jeffers
First Post
I do not work for NBOS Software. Everything I'm gonna say here is my own opinion.
Astrosynthesis v1.0 takes all the work out of your space games and allows you to have fun designing said game. A few clicks and you've got as many star systems as you could ever want. System requirements are not that high, my 1.5 yr old Dell runs it fine. It generates trade routes, proximity routes, system reports (HTML format), bitmaps, animations, and editable Planetary Surface Maps!
The maps export into Fractal World Explorer, and can be modified with Fractal Mapper (also from NBOS for a separate fee). It's just awesome.
Two Caveats and they aren't that big a deal.
Random names: The Random Names of the systems are a bit odd. They are cobbled together randomly from six earth languages; Basque, Bulgarian, English, Estonian, German, Hindi and Latin.
This makes very long, odd sounding words. The procedure to create new ones is a bit lengthy and involves a free download of Inspiration Pad Pro from NBOS's website. Then a little (very little) coding and exporting and Whoosh... new random names.
Secondly, I can't seem to figure out how they heat their planets. You can change the spectral class of the star, and the planet's ambient temperature doesn't change. You have to regenerate the whole solar system, or type in an approximation. That's almost like work.
As an American, I'd have liked miles, farenheit and a few other minor nitpicks, like Gas Giant Surface Maps being less like Dagobah and more like Jupiter, but I"m well known as a jerk about these details (Green Stars, anyone?)
It's great stuff.. you need to own it, I paid $35 at GenCon and don't regret it one bit!
Astrosynthesis v1.0 takes all the work out of your space games and allows you to have fun designing said game. A few clicks and you've got as many star systems as you could ever want. System requirements are not that high, my 1.5 yr old Dell runs it fine. It generates trade routes, proximity routes, system reports (HTML format), bitmaps, animations, and editable Planetary Surface Maps!
The maps export into Fractal World Explorer, and can be modified with Fractal Mapper (also from NBOS for a separate fee). It's just awesome.
Two Caveats and they aren't that big a deal.
Random names: The Random Names of the systems are a bit odd. They are cobbled together randomly from six earth languages; Basque, Bulgarian, English, Estonian, German, Hindi and Latin.
This makes very long, odd sounding words. The procedure to create new ones is a bit lengthy and involves a free download of Inspiration Pad Pro from NBOS's website. Then a little (very little) coding and exporting and Whoosh... new random names.
Secondly, I can't seem to figure out how they heat their planets. You can change the spectral class of the star, and the planet's ambient temperature doesn't change. You have to regenerate the whole solar system, or type in an approximation. That's almost like work.
As an American, I'd have liked miles, farenheit and a few other minor nitpicks, like Gas Giant Surface Maps being less like Dagobah and more like Jupiter, but I"m well known as a jerk about these details (Green Stars, anyone?)
It's great stuff.. you need to own it, I paid $35 at GenCon and don't regret it one bit!
