**no ads on dropbox, no.**

photobucket is what annoys me, or started to.

and it's good to have a new place to store my screenshots or other things.

interesting, i never tried similar with my onedrive, i tried once and the shortened link didn't worked thus i tried never again.
yesterday i asked you (resp. myself) if that will work, because i knew a shortened link won't work.

thus i gave it a try.

by the way let's see if that works with onedrive to

ha, i guess the format plays a role to, a .bmp wasn't accepted here, but this .jpg works.

but i guess i prefere dropbox over onedrive for such, it's even more complicated to get to a link with witch you can display a picture outside of the cloud.

in principles i feel this can't be in the interest of the provider, they advertise at least for them self, not active, but already due to that that you have a account. usually or this would be the idea i guess, people who like to view your pictures had to follow to your cloud and will notice the "brand", that's advertisement enough if they come to the cloud.

but in this way they won't even notice where the source is stored.

but well i guess that's not my business as long as they are my pictures.

yes, yes, i will watch the movie 😉

because erm, i still don't know what building you mean, i can't browse through your cloud
except you link the directory, that is for your safety.

if you link a single object a viewer is not allowed to browse,
if you link a directory he's allowed to watch only the content of this directory.

i think dropbox manages this even better as onedrive
i even can tell on dropbox "view only" and a guest isn't allowed to do anything except to view the files.
if i'm right i can on onedrive only tell it's accessable or not and if you have access you can also delete it i.e.
and if i'm wrong then it's at least better described in dropbox how to select this option.

Can you not see the picture of the building? It shows on this page for me. I hope you enjoy Rocky Jones. I did.

do i need glasses? (erm, yes) no (?) here (?)

o-o

no doesn't helps.

"It shows on this page for me" where?

wait,
i this post?

"Abuse? Not at all! Thanks for the lesson. 😀 How's this for an alien building? It's from the same movie."

there is nothing to see for me,

vice versa do you see my posted screenshots?
i mean i even didn't know if they show up for others.

one is a courier in front of a wheel station
and the other a scenery from pioneer with a interceptor from me on it.

because i really see no picture of a building here.

sometimes...

i logged myself out and yes i could see my posted screenshots.


i have a new idea for a lmr function
a parametric shape creator
i have a slight i dea how to make that and the reason is simple
it's a brainf*** to make bezier shapes
and even if you are routined you still have to enter a lot of vectors.
but such a shape engine could make it a lot easier to create a bezier shape
of course it won't have sliders like in a cad with a graphical interface
but it will simplyfie it already if you can draw a shape, measure it and use only a couple of really needed points.

also about the uv projection i thought.
it's stupid to dump a model open it in a cad and project the mesh, that doesn't suits the lmr
i could use the the obj instead to make this detour.
but i don't wan't to use .obj or a cad, it's a option one can use as mod.
thus i thought if that would be to reach i with the modelviewer
to simply project the mesh from given angles, this would suit the system.
not because i need the data of the projection, because i need eventually or would appreciate
a 2D projection of the mesh on a image to start a texture.
and if i have to use a projection i scripted in advance to export such it's still a good thing.
such a projection is easy and could be unified, even called with a function.

another option to make it a lot easier would be a layout
of course it won't fit all ships, but i can anyway only project from a given angle,
this layout will be sectioned in the views/projections, i'm aware i can only project each object/shape once
the sheme you could even use for any part of the ship or otherwise.
the size of a texture is always 1:1 no matter if 1024x1024 or 32x32
thus you could always use the same data except for the scale, but the scale is to calculate.
if you know, and when you script a model i assume you know this, how your object/shape is dimensioned
you know the scale which is to use for this section of the texture.

even for this i could write a function which will help to find the scale for a given section of the texture.

but it's no big help i guess, a 2D projection on a image would help far more.

So only I can see the picture of the building? That's odd, I followed your instructions and I can see it in my comment. I can see one of your pictures. It looks like an Imperial Hunter near an Arco building on a planet that looks like New Hope in the Epsilon Eridani system. If anyone else is reading this, can you see the images?

I just had a thought. My pictures are .png format. Maybe that doesn't work for your OS. I'll try converting them to .jpg tomorrow.

