing out the life of a civilization in, almost, real-time. The game divides up into seconds, minutes, hours, and so on. The catch is that you have the control over the clock, you can choose how much time passes, from 5 seconds all the way to 30 days at a stretch. No time passes until you hit one of the buttons on this window, or a near-identical set on the System Map, which I’ll get to later. You can design ships, give orders, arrange for research and so forth, before hitting a button to pass time. The wiki page has more info on times, turns, and interrupts. I’ll just note here that events in this game generally follow a realistic time-scale, research projects can take years, and terraforming a new world can easily take a decade or three. Moving back to the Population and Production window, if you route the Jaws cursor to the PC cursor and explore around, you’ll find that you’re at the top of what turns out to be a pretty large screen. This is the summary tab, and it’s displaying all the information about your population on Earth. Once again, the wiki page on this window has more information. For now, just get used to navigating around and explore the way Jaws lays out the tabs. Find the Research tab and click on it to follow along.Research is, of course, a fairly complex subject in this game, but for now I’ll just say that research projects are lead by chief scientists, who are all named. You can assign a number of research labs to a particular project under a particular scientist, and they will eventually finish work on it if you give them enough time. There are many areas of research, but for now the one
To The Stars with Aurora 4X, Part 2: Begin at the Beginning
To The Stars with Aurora 4X, Part 2: Begin at the Beginning Hi, All.This is part two of my guide on how to play Aurora 4X, a complex, deep space strategy game. The first part can be found here. My objective for this second part is to go over the very basics of how to start a new game and explain a bit about how Aurora’s screens are organized. Navigating the vast amount of information available is a big part of the learning curve for players, whether blind or not. I'm also going to touch on some important game mechanics, such as how game turns work, and a bit about research. I assume you have managed to download Aurora from the link in my previous guide and have started the program. What happens now?You’re greeted with the “Game Details,” screen. Aurora stores its saved games, and a ton of other information, in a giant Microsoft Access database. This is important because occasionally errors related to access or the database will occur, and it’s worth keeping backups. The database is stored in the file SteveFire.mdb, and if you choose to use the aurora Wrapper program, it is automatically backed up every time you start the game. For now, hit alt+n, or tab to New Game, and activate the button.The Game creation screen has a lot of controls, which you can explore with the tab key. This is one of a few areas where you can tab, so enjoy the chance to read over all the options. Many of these settings are fine if left at defaults, and the New Game page on the Aurora Wiki, explains all of them in great detail. For now, I will only mention a couple. For the purposes of this guide, I would turn off "Assign starting tech points automatically," if only because it will let me explain research and start us off at a consistent place in the tech tree. Also, don’t turn on "Create ship systems and ship designs," because we’ll eventually be walking through the ship design window. Finally, don’t be tempted to turn on the Extra-galactic invaders, they’re as dangerous as their name suggests. Just hit "“Create Game," after supplying a game name, and let the game do its thing. You’ll have about 40 seconds or so, during which you’ll have to hit okay on a couple of dialogs, and then be back at Game Details. Pick the game you just created and hit alt+E, or tab to "select."I’m going to take some time now to explain the way a lot of Aurora windows are set up. They tend to be divided into a few areas, with information and controls at the top, a bunch of tabs in the middle, which you can cycle between, and a row of buttons at the bottom. The Population and Production window, which we’ll meet soon, is pretty much like this. Some of the tabs contain mostly reference information, some of them are big tables, some you’ll almost never touch. You’ll be using the Jaws cursor to review all of these, because the controls aren’t laid out in any sensible way when you use the Tab key to go through them. There are a few exceptions, mostly in smaller windows, which I’ll note as we come to them.For now, press F2, or go to the Empires menu and choose Economics. This is the Population and Production window, and it’s probably the most important window in the game, and arguably one of the most cluttered. Jaws will land on a button it calls "5 seconds." This gives me a chance to explain how turns, and time, work.Basically, in Aurora you’re playing out the life of a civilization in, almost, real-time. The game divides up into seconds, minutes, hours, and so on. The catch is that you have the control over the clock, you can choose how much time passes, from 5 seconds all the way to 30 days at a stretch. No time passes until you hit one of the buttons on this window, or a near-identical set on the System Map, which I’ll get to later. You can design ships, give orders, arrange for research and so forth, before hitting a button to pass time. The wiki page has more info on times, turns, and interrupts. I’ll just note here that events in this game generally follow a realistic time-scale, research projects can take years, and terraforming a new world can easily take a decade or three. Moving back to the Population and Production window, if you route the Jaws cursor to the PC cursor and explore around, you’ll find that you’re at the top of what turns out to be a pretty large screen. This is the summary tab, and it’s displaying all the information about your population on Earth. Once again, the wiki page on this window has more information. For now, just get used to navigating around and explore the way Jaws lays out the tabs. Find the Research tab and click on it to follow along.Research is, of course, a fairly complex subject in this game, but for now I’ll just say that research projects are lead by chief scientists, who are all named. You can assign a number of research labs to a particular project under a particular scientist, and they will eventually finish work on it if you give them enough time. There are many areas of research, but for now the one
