All of this, the huge detail, the gigantic universe, the realistic gameplay - this all fits into a single floppy disk.

Much more than the single floppy disk, all developers in the late 80s and 90s were working under very hard memory constraints. Games like Frontier, F19 Stealth Fighter, Master of Orion etc. had to operate with under 600 kB of XMS and EMS memory.

I recall that I had about 50 different autoexec.bat and config.sys files to fit these games :). The problem was not so the Hard Disk space, but the operating memory.

That means, a lot of gameplay features had to be thrown out of the window to achieve that. In Frontier that means for example, no better cockpit, not too much objects in a system, no better grafics, or the game would have quickly become unplayable on the machines of that time.

But you are right: we wont' see today such many craft acts like putting a game such as Frontier on a single floppy disk.

XenonS

Also no lua scriptable missions and systems with the possibility of user mods. 😉

this is a joke!?

 

P.S. - I understand, is not a joke,

 

No, I'm pretty sure it was a joke. LUA wasn't even an impulse in the brain of its inventor back then, much game content was compiled into the executable, and data files were in binary because it was faster. I.E. Modding was practically impossible in those days.

So while modability is clearly a Pioneer advantage, it's an unfair comparison, which is why I'm practicaly certain that Tichys comment is tongue-in-cheek.

The subtlety of language...

 

Pioneer - The Last Frontier for a MOD.  Nobody like this Ideia!?

 

Sure, go for it. Just remeber the prime directive of modding: If you're not making your Mod, noone is. I.E. don't expect that you can just tell people Ideas and they implement them. You'll have to get working yourself.

 

had to operate with under 600 kB of XMS and EMS memory.

 

Slight confusion here. The executable had to go into 640 kB of "conventional memory" (the lower memory block). Theoretically 640 that is, since also drivers and a good deal of the OS had to use that space. A game that used over 580 was a real pain to get going. Oh, how I don't miss the days of endless Autoexec.bat tuning :facepalm:

XMS and EMS are terms for different usage of the rest of the memory (in 93, 4 mB were fairly common), where you could dump other stuff. Origin had a pretty nifty memory manager, which allowed them to put in their tons of bitmaps (and which, if I remember correctly, absolutely hated EMS, and wouldn't run from Windows 3.1. Then again, running games from Windows back then was just nuts. Even LESS memory available!)

Slight confusion here. The executable had to go into 640 kB of "conventional memory" (the lower memory block). Theoretically 640 that is, since also drivers and a good deal of the OS had to use that space. A game that used over 580 was a real pain to get going. Oh, how I don't miss the days of endless Autoexec.bat tuning :facepalm:

 

Yes, thanks to correct me, my memory fails... 🙂

Besides: games were modable at that time, but it was a coin flip. F19 Stealth Fighter is a game that I have modded successfully, adding all possible 3D worlds from F15 and F117.

Today, I think that LUA has the main advantage that a lot of people can work on a project which then is easier to synthetisize in one big code. But I don't think it's a code that is more easy to learn or understand  than Visual Basic or else. It more ressembles to JavaScript IMO. Can you make a whole program with LUA? Without C/C++ additional compiling? I've never made the step from macro coding to serious coding and that's a pitty.

XenonS

 

to suggest a name for a MOD, I have to make the MOD!?

 

No, you don't have to make it to suggest it. You just can't expect it to ever get made.

No problem of course, grafics and such are loaded into the RAM. But there are limits too, mainly the processor.

if you really play a lot of such heavy 3D games (Pioneer is not yet that), then better get a cooling device for your processor and grafic card...

Ok, I have to leave,

Cheers,

XenonS

Biomechanoid, on 15 Jul 2013 - 4:24 PM, said:

this is a joke!?

P.S. - I understand, is not a joke,

i see you tell me the advantages Pioneer have with lua scriptable missions and systems with the possibility of user mods!!

maybe Pioneer can be Frontier/FFE without the Bugs!? (Coded Hand Missions!) the newspaper, New faction like Thargoids etc etc

I meant that, when Frontier was developed, preserving disk and memory space were a priority, while now they are considered almost limitless, and the idea of user expandable games wasn't popular as today. The size on disk and memory of Frontier was also at the expenses of flexibility.

Speaking about Lua scripts and other features of Pioneer, a piece of complied code takes less space than a piece of text that must be interpreted. Textures, music, sfx and graphics also takes lots of space, expecially if you want hi res graphics and hi quality audio. There's a limit to how much you can compress the informations while preserving them. Beyond this limit, if you want to further reduce the size, you must throw away informations. If you are interested, you can do some research about information theory and data compression.

Also, when you are compiling you can tell the compiler to optimize by size, speed and many other parameters. So, while most of the optimizations are done by developers, some other optimizations are done by the compiler. And different compilers produces different binaries... And different compilers on different systems produces also different binares.

Personally, I largely prefer a game that's free software (free as in "free beer" and free as in "freedom", to quote the beardy Richard Stallman), developed by a comunity and flexible enough to allow users to easily contributes with models, scripts, graphics, sound...

...while I obviously admire the skills of the old developers.

infer from your words that Pioneer will do it better ... (frontier is an old game, 20 years)

  but for now, I'm a player and do not see better game. I know Pioneer is Alpha but ...

Can you explain this to a Pioneer Player!?  some possibilities why for now I do not see a better game than the game frontier!?

 

Thank you

Pioneer may take years before it is finished.  It may never be finished.  The devs could just pack up one day, release a final version and call it finished.  However, it being open source, with quite a permissive licence, someone else could simply pick it up and continue it or take it another completely different direction (eg: Paragon).

Maybe you don't see a better game than Frontier at the moment, i do (i'd argue that in many ways its better (graphics, modability), and in others still lacking (missions)).  Its up to you whether you actually enjoy playing it in its current state or not.

There is no point in asking when it will be better (from your perspective) as nobody can answer that for you, and its been explained to you many times that people work on what they want to work on, its a community project, there is no deadline for features, nobody forcing through milestones, no definite plan.

You have to accept this or else you are going to be continuously disappointed.

 

Can you explain this to a Pioneer Player!?  some possibilities why for now I do not see a better game than the game frontier!?

 

Because it's unfinished, unbalanced and lacks content. Be glad that it is stable at this point 😉

Because it's unfinished, unbalanced and lacks content. Be glad that it is stable at this point 😉

And due to the fact that it's in constant dev. something stable must became unstable  in certain conditions , Actuals players of Pioneer, Paragon, and Genesia must remind they are also testers.

Be glad that it is stable at this point 😉

Haha, that's the best joke of the week. 😀

I think you needed "relatively" before "stable" in there. 😛