Here's a .jpg of the building. It reminds me of FFE.

erm still i can't see a picture you posted,
but therefore i watched rocky jones and i'm a little bit wiser now 🙂

try once to log out of ssc and return to the forum without to log in,
your'e a stranger then and can make proof this way if someone else could see them

i'm not sure what causes it, strangewisely when...

yes i can see your picture when i post it even as a "stranger"

and the format i should have remembered it is usally .png .jpg or .gif for the web

and if that buildings in the episode you linked then i assume i've seen it.
no big deal no, and yes that's what i thought when i saw it "a bit like those irregular blocks from ffe".
if one likes it really simple, a extrusion with the frontview as polygon to extrude.
extrusions to extrude a different shape as a quadric haven't been used much, but it's a good way to create a body
with sides from three on up to as much you like, as much sides as the polygon has.
the drawback or advantage to i.e. a cylinder is that the sides are flat shaded and it has sharp corners, split vertices in other terms.
ideal for a eight sided building i.e., because it won't have rounded corners.

of course if you build the building from single quads you have the advantage to project each quad single on the texture
while a cylinder or extrusion you can only project the whole body from one side, but you know this.

![]( "")

This is really strange. I logged out and could still see my pictures and yours. I hope somebody else comments on this.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the movie.

"i'm not sure what causes it, strangewisely when...

yes i can see your picture when i post it even as a "stranger""

that's vanished now (?)

ok, well i said it's uncommon maybe not wanted to do this, i guess to be sure it works i will have to depend on photobucket or another picture service.

to link to album (directory) or a file it's still a good thing to have cloudspace.

probably but i'm not sure, the link is quite long when you do it in this way and contains information which is ment to scale the picture on dropbox and other data, probably either this causes the problems or which is also possible the "rubbish" is removed automated, it get's parsed and the link is no longer valid.

i would recommend to use someelse place to display screenshots from

perhaps i find a good free one which i can use myself in the near future

i guess i found one, it's a german picture host service and adfree....

i thought even google pictures would work but it didn't

looks like there's reason why [ https://picload.org/ ]( https://picload.org/ "https://picload.org/")
calls himself barrierfree.

but if you don't like a german hoster i'm sure you will find another,
google knows i live in switzerland and this was one of the first suggestions
though if you enter "free picture hoster" it will be for sure located near you.

![]( "")

it's ment for this - it works best for this

Picload looks promising, but I'm thinking this shouldn't be this complicated. I'm going to ask in the screenshot thread how others are posting pictures.

i think that's a good idea,

i've made two new ships, the first is named "Badger" and might remind of the FE2/FFE Transporter also the capacity is about the same.
![]( "")

![]( "")

![]( "")

![]( "")

the second is a quick one made from primitives, saucerstyle "Interceptor" (yet another?)

![]( "")

![]( "")

![]( "")

very small update to the Badger, i wasn't satisfied with the landing gear / engine pods texture, resp. cuboids are bad to texture
thus i made cube form quads and changed the texture.

![]( "")

**"the worlds smallest (underground) spaceport"**

![]( "")

![]( "")

it existed before made from wavefront objects, this is a new geometry from scratch, i didn't took any look at the existing old model.
the principle is clear
a small spaceport which allows only for small ships to dock on (later this could be sorted by population instead to assign spaceports randomly,
little pop - smaller spaceport and vice versa.

it's not yet finished, it needs a own texture.
the dock is a cube of ~ 20m sidelength though only fighters have space enough.

i guess it's possible to launch with any size of ship since collision detection is disabled while docking,
but to land a large ship isn't possible because you will collide before the docking procedure starts.

i could this make even more difficult with a fence or simple boundary sticks likewise i used for the old model.

in principles it could be extendet to 3 docking bays, but i guess for the "tiny port" one dock is enough, if occupied your'e out.
anyway a single spaceport large or small is needed to create situations like the well known of "Scirocco Station" or "Amundsen" of FE2.
"all bays full" and only one city and one spaceport.
mission failed!
next time you will be more precautious or well take the risk, probably it's free next time or later (in pioneer the ships don't stay to long).

This picture of the Atomic 1 just came up as wallpaper on my computer.
![]( "")
It's a beautiful piece of work. I got used to flying it but I felt uncomfortable in that cockpit up there. Vuzz made this screenshot from Genesia. Many of your models are there, and I have some early Pioneer alphas if you want them.

