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nozmajner
(@nozmajner)
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Topic starter  

With the 2014 01 16 build of Pioneer, the stats and performances of the spaceships got a long needed overhaul (they were quite inconsistent for a while).

We'd like to ask our players to give use feedback about how these ships handle and perform in different situations, and how hard is the game generally, ow much time is needed for traveling, etc.

This will help us tailor the game to be more entertaining and challenging.

 

So I'd like to ask you guys and gals to fill out this short survey. You can fill out any times you want, like when you've bought a new ship or encountered a tough opponent or a rough landing for example. The more data we get, better our perspective will be.

I will review this regularly, so don't hesitate to fill it out even if this topic is a year old. 🙂

 

You will notice that most of the ships got nerfed a bit, so no more 30G accelerations and 60 000 km/s deltaV-s with a few tonnes of propellant. Ranges (deltaV) can vary a lot depending on the amount of cargo in the hold.

 

Thank you for your help!

Szilárd


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NiankoSensei
(@niankosensei)
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Joined: 11 years ago
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Is not better ask only 1 question every week ?


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nozmajner
(@nozmajner)
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Topic starter  

I'm aiming for an overview for now, but we can be more specific later. And this way we can compare things continuously, so we see the effects easier especially if we change something later.


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Styggron
(@styggron)
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Posts: 125
 

Hi there Nozmajner

 

I downloaded the 18/1/2014 version and am testing it out.

 

Some quick feedback:

 

I was surprised that CTRL-M no longer works as we really needed this so we can test out other ships plus to load up our ship to save some grinding time 🙂 if that could be reinstated that would be great. I cheked the doc files just in case there is another key but could not see anything there nor in any menu for adding money for testing.

 

I noticed the star dreamer now take a long long long long time the AU distances take a fair slog now to get there via autopilot.  I thought this could be because of the standard ship we start with now, this is why I wanted to try a different ship but the CTRL-M no longer works to get $ to buy a new ship.......

 

Anyway I'll keep testing, hopefully we can get CTRL-M back for testing

 

Have not done the survey yet, I wanted to play a little more.

 

Great work...........lots of differences...........

 

regards


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robn
 robn
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I was surprised that CTRL-M no longer works as we really needed this so we can test out other ships plus to load up our ship to save some grinding time 🙂

Try this instead. Open the console with your backtick/tilde key, and type:

import("Game").player:AddMoney(9999999999)

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nozmajner
(@nozmajner)
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Topic starter  

Yes, it's slower because deltaV-s got reduced generally. Especially for ships like the Xylophis, which is intended to be a short range craft (the long hyperspace range is a happy accident due to it's low mass).

I'm testing too, and I was able to make quite a few deliveries with the starting ship (I removed the blaster though). I usually load up with some water too, that can cut your travel times, if you refuel midflight, and continue thrusting for a while then switch back to autopilot. Just keep an eye on your deltaV when you are doing that: your speed shouldn't exceed your deltaV reserve, and you should keep several hundred km/s in the tanks for orbital insertion and landing.

This command could be useful too:


import("Game").player:SetShipType("name")

Where the name is the filename of the .lua file you find in the data/ships folder.

 

Thanks for the testing and feedback 🙂


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Geraldine
(@geraldine)
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I hope you are getting plenty of feedback nozmajner. I will give the survey another bump when I do my monthly update on ModDB


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Styggron
(@styggron)
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Try this instead. Open the console with your backtick/tilde key, and type:

 


import("Game").player:AddMoney(9999999999)

 

Thank you so much Robn. I'll try that today when testing. It will really help test out other features, larger ships etc. Cheers 

 

Yes, it's slower because deltaV-s got reduced generally. Especially for ships like the Xylophis, which is intended to be a short range craft (the long hyperspace range is a happy accident due to it's low mass).

I'm testing too, and I was able to make quite a few deliveries with the starting ship (I removed the blaster though). I usually load up with some water too, that can cut your travel times, if you refuel midflight, and continue thrusting for a while then switch back to autopilot. Just keep an eye on your deltaV when you are doing that: your speed shouldn't exceed your deltaV reserve, and you should keep several hundred km/s in the tanks for orbital insertion and landing.

This command could be useful too:


import("Game").player:SetShipType("name")

Where the name is the filename of the .lua file you find in the data/ships folder.

 

Thanks for the testing and feedback 🙂

 

Hello Nozmanjer,

Thank YOU and the AMAZING Pioneer development team for giving us the opportunity. As Robn might tell you I have been playing this for a good while now.

Thank you very much for the console command.

 

Yes I understand the default ship is more a short range craft but yes it is great that the hyperspace range is considerable due to it's mass   When I looked at the hyperspace range and the missions I thought 'ahh I'll never get that far' but yes.....I think that was fantastic.

 

I did 4 package delivery missions and made them all no problem thanks to the hyperspace range. All worked well. Now with Robn's console command I'll add money and test out different ships.  

