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To all SSC Station occupants

Thank you for the donations over the past year (2024), it is much appreciated. I am still trying to figure out how to migrate the forums to another community software (probably phpbb) but in the meantime I have updated the forum software to the latest version. SSC has been around a while so their is some very long time members here still using the site, thanks for making SSC home and sorry I haven't been as vocal as I should be in the forums I will try to improve my posting frequency.

Thank you again to all of the members that do take the time to donate a little, it helps keep this station functioning on the outer reaches of space.

-D1-

Alpha 13 released

 robn
(@robn)
Noble Member

The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer alpha 13. Builds for Windows, OS X and Linux are available for download from the download page. This release features performance improvements in load time, terrain rendering and station menus as well as new music, visual improvements and the usual pile of tweaks and fixes.

New features

* New song 'spacegroove' (#267)

* Caching of models and textures on startup, reduces loading times (#271)

* Separate hyperspace target from selected system in sector view (#269)

* Charon a moon of pluto (#276)

* Gas giants overhaul, 5 new gas giant colours/terrains implemented (#276)

* Atmosphere selection changed, planets can have a more varied atmospheric composition (#276)

* Planetary rings are more varied and come in various colours (#276)

* Fractal texture to increase terrain detail and simulate planet surface materials (#291)

* Mute buttons for each volume setting that actually stop the sounds instead of just playing them quietly (#284, #270)

* New Lua events onShipLanded and onShipTakeOff to inform scripts when a ship lands and takes off from a planet's surface (rough landing) (#295, #297)

* New Lua method StarSystem.GetBodyPaths to get paths to all bodies in a system (#313)

* Outline overlay text (eg world labels) for improved visibility (#325, #314, #258, #39, #349)

* Make the "video link established" text disappear after a few seconds instead of flashing constantly (#319, #326)

* Support for translated strings; first language is German (#332)

* Name & title/occupation overlaid on station faces (#346)

* Added 'Inconsolata' font for debug and (later) console text (#343)

Fixes

* Move sector view to current system on first open (#262)

* Check hyperspace validity at hyperspace time, fixes erroneous jumps to Sol (#269)

* All sounds effects now honour the sound effects volume slider (#256, #280)

* Don't play ambient sounds if sound is disabled (#286)

* Fix supermassive black hole mass & radius (#303, #112)

* Reorder the star type list such that white dwarf stars will only ever be paired with white and brown dwarfs (#304)

* Lua methods Ship.GetEquip and Ship.CanHyperspaceTo now return string constants as documented (#305)

* Lua method Ship.AddEquip now adds as many items as possible if there is not enough room for the requested amount, as documented (#309)

* Use of Lua method SystemPath.GetSystemBody would result in a crash on exit (#311, #312)

* Fix occasional crash when station menus are still live in memory after launch (#259)

* Enable GL extensions earlier in shader compilation to conform to shader spec (#329, #330)

* Fix occasional crash on game load (#331)

* Fix terrain jitter (#179)

* Support extended ASCII characters in texture fonts (#338)

* Make sure all bodies have a minimum radius of at least 10km (#321, #301)

* All city models checked and proper collision meshes added, drastically improving city rendering performance (#348)

* Fix crash when music changes while in hyperspace (#345)

Internal changes

* Merged SysLoc and SBodyPath into a single SystemPath class (#261)

* Refactored SectorView to use SystemPath internally (#262)

* Tweaks and improvements to several terrains (#276, #291)

* GUI widgets now have a minimum size, used for better dynamic layout with variable-size containers and widgets (#279)

* Rewrote station menus and refactored several GUI elements to have better abstraction and consistency (306)

* Debug output now shows terrain vertices and font glyphs per second

Quote
Topic starter Posted : August 11, 2011 21:06
(@brianetta)
Prominent Member
robn wrote:
* Reorder the star type list such that white dwarf stars will only ever be paired with white and brown dwarfs (#304)

Just want to reassure any astronomers reading this, that the change quoted above only applies to systems where the primary star is a white dwarf. White dwarfs can still be secondary stars to anything, meaning that we will see Sirius-type systems dotted about.

ReplyQuote
Posted : August 12, 2011 01:57
Geraldine
(@geraldine)
Famed Member

Excellent news robn! 🙂 I will download it just as soon as I let the Frontier Forum know about it.

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Posted : August 12, 2011 02:00
(@robsoie)
Eminent Member

Thank you very much for this new release, i always have much fun in exploring planets and moons.

A little view of Pluto, from that strange elevated crater on Charon surface.

Fuos1.jpg

ReplyQuote
Posted : August 12, 2011 13:27
 robn
(@robn)
Noble Member

Fyi, OS X build was just posted.

ReplyQuote
Topic starter Posted : August 12, 2011 22:03
(@ollobrain)
Honorable Member

am liking it

ReplyQuote
Posted : August 13, 2011 03:45