OK, we can cal this ship also "Atomic 1" but i guess i named it once "Stardust", erm the name doesn't soinds special but it's to me.
"The Stardust" was featured in if i remember right the first series of sci-fi novels from the authors of "Perry Rhodan".
what i liked most was a spaceship with a "wreck orchestra". sometinhg i always sounding from the engnes to the struts.
never mind the "atomix 1" or X1 is a simple cigar.

i can imagine that you won't feel well in this cockpit, one must imagine that the seats position is controlled by a gyroscope.

somehow a nice model, but it won't find it's way into "phoenix", except as a mod, the project itself will contain only scripted models.
there is a wide range of ships i could reuse.

yes i still hold several old builds myself, thus none of the older ships is lost, only about a month of work i lost from "Sputnik",
but as it looks i have
a) recovered a lot
b) rebuilded old and builded some new ships

is that tailsitter working,
or have i cheated (i guess) with the landing gear animation (the ship goes in horizontal alignment when retracting the lg)?

your overworked landing pads and the orbital spacestations are recently out, they need to be overhauled i guess.

old and forgotten ships (foreign):
Large Galactical Cruiser (greyoxide if i remember right, only for the basic model, the final version i put together, it was ment as a example for a modular ship,
you would only buy parts of the ship to ugrade it from a relatively small ship, only the head section, to a large cruiser)
Talon Fighter (s20dan)
Boa (s20dan)
Panther (caribou - s20dan)
Hammerhead (s20dan, this i like best of him, it's a unique ship)
Imp. Explorer (s20dan)
Ghoul (SolCommand)

more or less

the "unique" ships i will probably use, wherefore the FE2/FFE ships will be for sure placed in a FFE mod to reflect not only the ships of FFE.

the goal of Phoenix is to work only with scripts, therefore i aded a lot of helper functions to make that somewhat easier and i'm still working on it,
functions will be added as soon as i feel "this process could be simplyfied", then i write a new one or change a existing function or sub-model to my needs.
i.e.
something very handy, i should have made this long ago, mirror vector x,y,z
first i started with a simple mirror_x to make scripting vectors a little easier

`mirx = function(vector)
return v(vector.x * -1,vector.y,vector.z)
end`

you enter a vector and the data will be mirrored along x axis, very handy
later and i don't no why i don't made this rightaway i added
"miry" and "mirz"

vectors for a cube look now like this:
v0 = v(2.5,-2.5,2.5)
v1 = mirx(v0)
v2 = mirz(v0)
v3 = mirz(v1)
v4 = miry(v2)
v5 = mirx(v4)
v6 = miry(v0)
v7 = mirx(v6)

of course i coud use "cuboid" to create a smple cuboid but "cuboid" you can only texture the whole object from one direction.
however that's one of the most handy functions and saves a lot of time.

i also completed the "materials list", i started this out wih "sputnik" and it was left uncompleted, i looked at it, found out what i made wrong
back then and have now a material table to select a predefinied maerial from.
that's also very handy and additionally keeps the materials used the same through the whole game

instead to **** up your brain what material specs you need you simply enter get_material(matlist.steel) as example.
probably, but this i have to check first i can even register the used material when i call the function, this would even help
instead to declare each time the "materials" in the info section.

one but i guess i presented this long ago, solved your problem with the string length in station names

`autoscale_text = function(size,offset,string_input)
return size*offset / math.max(offset,string.len(string_input))
end`

very simple, it just scales a text to a given count of glyphs
"size" is the maximum scale for the text
"offset" the length in glyphs with this scale or i other terms the space i have
"string_input" is the names string itself i.e. "Marcel's Hideout"

"offset" & "string" will finally influence the scale no matter what "maximum scale" is, maximum defines only the scale for the 7 glyphs of "Pioneer"
this to check in the modelviewer the size of the text, at offset 7 the space you need is exactly like the label "Pioneer"
you can vary this a little by using a different offset, i.e. 10, now 10 is the limit and the size will be kept in the length of 10 glyphs i the given scale.

now it wont matter if the station/city is named
"Llanfairpwll­gwyngyllgogery­chwyrndrobwll­llantysilio­gogogoch"
it will have enough space it only gets quite tiny with such a long name.