 

Another thing I noticed is the first few times I crashed whilst taking off. I see that has changes as well. I used to get clearance, turn off manual, pitch up and thrust, now of course I need to be careful as I can easily get out of control there as it takes time to pitch as it SHOULD of course as I am in a gravity environment.  Still, PERFECT I thought. Harder sure but an improvement   I thought I'd try just my "up" thrusters but that caused me to go out of control as well...ooops.........oh well. I must keep at it Commanders!

 

 

Well I'll keep testing, I hope you get lots more feedback here. I'll push it as much as I can for people to get involved. I'll be doing the survey as well and putting comments together in a document. I see the survey can be done multiple times all based on the timestamp of the ingame clock.

 

Cheers again wonderful lovely talented Pioneer team

 

Warmest regards

Styggron


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Coldcall
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Very good...have you thought about not just doing a remake of frontier or ffe? I just think its a bit of a waste you've built this cool engine, with decent graphics, but IMO you are copying stuff off the originals that was not very good to start with.

 

Two areas of braben´s work which for me were always pretty crap. His cockpit and control panel design, with those horrendous buttons on the dashboard which made no sense. Actually seeing ED, he has not improved in this department, i guess its a taste thing. 

 

So you've more or less changed the buttons to be slightly more intuitive, but its the whole system of the buttons that is wrong..totally wrong.

 

I´m really just nitpicking, but i still cant figure out why you just dont go and make something much better than Frontier or FFE...

 

 


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fluffyfreak
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Very good...have you thought about not just doing a remake of frontier or ffe? I just think its a bit of a waste you've built this cool engine, with decent graphics, but IMO you are copying stuff off the originals that was not very good to start with.

 

Two areas of braben´s work which for me were always pretty crap. His cockpit and control panel design, with those horrendous buttons on the dashboard which made no sense. Actually seeing ED, he has not improved in this department, i guess its a taste thing. 

 

So you've more or less changed the buttons to be slightly more intuitive, but its the whole system of the buttons that is wrong..totally wrong.

 

I´m really just nitpicking, but i still cant figure out why you just dont go and make something much better than Frontier or FFE...

 

Actually we're not a clone of FFE / Frontier.

Many years ago the project started off as using them as a template for TomM to learn about OpenGL, C++ and hwo to make a game like them but the two things that you've mentioned are some of the last remaining vestiges that we are in the process of getting rid off! 😀

 

We've got an experimental 3D cockpit in the works that you can turn on in the options, the sector view and other old screens are going to be reworked - once they're gone the old GUI will be entirely removed, the HUD with the control panel and buttons along the bottom will be removed too and there's a couple of threads discussing a new HUD design over on the developer forums.

 

I#ll be glad when it's gone and that last link is broken so people stop thinking we're just a clone.


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Coldcall
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Actually we're not a clone of FFE / Frontier.

Many years ago the project started off as using them as a template for TomM to learn about OpenGL, C++ and hwo to make a game like them but the two things that you've mentioned are some of the last remaining vestiges that we are in the process of getting rid off! 😀

 

We've got an experimental 3D cockpit in the works that you can turn on in the options, the sector view and other old screens are going to be reworked - once they're gone the old GUI will be entirely removed, the HUD with the control panel and buttons along the bottom will be removed too and there's a couple of threads discussing a new HUD design over on the developer forums.

 

I#ll be glad when it's gone and that last link is broken so people stop thinking we're just a clone.

 

Ok brilliant to hear it! 

 

So are you going to write a backstory to the universe with news or are you planning on keeping it storyless and just freeform explore, make your own adventure type of thing?

 

You know what would be really cool, is a zoom upgrade for combat hud. I find in combat the ships seems really small except when they are totally close up. It would be realistic to have ab upgrade that gives you a zoom feature in the hud on targeting hostile. 

 

anyways lookiing forward to future dev!


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Storm026
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Controlling the ship is a pain in the rear in without crashing. In space games I like being able to check out planets and moons and it is impossible to do it right if I can not look straight down as I take off, land, or look straight at the planet as I orbit around it. when I am looking from the point of view of the ship like first person I really like when the camera is separate controls than the ship so I do not start moving around against my will. I also would like to be able to go forward in the direction that I am looking in for first person. more often than not when I press up to go forward in first person view I go backwards or just keep going in a tangent to the planet or moon that I am trying to land on. I also notice that whenever I do manage to land successfully I always am inside the planet or moon and see though it  and I often can not stop moving! I would like to be able to more easily land on planets and moons without crashing into them or go flying off into space with no way to change my course. I also would like to be able to control the camera in first person view even when I am in autopilot without being unable to move the view or change direction. I use right click and drag to move camera. I also need to add in that I noticed a huge mistake for earth and mars! Earth is labeled as an ice planet and the solar system view shows mars with Earth's geography and is bigger than Earth. I also would prefer if moons were called moons. I think it would be much easier and enjoyable to be able to control the ship in first person mode and as I move the view I change the direction that I face only and do not roll around or change angle at all. hope the ship controls are improved so I can land easily and the labeling is fixed. hope my feedback helps! I am playing Aug, 3 2014 update.


