Hi. I'd like to talk about what can be done to promote Pioneer, and build a bigger community around it.
I think we can all agree that currently Pioneer is an obscure game. Does it have to be? Years ago when the project started it might have looked like that - the space sim genre was left behind, along with others like adventure games and city planning games.
Today with the incredible success of Kerbal Space Program and the successful funding of games like E:D and SC, I think it's pretty clear that Pioneer could be much more popular. There's a lot of wasted potential here and it's sad to watch.
What can be done about this? I have some ideas
1. Produce normally versioned releases.
Clear, regular versioning is crucial in my opinion. You can't have users used to proprietary games running different daily builds - it's chaos. It's also impossible to promote. How do you get people excited about "Pioneer git rev. 2e7775a66..."??
Please do releases every 1 to 3 months and tag them with some clear versioning scheme i.e. 0.1,... or the old Alpha 1,... and name the archive names after this too.
2. Create a tutorial.
Currently players unfamiliar with Frontier go into the game, don't know what to do, and quit. There needs to be a tutorial.
E.g. you start on Earth, game tells you how to fly around, how to buy some goods. Instructs you to deliver and sell some goods to Gates Spaceport. On the way out you're attacked by some weak ship that has very little chance of damaging you and the game tells you how to fire weapons.
So the player learns how to fly, trade and fight. The player is now equipped to explore the rest of the game without too much fumbling around.
3. Comment the code
The code itself seems ok, but there are almost no comments. This makes it more difficult to contribute than it could be.
In the future if there was some guideline e.g. that functions are to be commented, that vectors should declare in what frame they are, it would help a lot
4. Publish the game on Desura and Steam
Both of these are amazing platforms for reaching more people. I'm not sure if Steam accepts games that are otherwise free, but if not this can easily be circumvented by adding something to the Steam version that's only accessible to Steam buyers and then charging some nominal price for it ($1)
There's already a smelly fork of Pioneer on both of these, so there's no worry that it wouldn't be accepted
5. Run a Kickstarter campaign
Running a kickstarter is a great way to get attention. Just starting one will get journalists writing about the game. It worked well for Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead and many other games.
What would be funding goal be? One thing that would be fairly simple is to fund an artist to make more ground space ports - add some different architecture, some arcologies, etc.
Another option would be to fund a programmer to work on the game full-time for a period. Since KSP is so popular why not have them do work on making ships modular, and a simple interface to build them. Even though the result would be much more basic than KSP is now, I think Pioneer has great potential here, particularly because it's written in C++ and could therefore have much better performance than KSP (where bigger ships tend to induce extreme lag)
KSP also has many skilled modders who if attracted with basic functionality could greatly contribute to Pioneer. And unlike with KSP they would have access to the source code.
This could be a separate mode from the main game.
Conclusion
So these are some of my ideas about what the community could do to make the game more popular. Feel free to comment, add, tell me why it's stupid, etc.
I have done some work with this goal in mind: I've written a Wikipedia page on Pioneer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_(video_game )
I contributed a little bit of code too.
I've started a subreddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/pioneerspacesim/
There was a small discussion on r/linux_gaming: http://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/2a1b6e/pioneer_open_source_space_sim/
The picture on the Wikipedia page reminds me of ksp. I have to see this when I get home.
See? 🙂
If anyone's interested in doing the above or their own idea, tell me and I'll see what I can do to help. I can be found on irc: dv- on #pioneer at irc.freenode.org. Hopefully we can make something happen!
Thanks for reading!
1. Produce normally versioned releases.
Yeah it's not ideal the current one but we desperately wanted to get away from the alpha madness and out of all of the bad ideas this was the best :/
Really we'd like to just auto-update or something like that but what would actually be better?
2. Create a tutorial.
Yeah, this needs doing, I don't think anyones had a good idea on how to do it.
3. Comment the code
Bah 😉
4. Publish the game on Desura and Steam
I did a Steam client integration branch and RobN has looked into Desura, in fact with Desura it's more that we just didn't all pull together and help him out with it :/
Steam, I have no fucking clue how to go about getting it onto there. We could either go through the Greenlight process or ... I dunno. I don't think Steam is viable, we don't charge anything for the game for a start and you need to go through an approvals process.
Desura seems like a better fit.
5. Run a Kickstarter campaign
So I've thought about this before and have discussed it with RobN for a while because I was trying to think about how it would work. One thing is that we might not be allowed on KickStarter due to their rules about funding various things. We're OpenSource and there's no product at the end so it can get a bit screwy with some of their terms. IndieGoGo or another might be a better idea.
The hardest thing here is coming up with viable and tangible things for be made or implemented, agreeing them as a team and then finding the people to pay to do the work itself.
Not sure where I have all of the discussion we had but might be worth looking it up again.
Conclusion
Also worth pointing out in the Reddit that Dave Braben didn't "come down on us", it was ... we removed it to avoid the possibility of future problems due to the (then) forthcoming Elite: Dangerous which no-one knew what was going to happen, there was some discussion of Frontier and FFE at the time too so the future was very uncertain.