not that long but quite longer as "pioneer"

"Chalatnikow Newtown"
![]( "")

it's just a mess and certain builds are in my storage, some in the downloads folder and some are along with the Pioneer i'm working with and some
are in the folder for the project(s).

many things i had fortunately bunkered on my mom's macbook. unfortunatly not the latest build of "Sputnik", just a compiled release which i never published
but it misses a lot i made later and i can't run it on my 32bitXP because it was made on a win7x64.
this compiled project and the remnants on my HD i used to start "Phoenix".

the next step would be checking the "old" build for changes i made (some) and compiling a new build for "Phoenix", including the small lchanges.
recently i'm not very lucky with compiling a alpha31because several files in the "pioneer_thirdparty" repo (alpha31) are broken.
the new repo won't work because it has changed a lot since then and old repo's aren't available (well one should have thought of this, you can download
surces down to alpha9 but you can't find a matching thirdparty" repo, thus it's useless).
older builds had the repo in the source but from a certain release on they split the thirdparty repo from the source.
fortunately
i found a old fork from "philbywizz" which is alpha31 and he included the repo. probably but i haven't tried it yet,
i can use this repo or i can use it at least to replace the broken files in mine (some files and even some scripts i recovered have only garbled content).

for some reasons i would lke to get back to alpha9, if it would be possible even more, mainly because the changes in the AI
also for easyness of scripting missions, it was a lot easier, dirty programmed as robn said but well good to understand for a human what each module does.
further no need to respect languages which complicates the thing uselessly, i prefere english since aeons to play frontier or even pioneer, German? i think it sounds stupid for a space game, no i don't need i don't want.

"ahhh, we have a Pioneer in thousend languages, but well we speak in the forum only english (there was a german thread once)"
so what? (what for are they good, except to make more and even more work to do?).

however i have the sources and have access to GitHub though i can compare changes, which have been made since that.

it's sad that i can't play any of the new releases of pioneer and this was what i always warned of even when i had a win7x64
"don't forget the poor dudes which can't afford a new machine, not everybody has a high wage, some have to work physically hard and get "nothing" for it"

it should run now on old machines, but as usual it doesn't (how could i be proof of that it will run if i don't own such a old machine?
theoretically won't help - theoretically i could be a billionair but i ain't. what counts, yes i told this a 100 times before, is praxis not theory)
does it work?
no
then it doesn't works no matter the theory.

this hasn't changed snc a couple of years, you as user ask for something and in return you get a "theoretically...", instead that they track the problem,
or give you the feeling to be taken serious.

no means no and not probably!
if it fails it fails!
a bad is a bad!

what isn't bad is this,
i worked a little on my singleport station and i guess it turned out well for a scripted model.

single and underground
![]( "")

![]( "")

![]( "")

you won't collide with the terrain because while the docking procedure runs the collision checking is disabled
of course you can see for a brief moment the terrain, resp. the ship sinks into the ground viewed from above
but to me this doesn't matters much, a subterranean station matters more and the next will be a 3 port similar to FE2.
and if i ever get it sorted out how to predefine a "outdoor world"'s city/station, then i can even seperate the "hostile" from the common "groundstations".
which would mean such underground stations would be placed only on hostile planets.

the next model i already started is a rebuild of the "big wheel" i posted a coule of years ago (remember that?),
the model is one of the lost ones i can't find that anymore.
that's quite sad.

old screenshots:
the large tube variation of the "big wheel" (scripted version, not to confuse with the "big wheel" i made in blender once, this still exists but it's a "solid" model i wan't use for "Phoenix". apart from that it would be to large for pioneer, but read later how this can be bypassed).
![]( "")

the wheel itself
![]( "")

and the small port variation
![]( "")

it's at least good to have the screenshots rom "sputnik", it gives me a idea how it looked,
further i'm not sure if i will make such a large tube again, the polycount was horrible for this monster object,
also i had to trick pioneer to make it work,
i case for he tube i had to move the station 300m in back of the releasing collision check (quad), strangewisely else the docking procedure failed.