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 Anonymous
Joined: 54 years ago
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I suggest you to read the wiki. Expecially "keyboard and mouse controls" (because, yes, you can look straight down while landing... and you can also define you own keymap) and the Tutorials (even if they are outdated).
Flying in pioneer is harder than in many other space games, because the engine is based on newtonian physics.
http://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Pioneer_Wiki


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Sirius
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1 battle mechanics - challenging but i get used to it. (missing beam weapons)

problems: interface. near crosshair its shows distance and how fast you are approaching to target. and that numbers can switching places. its confuses in battle.

And I don’t see any cargo left from enemies

 

2 missions - I liked Search and Rescue missions been added, its my favorite for now.

Proposal: add discovery missions, like “check asteroid”, “scan unknowns system”, “scan unknowns ship”, “respond for unknowns signal” and respond for SOS signal

3 navigating – Has some issues .

 

problems: in planetarium hard to navigate, its took to long to zoom, doesn’t show entirely orbits that confuses.

 

4 traveling - ( my personal^  I don’t like the compressing time idea, I would like to see some sort of “supercruise” mechanic)

problems: fuel scooping is tricky, its heard to understand when it will start. It need some sort interface for that. And I missing scooping from stars.

 

5 planet landing – its pointless. waiting for mining rear and expensive materials (not ice and metals like in frontier) or searching for precursors materials on planet.

May be scanning mechanic like in “space rangers” )))) 


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Gernot66
(@gernot66)
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Storm25, i have no idea if you will read this it's quite long ago when you posted it.

That Earth is an ice or sometimes a water planet (it varies with the release because the generation will vary slightly) is caused somewhat by the procedural generation. Even if "Earth" is a "hard coded" system the generation still decides what type of economy or ecology it has, it can be bypassed partwisely but not completely.

The symbols we use are ment for all possible combinations, Earth is to be honest only one of billions. The symbols stay for many planets with a similar atmosphere or geology but not for size or exact look. You have a dozend symbols but 100'000 of variations to cover that with.

To respect the many variations or just a few would boost the amount of symbols uselessly.

On the other hand such a "dot" could also be generated and would probably better cover what it is.

But dammit, a symbol is enough and it doresn't have to match the exact look it just a symbol, it could be a plain white dot, it would mean the same and technically it would be also the same, click on it to target the object, hover over it to receive the data.

Yes it could be made better, but i guess i would prefere to make the orbital view better the white dots here are very cheap instead to display the planet like in FE2.

However you are free to change them while a smaller "Mars" icon would mean all of this type "rocky planetoid" with a "thin carbon dioxide atmosphere" and in a similar temperature range will show this symbol.

Sol is our home, but it's not a common system in Pioneer, it's not what we measure all with.
Thus easy the symbol for "Waterworld" or "Iceworld" can be smaller or larger, it doesn't reflects the size it reflects poorly its physics and chemistry which alltogether form the visual appearance of a planet.
Hard to tell if they would look like this at all.

On Earth we measure things by Sol, depictions of extrasolar planets are always artwork based on what we know. And well just guess how Dürer depictet a rhino only by description, he never saw one, it's not bad for that but he didn't matched it exactly. So i assume we will be at least this far from the real look whatever we imagine.

Neither i like the symbols now for the Planets on the HUD, it looks kitsch to me.
Not every medium gas giant has such large rings like Saturn, we can assume it's not the common situation.

....to me, but i'm only Gernötli.

---

to the topic

I think that was a good idea, yes such was needed.
usually i depend only on my own experiences.
"Controlfreak"? sort of.

---

Hey planet landing isn't pointless it's the easiest way to outsmart an agressor without to fight 😉

What would be the difference of a "time compression" to "super mechanics"?
To play nothing!
Can we travel faster as light without something like a hyperjump (pure fantasy) or a warp drive (technically impossible)?
No.
So there is only time acceleration left which makes it halfways realistic, you need this time to get there and you need this amount of fuel - Pioneer is not Starwars or StarTrek where everything works magically and disrespects the basic physics.

The interplanetary flights and the manual control are to me a vital part of the gameplay, i'm no pushbutton pusher and i hate games where you only have to press the proper button, it's already to much for me that i can hire a co-pilot to fight for me, that's "final-fantasy select the right button to win and watch a cutscene for the 1000th time" crap to me.

I don't feel i won if my co-pilot has shot down the enemy, i had until only
one successful fight since the AI uses a different method to fight back (in general my method with which i outsmarted them, shut off engines and fly manually, fire thrusters only to maneuver and to accelerate or decelerate.
up to alpha 9 i guess the AI was steady firing the main thruster and had to fly due to that a very large parabellum.

however this single victory counts a lot more as 1000 shot down ships in FFE.

