The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer Alpha 33. This release sees some new eye-candy: eclipses and missile smoke trails. For modders, this release brings a simpler way to define space station docking sequences, supporting stations with over 200 docking ports. Full changelog and builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the homepage

New features

• Czech language support (#2136)
• Planets now cast shadows (ie, eclipses) on other planets (#1353)
• Missiles now have smoke trails (#2154)
• Station waypoints are now defined in the mesh themselves and dealt with in C++, and their docking bays can be grouped together (#2058, #2175)
• The System View (F3, F6) now shows the player's current orbit (#2084, #2168, #2169, #146, #985)
• The Sector View (F2) now has options to hide vertical lines and out-of-range system labels

Minor changes and tweaks

• Clean up the Taxi, DeliverPackage and Assassination mission views (#2142, #2151)
• Tweak Polish translation (#2167)
• Gas giants now have a thin layer of atmosphere (#1788, #1395)

Fixes

• Fix hoop station unreliable docking detection (#2153, #2125)
• Fix ground and "big_crappy" station docking detection (#2197)
• Fix redscreen from TradeShips module when entering a system with only surface ports (#2172, #2171)
• Fix object viewer crash (#2187)
• Fix Lua console to allow continuation of incomplete commands (#2198)

Internal changes

• Converted some remaining GL code to use the renderer interface (#2184)