later and that was a different test and had nothing to do with sputnik
i rebuilded the "orbital city" from FFE (i.e. Mars Station)
this object is extremely giant and it won't work in this size for pioneer (a size limit? why? to avoid lunacy or what?)
but it helped when i made a collision mesh only for the front part of the huge station, the rest has no collision mesh and due to that "no size".

spacestations have to be made new for "phoenix" since the largest ship you can buy has a diameter of ~100m, which won't fit into the "spacestation entry"
sub-model.
recently only the naked "big crappy" is present to have one orbital station at all.
similar for the ground stations, there is none left except for the "large groundstation" (pad size 150m) and the "dome station" which i made for "Sputnik".
and of course te new "single port".

it's ok to have stations and ports which are to small for the large ships, but some or most must be big enough.

large and 50m above the ground, still under certain circumstances it can be covered by the terrain, which looks nonetheless reasonable.
![]( "")

![]( "")

i almost forgot, the "station splash" contains a little clock, the blue and red dot (planet & moon) circle the yellow dot (sun),
while the small red circles the blue dot to show the seconds (one pass = 1 minute)
the blue shows the minutes (one pass 1 hour).

special planet movement clock, not good to read the time from but looks quite nice.

a question to myself
"why does most ships designs have only large forward thrusters?"

i think that's shitty, someone designs a spaceship for a game like pioneer where a lot of things are reasonable and you come off with a ship with fou giant thrusters in the rear and no reverse or laeral thrusters, how could such a ship fly?

i know even i didn't builded all ship in a manner tha they would work or that the thruster nozzle size would reflect the thrust,
but i'm trying to or trying to be as close to this as possible.

but when ilook at sketches or ships of other modelers they always have only the big thrusters in the ear, 4, 6, 8 of them,
to me that didn't looks really good.

let's take a look at my last ship
![]( "")

the four thruster pods have main and rear thrust nozzles, already with this setup, because they are relatively far from each i could steer the ship
along the 3 axes, climb/dive, yaw and even rotate over Y is possible.
what's missing is rotate along the ships axis and crawl sidewards as well lift & sink.

with adding of the thrusters "up" & "down" i reached even this and now the ship can roll (it could anyway in the game, but i use no antigrav engine)
along it's axis as well to lift.
thus you see you don't have to use all directions like i did for the "Badger".

![]( "")

of course some ships leak of this especially the "Rapier" or the "Hullcutter" which also have only large main thruster nozzles.
but firstt hey are quite old models and second i had a Hullcutter version with the proper thruster nozzles fitted.
this could be added anytime .

further, if you have a ship like my saucer style "interceptor" with missing sidewards thrusters one should reduce the left/right thrust to a minimum (a fraction of 1G),
thus it's in the game really disfunctional and the ship will behave different.

they don't look bad but usually i guess "no, this ship won't be to maneuver".

halfways it should also reflect the thrust, if i have a shi like the good old "Large Galactical Cruiser"

![]( "")
6 i mean SIX giant thrusters in the rear, but nothing else
also a freighter, a ship with a rather low acceleration and then REAR THRUSTERS as big as if it's ment to accelerate with 100G's
even if you add reverse and lateral thrusters they won't stand in any reation to the big rear thrusters whch produce prob. a accel. of 10G
if i add now a small thruster for reverse it will have looked at the size a thrust of 0.1G, by the meaning of 100 times smaller = 100 times less efficient.

imho most is based on SW and other sci-fi movies or comics, SW is a fine example, in SW the ships usually only have forward thrusters, how to steer a ship isn't relevant it seems.

a Stardust in action
![]( "")
nah, even this ship hasn't proper thrusers fittet.

at least they all look better as this one
![]( "")
excerpt of "Learn Vertex and Pixel Shader Programming with DirectX 9", wordware publishing inc.
[Learn Vertex and Pixel Shader Programming with DirectX 9]( https://books.google.ch/books?id=0hxI9nxkdg8C&lpg=PR4&hl=de&pg=PR4#v=onepage&q&f=false "https://books.google.ch/books?id=0hxI9nxkdg8C&lpg=PR4&hl=de&pg=PR4#v=onepage&q&f=false")

could one design a ship with less polygons?
and is that because most modelers are men that many ships remind of something phallic?
"testa di gazzo"

and if mine doesn't look like that (mostly) does this mean i'm gay?