So far to the fighting, every john and henry likes to have beam weapons 😉

but dudes think of two points:
- the enemy will have a beam weapon to and that would mean you are burned down to ashes even faster as now before you even recognized the enemy.
- it doesn't works with the engine i guess, weapons in pioneer have a mass, each plasma shot consists of a range of blobs, each blob has a certain mass and a certain impact. due to that it's possible to graze. So from this side i see already a problem with introducing beam weapons. further the field of view or perspective we use isn't isometric it's a distorted perpective, bowed lines it has annoyed me always i don't like it to much even if it should be more realistic - should but it isn't because in reality the perspective is not distorted or bowed, the lines are absolute, it's an isometric perspective.
the problem is how to project that on 2D. Isometric isn't quite right and what we use for Pioneer is certainly used for every game which ids placed on Earth. But imho in space we would need the isometric view, it let's you better judge and it won't look so stupid when the shots make a visual "curve" like now, further this would allow to think about beam weapons because imagine that with the distorted perspective, it would look stupid as hell, it looks already stupid to me that the plasma shots make a curve.
imho this otherwise proper way to project a perspective is wrong for a game like Pioneer.

FE2/FFE uses a isometric perspective and the beam is straight like a laserbeam, but in Pioneer it would turn to a curve. I really never liked this distorted perspective but it is that way.

The only good reason would be that it makes multiplayer games impossible, that's why elite uses interplanetry jumps and you meet only in real time. But it never was what i would have liked and well i remember the debates on frontier forums well it's not what we FE2 veterans liked to have.

We prefere to play solo, that is less agressive and you don't have to mess with idiots.


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Gernot66
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and oh yes to me and to all the pioneer veterans, Pioneer is clearly a clone of FE2 (or reverse engineered FE2) no matter what the young dudes state.
It was never ment as something else by us.

"I started it to avoid some of the horrifiying bugs in Frontier"
Tom Morton

It was rather a demo when we got attracted to it.

Who and whatever, to me and some others Pioneer is Tom Mortons project and it will stay this.

We, by this i speak of Geraldine and little me, only discovered it and we searched for devs to keep it alive.

No i don't need no laurels, i'm happy if i can participate in some way, respectively in my very own way.
That's not what i'm after, not here and not in real life i don't hunt for laurels or fame or money.

Perhaps applause, that's ok.

Ah yeah, if i stand on someones toes then fine, that has some effect.
I just like to make it a little better, but since i'm the rebellic one and easy been overheard i do it this way. i have to do it this way.

I'm infamous for my long and often distracting posts.
Anywhere not only here, the very first they noticed on atari-age, but now they know me and i guess they also miss me.


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Gernot66
(@gernot66)
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Posts: 522
 

A few words to the old HUD, or FE2 style HUD, it was far better.
Sure it looks cheap compared to other games.
But it displays what i need to know, most infos it displays now are useless and the important things are to small to be good readable.
an artificial horizon makes no sense for spaceships likewise the definition of north or south.

Contrary i like the FE2 HUD very much and it's by far not useless, it's exactly what you need to play the game and no schischigaga or larifari. (embroiderings).

That won't help you to play the game, what helps most is experience, repetive experience, i can't tell how often how many hours days months we FE2 veterans spent with this game to become good.

Everything was a challenge even the "useless" rough landing, i remeber that well when i did this for the first time or when i scooped fuel for the first time.

Now we feel "easy" but i know it was hard when i started, very hard.
Today i perform manual flights by the guts and well a calculator is useless, to much you would have to take in account to get the proper result.

Forget that, learn it by doing.

Scooping fuel has become a bit difficult, it was easier in the beginning.
the gas giants atmosphere was thicker (i guess they had no core at all) but only in the upper layers of the atmosphere is hydrogene.
This stays but the gas giants have now a core and it's a quite big ne imho.
never mind i see it like that the gas gets as thick as a solid ground.

but it has beciome very difficult to scoop fuel, the space you have between the upper layers and the core isn't much, easy you crash with the core and easy you miss the thin hydrogene layer.

I didn't think that this or such should be automated or that you should receive help from the board computer. Not because that wouldn't be reasonable for 3200 bc because it kills the gameplay.

Automatet weapons, Co-.Pilots, mind controlled armament, evberything is plausible but it kills the game that's the problem i have with that.

You have to manage this that's the game and not i press the proper button and bingo.

Remeber what i posted about Flapee Bird?
Well imagine flapee Bird without this single button it has to control the flapping wings, would it be still a game or a demo or very boring movie of some sort?

no question, a demo.

See that is "the final fantasy way to control a game, press the right button" it's for idiots but not for gamers.

Sure none of my young friends are able to play what i play, they have neither the patience nor the skill. A lousy invaders is to hard to be played.
To hard not because of the crappy graphics, it's simply to hard.

What did i played with "flipsi"?
ahh yes, not so bad "Simpsons" a classic hack and slash, i mean it's stupid you just have to hack continousely but it's already to hard, you have to do something that is already to much it seems.

well i remeber a "lucky luke" game i had, you couldn't use a gun your only "weapon" was to kick asses. a very hard but also freakin' funny game.