One thing is: what do we want the attention for? What would it's purpose be? We already feel a lot of pressure from people to get things done but we all work/study fulltime, real-life is the biggest issue we have, more pressure has burnt us several times and there are times when I've quit for a few months to recover my enthusiasm. You might have noticed that there's a lot of names in the contributors text file but only a few of us around at the moment.
Andy
3. Comment the codeBah 😉
Real Programmers don’t comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand and even harder to modify.
Oolite Naval Attaché
Try to get the attention for pioneer frm youtube lets play reviewers ..... get some youtube videos that might attract development talent or more players to check it out, do regular lets plays for say each update and piont out what is different
I think a naming schedule perhaps moving to beta status is an idea. Once a week.
2. Tutorial seems lke a good idea, but a better idea would be adding more content rather than fancy graphics, give the player the ability to deploy mining modules and fuel harvesting arrays as a starter
3. If they wont comment on the forums they wont comment n the code, find a way to drive more traffic to the game , more players and a % of those might be developers that might contribute to the game .... more hands isnt always good but a few more hands might bring some fresh life
4. Desura possibly steams a nightmare and you wont get noticed .....
5. Kickstarter or a donate button
6. Comment on the bay12 forums on pioneer i have a thread there ill bump up, some discussion might get some attention there
Well on the publicity front I do try my best every month with the ModDB site. Screenshots in particular seem very popular indeed and right now, Pioneer has a rank of 197 out of 22546 on there. Not its highest ever rating by any means. Occasionally it even breaches the top 100. Thats pretty good in my book when you consider what its up against on there.
Yeah it's not ideal the current one but we desperately wanted to get away from the alpha madness and out of all of the bad ideas this was the best :/
Really we'd like to just auto-update or something like that but what would actually be better?
I imagine a simple system:
1. Once the game accumulates enough new features and there has been a bit of time to test those features for any obviously breaking bugs, tag it with a new version.
It doesn't need to auto-update, there's no need to maintain a new branch. Bugs will happen but that's okay. If there's something very breaking then a new minor version can be uploaded, or the release of a new version can be sped up if there are many minor bugfixes.
Yeah, this needs doing, I don't think anyones had a good idea on how to do it.
Can it be done in lua?
Seems like what would be needed is the ability to display a message to the player (in any view), detect what the player is doing (player docked at X, player bought Y, etc) and update the message. It doesn't need to be complex - just a linear series of steps with goals for the player to accomplish.
I did a Steam client integration branch and RobN has looked into Desura, in fact with Desura it's more that we just didn't all pull together and help him out with it :/
Steam, I have no fucking clue how to go about getting it onto there. We could either go through the Greenlight process or ... I dunno. I don't think Steam is viable, we don't charge anything for the game for a start and you need to go through an approvals process.
Desura seems like a better fit.
I think this should be revived. Obviously I don't know what needs to be done but I'm willing to help with tasks
Even just getting listed on greenlight would be great.
So I've thought about this before and have discussed it with RobN for a while because I was trying to think about how it would work. One thing is that we might not be allowed on KickStarter due to their rules about funding various things. We're OpenSource and there's no product at the end so it can get a bit screwy with some of their terms. IndieGoGo or another might be a better idea.
The hardest thing here is coming up with viable and tangible things for be made or implemented, agreeing them as a team and then finding the people to pay to do the work itself.
Not sure where I have all of the discussion we had but might be worth looking it up again.
There are open source games on kickstarter - I don't think there's any problem with that. It might be good to look at the Cataclysm:DDA kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/568375735/cataclysm-dark-days-ahead-dedicated-developer
Their goal was to fund a full-time developer to work on three specific tasks
One cool goal like I said might be to add the ability to have modular ships (and an UI to build them)
Another would to implement the UI mockups that nozmajner made
The rewards could be things like adding names to the random name pool, a line in the credits, naming planets, etc.
I don't know where you'd find a developer to work like this - maybe reddit.com/r/gamedev would be a place to ask?
Also worth pointing out in the Reddit that Dave Braben didn't "come down on us", it was ... we removed it to avoid the possibility of future problems due to the (then) forthcoming Elite: Dangerous which no-one knew what was going to happen, there was some discussion of Frontier and FFE at the time too so the future was very uncertain.
Feel free to post on the subreddit. It's a lonely place at the moment 🙁
One thing is: what do we want the attention for? What would it's purpose be? We already feel a lot of pressure from people to get things done but we all work/study fulltime, real-life is the biggest issue we have, more pressure has burnt us several times and there are times when I've quit for a few months to recover my enthusiasm. You might have noticed that there's a lot of names in the contributors text file but only a few of us around at the moment.
I think this is just the nature of open source projects - people come and go. There's nothing wrong with it. I don't think it would be worse if there was a bigger community.
What would be better with a bigger community? More testers, more programmers, more artists, more influence on trends, etc
It seems like an odd question to me though. Presumably you work on this game because you think that it is worthwhile. If it's worthwhile to you then it's logical to assume that would be to many others too.
