Game and Software Update

Our Traveller game has slowed down - we've not actually played in a month or more. Between holidays, illness and other aspects of real life, we've been unable to meet up. Either that or my players are not really enjoying the game.  And I've been a bit out of contact myself for a variety of personal reasons. While next weekend (end of Jan) I am unavailable, perhaps we'll be able to play the following weekend.

On the software side, I've restarted the Traveller Tracker a few times.  Trying to get my head wrapped around the MVVM aspect of things.  I've got yet another restart in process where I've the basic MVVM set up, I've installed the SqlLite DB and tools, and I'm about to at least see about getting the various other models I had ported into the new program.  The Entity Framework sample I am following has migration built in it appears, so that my database will be maintained via the program.  So that's good.

I've got the basic idea for the main screen. Each button on the left loads the appropriate view.  Not sure how to implement this just yet, but I'll get there.  Eventually....

Software update

While I was making progress on the revisited UWP, I've decided I also want to learn some new things, not just keep rehashing the old things.

So...I will endeavor to make this a MVVM style software (Model - View - View Model) and embed SqlLite into it rather than using text files.

So, up front this will radically slow things down initially.  Long term, however, it should actually speed up things.  So Traveller3 is sort of stopping production, and I'll start on Traveller4 :)

If anyone wants the sort of functional Win32 version, I may be able to package that so it can be installed. I'm not really sure where I left it, other than replacing the IE8 web control with EO Chrome (with the nag screen as I had not paid for it) browser to verify if the TravellerMap API would still work (mostly, just need to adjust the call a bit).

As with all personal projects, I've no idea about an end date. I want to get it out before the year ends - I did state that as a goal on COTI after all :)

Traveller Sunday

Alas, one of my players was sick. So the rest of us (all 2) went to see Star Wars: Rogue One.  It was enjoyable.

And I got more work done on the Traveller Tracker. Finally got the support files to load although I am not exactly happy with the technique.  And the regex did not work on the new SEC files. So I am deciding that only files as exported from Traveller map will be used, and using a fixed width file format (which frankly is a lot more efficient than regex anyway; especially since my knowledge of regex is pretty much copy/paste!).

So I've added the initial data template for the worlds of the sector. Needs work but it is at least working.  And I think I'll save off the last ship used and load that on start up automatically as well. But at least I am making some progress.

As for the game - I did collect enough Lego minifigs I think to handle things. I'll have to recheck before we play, as well as look into BITS At Close Quarters to handle the combat.  Ill work up a cheat sheet for the players.