This is the "final fantasy effect" press the right button or pay the right price but you won't have to be good or skilled or versatile.

Lean a little from left to right to control a river rafting boat, well well, lean a little left and lean a little right, erm ummm..... this isn't gaming!

It isn't gaming if you don't sweat, if you don't get to the point where you would like to smash your console because of the stupid always winning machine. (what i did in fact, i smashed it on the wall, "dammit you shitty computer", a good laugh for my friends on atari-age).

that's gaming, cold and hot sweat and
blisters even on your fingernails, that's gaming.
(well it's not only nostalgia)

and you played it right if you run out of your house raise your hair and act like a true lunatic - that's the real effect of gaming.


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Gernot66
(@gernot66)
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erm yes, i giuess scooping from stars was removed for two reasons, no one ever did that and the chances are actually very low.

Pioneer calculteted something wrong with a suns gravity (i assume), in the beginning it was impossible to collide with a star the gravitation accelerated you easy far over the escape velocity. the effect was that you was repelled from a star before you can reach it no matter even if you approached to the centre. i remember that i was once repelled with a large galactical cruiser and i found myself in seconds past jupiter without any time acceleration.

FTL in Pioneer?

However this is fixed since long and now you won't get close to a star and your thrusters won't be powerful enough to escape the gravity. to scoop fuel if that would be still possible you would have to calculate an exact orbit respectively an exact sling shot. It's not what we can assume a player can do.

But a player can handle a large gas giants gravity without to know the mechanics.

---

Try out "phoenix" or copy at least "ikarus" i positioned this station in closest possible orbit to the sun (right after it refused to tell me that the orbit is to small)

try to reach this station with my lousy shuttle - good luck.
It's possible but most of the tim e you will find yourself on a curse into the sun.

since it's that close to the sun the autopilot gets confused and can't dock you have to do that manually.

Just to tell that it's almost impossible to scoop fuel from a star and i'm pretty sure that's why it has been dropped.

That works in cheated Frontier, it has worked in Pioneer when we started, but it isn't proper.

I'm not sure but FE2 is 10 times smaller, in fact it's in decimeters and not in meters. this means also that not only the extension is ten times smaller it means also that gravitational effect and masses are ten times smaller as in reality else it wouldn't work.

it might have the sideeffect that the mass of a sun is to small to show the proper effect its gravitation would have on you.

However i trust Pioneer, the recent state that you nearly can't escape a stars gravity from on a certain range is comprehensible to me.

The repelling and resulting velocity above speed of light was more then just wrong. Getting this close as in FE2 is also wrong, it's not possible and this is not because it would get damned hot inside your vessel, this i disregarded.

With our old mechanics i could perform slingshots easy, now i can't do that and would need to precalculate them - looks very comprehensible to me.

What i reached once is an orbit around a star (a brown dwarf in fact) if it would have been stable i don't know but it was at least for a couple of hours. this i reached with that i have let my vessel been accelerated by the stars gravity. I positioned my ship where i assumed it could end up well and gave it a little kick in direction past the star and bingo i was in an orbit.

Besides orbit, the weirdest orbit i discovered in a far out sector, you might know "Phoenix" starts in a sector around 50,50,50 negative or positive, this is (by default) the rim of explored space in Pioneer. Now i stumbled (and hope i can repeat this and find the system again) over a weird multiple system where the whole partner star inclusive its planets sinks into the central star. looks very funny, unfortunately i didn't took me enough time to stay and neither made a screenshot, i would have liked but i had no patience to wait so long. i recognized it in the planetray map view and would have had to stay in orbit to the star in time accel 3x that's far to slow to wait some months for such to happen.

Yes i do examine sometimes this map, dunno why it offers no important information but it gives you an overview how the system looks like.
Since my plays was test runs i certainly checked each system i passed on my way back to sol.

Else i wouldn't have noticed this or the systems with 1500AU and more distance between the partner stars.

Which obviousely makes alpha centauri (or Toliman or uga-uga if you like to me it's alpha centauri. there is no right or wrong but one name is enough the rest is only hairsplitting) to a triple system for Pioneer, Proxima isn't that far from Alpha, it's debated if it's one, i stay to that it is one and we only can't recognise that proxima is in fact in an orbit to alpha, it's to slow to be recognized, we would have to observe it many hundred years to notice the movement.

It seems like that as further you are from sol as weirder the systems get, at least this was my impression.

For such like if alpha centauri is a triple system or not i will contact an astrophysician, i'm not convinced of certain things we introduced like the strong colors of our stars in pioneer.

the colors are classes and don't reflect the actual light a star emits or how this light would affect lighting of an object.

We classify sun as a yellow G type, but the light isn't yellow no?
Right we are born under this light and to us it's white because of this simple fact.
Nonetheless a red dwarf doesn't means he emits only red light, this would be subtractive color mixing.
a star emits light, light color mixes additive not subtractive.
it's no filter wich filters all wavelenghts except red, it emits more red but it emits all the rest of the spectrum to.