Well on the publicity front I do try my best every month with the ModDB site. Screenshots in particular seem very popular indeed and right now, Pioneer has a rank of 197 out of 22546 on there. Not its highest ever rating by any means. Occasionally it even breaches the top 100. Thats pretty good in my book when you consider what its up against on there.
That's really good. I knew it was on moddb but I didn't know it did that well.
Well the Steam branch is on fluffyfreak/Steam if you want to take a look. It's just a basic integration with their client stuff.
There would need to be some stuff done for distribution etc.
I think the most important thing Pioneer needs (apart from hunting down all those new bugs) is creating and solidifying actual gameplay.
This is what appeals to the player apart from semi-vague promises of huge, procedural universe, this is what the tutorial will address and so on.
Other things Pioneer really needs is better content creation (I keep looking at Space Engine and can't help but notice how much better it is at that, partly because of sheer quantity and variety of objects - Pioneer essentially inherited Frontier's approach with coarse representation of systems with only major bodies and a bunch of stations, meanwhile SE has tons of asteroids, comets and so on) and less fragile save versioning allowing working on the systems without inevitably breaking player's saves with each update.
A long running, incremental project without any sort of intended final form can't afford such fragility.
P.S. Pioneer could also use more consolidated discussion - if I want to, for example, bring this or my ideas regarding combat to the attention of project guys, should I hope for one to read it here, ctrlc, ctrlv it on dev forum or what?
Also there was a thread about creating a video for Desura.
@DraQ I don't know about Space Engines content system but we would like asteroids, proper ring systems, comets, etc.
Quite often we just get bogged down in the UI, Lua and other random crap 🙁
Fluffyfreak has a point, as someone who cant program im a mere observer but looking at the committ changes there seems to be 2-3 people basicaly doing 90% of the committs at the moment. Those are active here and basically have real life to deal with to, so the pace of change is pretty good but yeah big changes, and any publicity at this point really need to not focus on any fundraising, raise its profile yes but really what u guys do need is a way to attract the attention of freeware-open source programmers, artists and those that can create content and new ideas. get enough of the right type of people interested, liking the game and those that can contribute * youll always find feedback* but someone to generate contributions, so dev forums for open source developers, other freeware projects a quick thing, reddit is another one
La critique est aisée mais l'art est difficile => criticism is easy but art is difficult
That mean : It is easy to find fault with something, then we would not do better yourself.
And remain, Pioneer have a Alpha status
It's a nonsense talking about some succes for a project under dev .
its avery good simulator for flying around in a basic spaceship with a bit of basic trading exploraing a very big procedurally generated galaxy with lots of pretty planets pioneer does a very good job at that, but so far apart from quite a few small features that remain incomplete thats about it it lacks a lot of proper implemented gameplay mechanics.
But thats still a very good acomplishment just dont expect much more unless u get an army of volunteer devs working on moving it outwards, and at the same time dont expect to get a large player base while its missing content content and more content
I think people can own decisions on whether they want to play or contribute to Pioneer. The problem is that the vast majority of them simply don't know about it, and by refusing to "market" it to them, we're making that decision for them.
Plenty of alpha software built communities around it anyway - just look at KSP.
I think my only fear is that we'll get a repeat of what has happened previously.
A lot of people with demands and ideas appear who aren't willing/able to contribute, they drown out the community we do have already and drive of those who can and are contributing.
The other thing that KSP has is a dedicate team of full-time developers whereas I, for example, haven't had chance to spend more than 20 minutes looking at PRs, let alone writing any new code, in the last 4 days.
I'm desperately trying to get the new docking code working so nozmajner can finish his new spacestation, then I need to do some character screen editing so Everchart can update the facegen art assets more easily, there's more spacestation work to be done, porting to OpenGL 3.x / BGFX, terrain rewrite, clouds, water...
So my greatest fear is actually just disappointing people because they have high expectations and I'd hate to let them down.
Real Programmers don’t comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand and even harder to modify.
Let me disagree. I don't know about real vs fake programmers, but every programmer pretending to be a "good" programmer should always take the time to comment his code, unless he thinks his code is final. But since no code is final (if I never get a bug report, then no-one is using it, period) then "it will be hard to understand and even harder to modify" will likely apply to ourselves as well. And when, in three months from now, I will be wondering whom his this f*** guy which hasn't commented the code, it will be sad to discover that it was me. Wow ... what a great idea ... I finished 1 hour earlier but now it will take me 2 hours to recall where I left and start thinking about how to resolve that damn bug!
How is pioneer progressing ive been away from it for a while, it had early potential
If you've been away a little while then the best bet is to skim over the changelog and see all the things we've done
We have numerous rendering improvements including better texture filtering, terrain detail texturing, ship normal mapping.
There's search and rescue missions, improvements to the trade UI.
New moons for jupiter and an improved Barnard's star system.
Hundreds of bug fixes, internal changes, minor improvements etc.
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