I think we should start making some of this mod core, especially the gas giant fixes!

I think the heightmap for Mars, Vuzz's Olympus Mons location and walterar's seed should be added too.

GitHub seems to be having some serious issues right now. I've created a "modport" branch with some of the changes backported.

I skipped most of the hometowns for now, but seeds, olympus mons etc and the "mars.hmap" are in there.

We'll discuss when I can get the PR to work it but I personally think all that should go in.

The reason I've left out the hometowns list for now is just because of the performance concerns people might have about enabling that many for a single planet.

Plus it means that we still need the mod Marcel 😉

I personally favor using the spaceports from Pioneer plus the spaceports from Frontier and the actual spaceports that exist today. It would make Earth seem more densely populated but the spaceports should be far enough apart to avoid performance issues. Sort of like this;

[attachment=3417:00_sol.lua.zip]

Okay well the first tranche of backported stuff is in and I'll see about those others.

Because of connectivity issues, I've just been able to get the latest versions of Pioneer. I'm not updating the hometowns mod this time because it still works, it just has parts that are now redundant. I'm really gratified to see Shadmar's height map for Mars finally added, plus fluffyfreak even included Bradbury Landing and Jobs Pad with my intended seeds for the three space stations! Thanks Andy! It really makes me feel good to add a little something to the game. I'll strip out the height maps the next time I add a spaceport to the mod to make for a smaller download.

Thankyou Marcel for doing the mod in the first place 🙂

Indeed Andy, Pioneer just isn't the same without the Hometowns mod installed. For me at least it adds that special "something" to the game, don't leave (or find) your home without it!

I think I may have found a reason to update the mod. In earlier versions of Pioneer, space stations in the same orbit would be spaced equidistantly apart, so that two stations would be on the opposite side of the planet. This no longer seems to be the case. Gates Spaceport and Jobs pad are now uncomfortably close together. Looking at the code I see for Torvalds Platform;

:orbital_phase_at_start(fixed.deg2rad(f(0,1)))

So I guessed that you enter the degree as the first number and it converts it to radians for use in the game. I don't know what the second number is. I copied the line and entered 90 for Gates Spaceport and 270 for Jobs pad. I'm perplexed because the stations were only nearly on the opposite sides of Earth, but not exactly. By trial and error I changed the number for Gates to 130. That's about right, but if I understood exactly what the deg2rad function does I could be precise. A Web search hasn't helped. Would anyone care to enlighten me?

This station arrangement is kind of a metaphor. Gates and Jobs are rather aloof up there on opposite sides of the planet while Torvalds is down there with us regular folks doing its own thing. The other point is that travelling from one outer station to the other makes the autopilot negotiate a cool fly-by of Earth.

I'm also planning to add the new Russian Vostochny spaceport and anywhere else that anyone reading this would care to suggest.

A wee request Marcel?

Any chance of slipping in a "Jay Miner Starport" someplace?

Sure, Geraldine, be glad to! I had to look him up on Wikipedia to understand the reference.

There are four possible locations on Earth, where he was born, two places where he worked on the Amiga, and where he died. Prescott Arizona where he was born seems like the best of the four to me.

I remember you bouncing the idea of a red and white chequered ball space station off me some time ago. Jay Miner Starport would be a good name for it. My modeling skills are not yet up to the task, and Pioneer would pseudo-randomly distribute them throughout the galaxy anyway, but I could put a station orbiting the Moon or another orbiting Earth named after him.

What's your preference?

No need for a custom starport Marcel. Prescott Arizona sounds ideal! And thanks Marcel.

You're quite welcome. I wasn't thinking of making a custom station right now, but I could use one of the existing models. I'm testing using my personal hometowns version. It has a spaceport on top of my house and the houses of my family members. I'm telling you this because the number of spaceports affects which station type is generated. You may see the other type of ground station, but here I'm checking to see if the name fits on the roof of this type.

[attachment=3456:Screenshot from 2016-06-15 2119.png]

It's a beautiful place, all spread out like the American West.

[attachment=3457:Screenshot from 2016-06-15 2104.png]

I also added Vostochny, and because the Russians have two I included Vandenberg to make it even.

I plan to put up the mod tomorrow, but for now I'm going to climb into my bunk and set my brain to dreamtime.

Looks great Marcel! Well done!

And Vandenburg....that brings back memories..

But of course that was in a different universe long long ago..

Here it is. Without any heightmaps inside, it's a tiny download. 🙂

http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/files/file/1062-spaceports-hometowns201606-modzip/

I see that I've gotten a few downloads. I'm interested in feedback about the alignment of Jobs Pad and Gates Spaceport. You should be able to align them exactly in the orbital view. I'm asking because 130 for Gates and 270 for Jobs worked for me as I made the mod. I've done some further testing and now 90 and 270 degrees seems to work correctly. I don't know why but I wonder how it works for you folks. I think I'll have to update the mod.

@Geraldine On that note, I've long been thinking about having systems on themes, packed with references, like having a system called "Turrican", and fill it with Amiga game-references, and prominent amiga people (programmers, musicians, crack-teams, fictional locations from games, etc.).

Main reason I haven't done it is because I think it's a task well suited for those who want to contribute, but can't program, draw, model, or translate. I have a long list of good names for planets, stars, ports, etc.

Impaktor, its very easy to change the starport names and those of custom systems to your liking. Just look in Pioneer/data/systems. In there you will find some systems like SOL. The file for this custom system is called: 00_sol.lua. Open it with notepad (Notepad 2 is better) and just look at the existing names. Then you can change em to how you like. Marcel goes further with his Hometown mod as he is adding lots of extra starports, again you can change the names in that too if you wish.

@Geraldine Yes, I know, I was saying that I haven't done it since I have other, more specific, things I'd like to contribute to pioneer, both on C++ and Lua side.

I think pioneer needs _very_many_ more custom systems, since I hate the very generic random names for the star ports, and I think this is something the community can help out with, provided they share my opinion.

DarkOne contacted me about this mod because of the changes he's making to the site. It prompted me to make an updated version. I fixed the position of those space stations and added the new spaceport at Wenchang, China. I sent it to him and I'm also posting it here.

[attachment=3572:Spaceports-Hometowns201611_mod.zip]

Thanks Marcel!