How much more i can't tell i only know that it is this kind, for detailed information i need an astrophysician. How strong the red section of the spectrum would be i can't tell, but not as strong.

what we do is subtractive mixing, it's quasi a red filter (for a red dwarf) and this isn't proper.

Light and the effect lighting has on a surface was part of my education.
Light is important for a textile technician, cause we work with colors.
We use many different lightsources to cover the different effects a certain light will have, but none of these bulbs are red or blue or yellow filtered, they emit a different spectrum. that makes a bulb "red" "yellow" or "blue" but in fact visible is all as white light.

"tubes", flourescence tubes you can design to an exact spectrum you need, but none of them is blue red or yellow, it appears as white light to us.

It's only to recognize that i.e. a enlightened green tends to be olive or more forest green depending on the spectrum the tube emits.

I guess it's also caused by that we can't receive the full brightness, it would not be useful. thus we see everything as white light because it's simply to strong to recognize any other as the full bright white mix.

On a sunny summer day the lumen of sun equal to infinite!
On a cloudy winter day it's still 10'000 lumen strong, still stronger as any light source i can legally buy (i was an indoor grower to when it was still new in europe back in the early '90s, is their anything i didn't did already? yes i never was bungee jumping 😉 )

Mercury bulbs are forbidden in switzerland and Xenon bulbs you neither¨ can buy as a customer. We had them in industry to test the destructing effect of light on materials in a reasonable short time. this because you can never know...
most we know and the extreme large encyclopedia of ICI chemicals lists already almost all bad combinations. certain colors can destroy a material together with the UV in a short time, it burns holes into the textiles. most is known but not all possible bad combinations.

It's besides simple physics, somewhere has the energy to go which is absorbed by a subtractive color, sometimes this energy simply destroys the material. mostly it's converted to temperature, sometimes they convert an invisible section of the spectrum to a visible (caused by the loss of energy), infrared or ultraviolet. a side effect of colors we use since many decades for optical brightnessers. it converts UV to visible light this brightens a surface and makes colors appear more saturated as they are. usually it's in every color washing powder.

a side effect of LED light and other crap, this doesn't works with bulbs which emit a exact matching spectrum, no UV no effect of optical brightnessers.
Just if you wonder why things look so flat in this light.
It's no light whatever they state, it never lightens out a room and it's horrible imho. no input = no output, we haven't invented a perpetuum mobile yet. 1 watt in 1 watt out at maximum all the rest is a blatant lie.
we can match the emitted spectrum exactly to what our eyes receive but that didn't lights out a room. there is no "extra energy" which could be converted to visible light by the surface. so everything is flat and bad enlightened.

in no way a 7 watt LED can match with a 40 watt edison.
yes it wastes alot of energy in temperature, but especially the UV part isn't unimportant. FL tubes are ok, you can even match them to our eye but not as close as an LED. they still waste temperature and some UV.
It's a somewhat bad idea, it didn't lights up a room proper.
and if i need 10 times of bulbs to reach the same i gained nothing.
this was my comparison for sodium vapor lamps to FL tubes.
Special growing FL tubes arent bad but if i like to reach the same "lichtstrom" (oh no translation) erm... lightpower (i guess it's not the proper term for "lichtstrom" is the amount of energy a lightsource emits as light and which can be received by a surface)
OK ... if you like to reach the same power the you need ten times as much FL tubes and the resulting energy consumption is exactly the same
400watt a single one 10 x 40 watt for the FL tubes. if i like to reach the same "lichtstrom" i need the same amount of energy. "lichtstrom" didn't cares for what we see, it measures the whole light a lamp emits.
as a grower (i.e) i like to know how much a plant can use of this "lichtstrom" but the differences in this are neglectible small. the advantage of the FL tubes is that they emit less infrared and are due to that not as hot and that the light isn't concentrated on a small area and that i won't need a good designed reflector to shatter the light. However i decided to use sodium vapor lamps and a professional reflector, fortunately my girlfriend was a gardener and we could buy this stuff reduced in price.
In principles a sodium vapor lamp wastes a lot of yellow light which is "invisible" to plants. Yellow and green are the sections of the spectrum a plant reflects. Useful is red and blue. Nonethelees the sodium vapor lamps have a good yield.

See Gernötli examined spectrums up and down, not only because i'm a textile technician.

And yes a sodium vapor lamp is yellow. but when i stand in a growing room it's dammit just bright white light, very unlike if i see them on a road crossing where they are usually used to lighten out the road crossing.
White because so much light is concentrated in a very small room.
You are probably very close while the lamp on the crossing is outdoor and some meters above you. light "loses" (spreads) in cubic root energy.

But well a star is something quite different, yes it spreads even in cubic but it's still that bright that you won't see nothing in space without an extreme filter and while using this filter you won't see any other stars.

the sun has infinite lumen if me measure it by this.

any star has infinite lumen and i assume the light will be to us simply bright white light. and second, light mixes additive, colors mix subtractive.
A red dwarf hasn't a red filter.

