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A request for instrumental pioneer


jimishol
(@jimishol)
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Joined: 3 years ago
Posts: 3
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At my time i had fun with Elite on Spectrum 128. Decades later, about 2013, i got nostalgic, searched similar games and met your pioneer. It was on early stages but pretty good. I was impressed both by his classical soundtrack (Strauss blue Danube fitted very well) and the gameplay that suited me. Even if i had no time to play i remembered the filling of classical music at least and it was one of the reasons that push me to start to hear classical music. 2-3 years now, i can, hear and enjoy only classic music. Believe it or not, i feel that my time playing pioneer has a great part of my turn to classical music.

Now, i can spent more time for me and remembered pioneer again. My git folder was still on my PC and pulled the game it once again. I couldn't compile it because the guide on wiki pages is outdated. Thankfully, my son pointed me to read the compiling.txt that solved the problem. I started the 3nd "difficult" start but i was afraid i couldn't play it, because i had forgotten all about gameplay and remembered the difficulty of manual flight. And here i am.

Excellent!  Excellent!!

I started enjoy it from the first moment because of the autopilot. You took the game far many levels ahead from what it was when i met it. I enjoy it even without hyperdrive, All the menus are excellent. The circle menu in the center a "diamond". Whatever i thought was missing with little attention was there. Even the lack of Estimated time of arrival is fun. I started making notes of flight data and where i thought i got it stacked on a giant planet with full cargo. It was fun to realize that gravity burned too much of my fuel making impossible to arrive in time for my missions. Since i will spent quite a time travelling back and forth, before i can buy hyperdrive i thought why not to play it on my laptop? My laptop has false cooling system and every opengl execution makes it hot and bios powers off it  for protection. So, took me almost half a day to Xforward from my desktop through virtualGL and ssh. I made a soundless trip ok but would prefer a more natural feeling of frame refresh and mouse rotated view. And came to me the following request.

Whoever don't indent to fight but to make peaceful commercial missions, having of course the autopilot, actually needs only the instruments. So, for me it would be nice to have my desktop as battle seat and laptop or mobile phone for peaceful instrumental flights. If space view is a must, wired structure objects or even better floating scalable labels and symbols would be ok. (I don't mind to copy saved games by hand, so my suggestion does not include the possibility to make my laptop or mobile a remote control of my desktop)

That's it

I thank you all those who kept active, alive and grown pioneer for so long.

On virtualGL time passes about 10 times slower. But there is a nice work around. After you set whatever you want in normal space view, switch to player's info view. There time compression works fine and can finished trip in seconds. So, no need for instrumental version. But, there remains a promblem. Hyperjumps may take even 5 minutes to finish. I am not home to verify, but I think there is no player info view during hyperjumps.

So, the question is, is there a way to disable hyper jumps effect during jumps? I need only to make normal duration jumps through virtualGl connection.

 

I give the answer myself. No need for disabling jump effect. The player info screen is available during jumps So, just after jump switch to player info screen. Watch the clock and date if you want to switch to normal space view before jump finishes. The same aplies if near by objects seems to slow down the time when playing through virtuslGL.

My best results command to play through virtualGL is

vglconnect user@server_executing_pioneer_ip -CY -p SSH_port 'cd /path_of_pioneer_compilation_folderme/ && ./pioneer'

 

As long as I play through virtualGL I realise that the thrust indicators would be useful if they could appear on player's info screen beside the radar that already exists there.

There is no need for it either. I just pay attention to how the fuel and deltaV changes to estimate the time thrust stops and need refuel to increase speed.

This topic was modified 3 years ago 5 times by jimishol

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impaktor
(@impaktor)
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Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 166
 

I couldn't compile it because the guide on wiki pages is outdated

Where did you find outdated info on this? The FAQ just links to COMPILING.txt. I'm curisous as then the sucha a compiling entry on the wiki should be updated or removed.

The circle menu in the center a "diamond".

How did you find it? I fear it's not well known, most users don't read the wiki-manual, I suspect. Would be something we'd address in a future "tutorial mode".

Hyperjumps may take even 5 minutes to finish. I am not home to verify, but I think there is no player info view during hyperjumps

Pioneer recently added support for staying in the sector map during hyper jump, and you get to see your ship actually traversing from one star to the target star during the jump.


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jimishol
(@jimishol)
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Joined: 3 years ago
Posts: 3
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Constellations

When i started to play, i maxed out all video settings because i wanted to prove the abilities of my gpu. That included the 'Density of Star field'. It didn't bother me at first to see everywhere in the sky a milky background. Then i started wonder why i don't see constellations. I didn't see some brighter stars that, standing out of the sky, could be parts of imaginary shapes in my mind.  So, i looked out for parameters that could 'create' constellations.

For some weeks i played with 'Density of Star field'=0.20 thinking that it was the better i could get. Lower values created too few sky stars, at least for Sol system, and on greater values the stars were so many that my mind could not 'create' shapes from them. On 0.20 value, I could see stand out stars and have a feeling of constellations, but still the standup stars remain too dim for my tastes.

Lastly, i discovered data/configs/Starfield.ini

I would like to see and ask from developers to give more details in the comments of this file. Also, some of its values could be exposed, just after the 'Density of Star field' line, to the users.

The values of this file can be edited on the run, without need of closing and restarting the game. The results on sky will be visible upon saving the edits. I wanted brighter the brighter stars so i noticed the brightnessPower parameter. The sky is very sensitive on alteration of these parameters. Take them little higher and instead of constellations the sky can be filled with tenths of bright big suns in every direction. So, i write where i ended.

brightnessPower=5 instead of the default 3.5

(Does it means 5 times brighter than naturally would be, than average of other stars, or minimum of a fraction of stars because almost zero brightness do exists,  i do not understand. A more detailed comment would clarify.)

Then i read (needs to be balanced with the factors below). I notice brightnessApparentSizeFactor and its comment that is not clear to me 'the bigger this number is the bigger are stars compared to their brightness'. Bigger in radius, in mass? How  the initial parameters rMax or gMax involved? Anyway, i decided that the product brightnessPowerbrightnessApparentSizeFactor should be almost the same with default settings. So, i set

brightnessApparentSizeFactor=0.21 instead of the default 0.3

I could see constellations on some systems but not when i orbited around earth. I finally changed

visibleRadiusLy=240.0 instead of the default 220.0

Now i 'see' constellations near earth too.

Last parameter seems extremely sensitive on the result of the 'feeling' of what someone would consider natural sky.  Set it higher and could end with multiple large suns around earth. With the above values bright stars were too dense.

So, i changed on initial menu

'Density of Star field'=0.15

Changing values in Starfield.ini made 'Density of Star field' too sensitive too. At 0.15 i wanted some more brighter stars on 0.17 were too many. Unfortunately screen menu did not let me to set it to 0.16. There is no point to alter it by editing the AmountOfBackgroundStars=0.17 in config.ini because screen menu will alter it anyway. From 0.17 i prefer 0.15.

By alteration of these four values in the two ini files, i enjoy my 'taste of proper sky'.

If i could, a suggestion for developers, i would create a file of few hundred at most, far away, unvisitable, out of game world stars containing their virtual positions and brightness such that they form well known or almost well known constellations seen by Earth or Sol (0,0,0) and will render them along with the thousands, i suppose, of stars that game actually renders.

I hope, my fellow pioneers, to enjoy your 'taste of proper sky' too.

 

 

 


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