That was a lot of off topic, at least it has nothing to do with
balance, stats, survey
But well i had to note my thoughts somewhere.

And i guess nozmajner you did that right, no question.
Even if i don't play Pioneer to be honest, i gave it some test runs for the recent models i made but that is already all.

It's to me no fun to play, pardon me (for once i feel really sorry), let's say it's caused by my bad eyesight, i can't read the small stuff anymore. at least this really annoys me most.

Else it a yes and no, i like and i dislike.

A lot of things have been improved that's a big YES.

Got lost a little in tid bits and details (not your models them i didn't judged and i won't)....

less is usually more and a little bit larger and less infos wouldn't harm.
certain screens look like a text adventure screen, or almost.

i didn't guess that this makes a better game, vice versa i guess.

but well just guess "gernot is an old gamer and still plays invaders" 🙂
i'm aware that i'm a dinosaurus of some sort.

we 8 bit gamers are soon extincted and then you guys have your peace.

whatever, i would have to play it to judge it proper.


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Geraldine
(@geraldine)
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I am happy when anyone shows an interest in Pioneer and I love all the different flavors in comes in. Also I updated the ModDB page once again with the "March Build" and again on the Frontier Forum. That thread is getting old but I'd rather keep it as its a record of sorts of Pioneer itself. And Gernot? I also gave a mention to Phoenix too in the thread. 🙂


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Gernot66
(@gernot66)
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Looks like you improved a lot of things.

Haven't played it yet, i just peeped into it.

I (still) miss a little the console window.
Is that feature hidden somewhere else now?
(key96 "§" has no effect even if still assigned to in the config.ini
"BindToggleLuaConsole=Key96")
Probably it's removed because you don't use lua scripts anymore?

edit: i will see....

*It's a bit sad that it is now such a small window.

Ah, yes windows defender argued because of the installer.
But it's just because it has no digital signature thus it's "unknown".

And another Q do you used the facemod of "anonymus" (i have no idea who's that)?
It looks like.
Just if, then i don't have to care to put them in a mod.

---

Thanks so far my buildings look fine spaced proper, suggestions are still welcome.
edit: city density was on low, that's why they was spaced wider.

---

Geraldine, it looks like it's getting "new", renovations are on their way to frontier.forums. I liked to.... but ohh.... now i have to wait a day or two.


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Gernot66
(@gernot66)
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to the above post, i'm really confused, the config.ini seems to have no effect on the keybindings and to assign them from in the game is a horror because this neither ends up like i wish or is confusing, sometimes the edit window pops up sometimes not, sometimes it works sometimes it fails.

In fact i lost patience already only to bind the keys i need to play.

---

If i'm allowed to say the HUD is anything as intuitive.
How long do i know this game? 2009/2010 ?
And i can't engage the autopilot because i have no idea where to engage it.
No symbol, no button for this but 100 of things i don't need to know and all is as tiny that even if i wear glasses i get problems to read it.
(i can't afford a 3m wide screen i'm very sorry, i own a tiny notebook).
I can say i'm already happy i found out where to set the target by try and error but i can't find anything that tells me "autopilot" or is it engaged or not and how and where? no idea - i'm lost.

No i don't read manuals (and certainly not of pioneer), i never did, almost, i guess the last i've really read was the 300 pages strong manual for simearth and that was 1993 (the whole gaia theory, so someone really readed it, just because the author stated "no one will read this"), but that's something different, to play it you won't need it - it's intuitive.

Usually i first play and i know every player acts like this, you don't read manuals you play and if you have a question then you refere to it.

It is no wonder to me that "johnyliltoe" had no idea i haven't myself any idea and i'm not new to the game.

---

Together with the keybinding problem this was the most obvious and most annoying i experienced with Pioneer, this and last build (any between alpha31 and this i don't know).

So in fact i didn't came to play even if i'm willing and tried since two hours without any success.
I'm lost, and i guess i would be completely lost if i would be new to the game.

Respectively to be honest if i would be new to the game i would have gave it up after 10 minutes. If a newbe don't get it in 10 minutes he will dislike it unless he's an addicted.

So i can't even tell how it is to play because i can't play it.
And really i'm not stupid and try to act not willingly stupid.

Let's refere to the manual,
Oh, which doc where is it?
Ok let's move to the wiki,
it referes to the old HUD

So who can tell me what i have to do?

Again imagine i would be new to Pioneer,
i really would have trashed it and would never tried a second time with it.

Yep i would say "ok i can write a short introduction" but dammit i have no idea myself.

---

OK, i found out how, rightclick on target, but really that is not intuitive, it was the last i didn't tried after damned two hours of try and error.

What i ask myself what use has it to hide it this way?
What will tell me this if i didn't even have a quick reference?

---

Apart from this very obvious stuff i can't tell much, else it looks fine the most annoying to me is really the HUD.
And well i didn't even played, just liked to make a screenshot, but it looks it has getting a little late 😉

Imho it's to much to tiny and to less intuitive, at least to me.
(because i can't read minds)
To set the HUD on a diet (in amount and not in mass) wouldn't harm i guess.
50 percent of what i see i can use to play the rest seems to me useless info i don't need and which only distracts from the important things.
Therefore it wouldn't harm to show on the screen what i really need to know to play like to engage the autopilot and this maybe scaled double.
I've noticed i can fit the HUD to the resolution, i found this but a newbe?

Sure now i know how but i still don't like it.

Also sure the old HUD didn't reflects what is to expect of a spaceship, but it reflects what you need to play the game.
To compare this with something odd (or old) the HUD of old old "Space Shuttle?" is far from the control desk in a space shuttle but it shows what i need to know to play the game.

A plain Flight Simulator or a Shuttle Sim is something complete different here i like the exact replica, that's the goal (if i would play such).
The game one could say is to understand the controls, but not so for Pioneer i guess.

Besides what would be reasonable for 3200?
Mind control or i guess you would rather sit in a space vessel and the machine will do everything, that's reasonable.
Both is no game except to press one lonely button "lift off".
Reasonable can't be the goal here.

Just to explain a little why i like the basic HUD better might it remind of FE2 how much it likes, it made sense for the game, i would never change this.
It's imho optimized for this type of game.

---

a short rant:
If i look at todays car cockpits i get pretty the same impression, 50 percent is show if not more.
Dad's old Mini haven't had even a speed counter only a tachometer, a oil warner , a water temperature warning lamp and the fuel meter that's it you won't need more to drive a Mini.
Yeah ok he bought a speed meter and a tiny racing steer wheel (wooden partially fur wrapped) to pimp his Mini 😉

Two years ago i was allowed to sit in my therapists GT Nissan, feels like a fighter plane, no joke a lot of knobs and lamps even on the ceiling (not even his wife is allowed to. In fact he really liked me: "i guess it would be no problem for us to be locked for years in a bunker we would always find a topic to talk about". So it was rather a study as a therapy and i really learned a lot about how they treat today).

But no question i like the old Mini better.
Spartanic and its "HUD" (desk of course) shows exactly what i need to know to drive a car, not less and not more.
And sorry no GPS still no one drove in his neighbours garden like today, fascinating.

The purpose dictates the design and to me it looks much better as the design of the overloaded GT Nissan with 100 lamps and switches (i assume it even has one to fade out the wife, press a button... flush)
And that's why Colani statet "99 percent of the designers are boasters"
because the purpose dictates the design and rounded eges aren't design they are just rounded edges.
And i guess he showed well that a functional design mustn't be boring.

---

Let's take a look at a classic space fighter and where this type of HUD with the circle in center comes from. Good old X-Wing.
But it has a purpose, a Tie fighter hasn't this why?
Simply because with the X-Wing you lock a target in distance.
You have the four emitters which reflect the beam over mirrors to the target for this the target must be locked in distance so that the four beams meet exactly on a single spot which i can move with without to move my ship.
But for anything else it isn't needed it has this sole purpose to show "target is locked in distance".
Besides this part of the desk only appears in engaged battle mode else it flaps aside because it has no other purpose.

SW is only fantasy but in certain parts it's a well thought fantasy.
The design of the X-Wing is i guess the best in the whole SW universe.


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Gernot66
(@gernot66)
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I hope you don't mind but a little "hmmmmm.....?" with the keybindings

Judge yourself:

As soon as i disable the joysticksupport i can't change anything to the keybindings.
While there is no Joystick connected to my notebook, the only input device connected is the mouse.

And such Keys
,"Key1073741915"
i don't have on my notebook???
(must be quite a large keyboard with many many keys - chinese though?)

Well if it's bound to such because if and under certain circumstances someone could in a very rare case use a different language as english and a different keyboard as one with 104 keys like:

Well, some of us live in the "western world", hard to imagine but it's true. 😉

Just guess of someone who installs the game for the first time will be confused if not disappointed.

It disappoints me even if i can edit the config.ini and use my old keybindings, a newbe can't.
If he does the "mistake" to disable the joysticksupport he will be lost.

Most won't have noticed that because most probably you didn't changed the keybindings since xxx and kept the same for every build.

I installed it "new new" so to say, in a new directory and erased the user dir that it builds a new config.ini.


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Gernot66
(@gernot66)
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Posts: 522
 

it's not because i don't respect you and the work it's just because i love pioneer.


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hommeslip
(@hommeslip)
Crewman Registered
Joined: 8 years ago
Posts: 2
 

Hi,

I don't know if i'm in the right place but i recently dl the last version of Pionner, it's really cool but when i load my savegame the city's buildings disappear only docks remains that's not a big issue but i'm a little bit crazy and it's very frustrating for me.
Did someone have an idea to fix it?


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Pinback
(@pinback)
99 Star General Site Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 9066
 

Don't know how to fix your problem, but you may want to try their own Dev forum https://pioneerspacesim.net/forum/ as their may be an answer in their somewhere.


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