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Pioneer: new GPL Frontier Elite 2 style game

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Ezelite
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The terrain looks very similar to an orbiter addon called Orulex. I imiagine there are tonnes of settings for the way terrain is generated, and i also dont see why it wouldnt be possible to mix the random noise with a real heightmap of the earth/moon/mars etc, or any user created one. When i visited the moon, it looked great but it didnt seem to vary too much, and there werent any flat areas i could find to land on.


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Pinback
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Personally I think Pioneer should forge its own look with the space craft,station and players

console GUI.and not just ape what was done in Frontiers.

Maybe some sort of ship installer which can covert DFX,wavefont ect into the format the game can use would be a usefull start.


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Stardreamer
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PINBACK wrote:
Personally I think Pioneer should forge its own look with the space craft,station and players

console GUI.and not just ape what was done in Frontiers.

Maybe some sort of ship installer which can covert DFX,wavefont ect into the format the game can use would be a usefull start.

Hmmmm. Well that might help it avoid the legal hammers of a certain Mr Braben but if Pioneer is supposed to be a clone of Frontier...I don't know. Perhaps having a whole suite of new ships to fly would be fun but I'd love to see the classic Cobra MKIII flying over one of these planets. 🙂


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DarkOne
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Very true Pinback, it can be Frontiers inspired and just have different ship names and models. With it open source you can really open it up to almost anything.

oh btw s20dan that 2nd screenshot is nice 🙂

The terrain engine that is being used is nice and provides some great possibilities for exploration.


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s2odan
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Glad you like the shots, I had far too much fun flying round finding the places 🙂

Quote:

Ezelite:

The terrain looks very similar to an orbiter addon called Orulex.

I had that addon for Orbiter, its great. Spent ages playing with the settings to make some nice looking planets.

Mars with the heightmap was very impressive.

I noticed that in the data folder theres a file called 'earth.hmap', so with any luck the devs have had the same idea as you Ezelite 🙂

Tomm, are you guys taking any suggestions or are you sticking to frontier just for now?

Because I have dozens of ideas, some practical some not 🙂

Heres one Idea/Suggestion: An Autopilot that only really uses the rear engine... Why bother with using the piddly reverse thrusters, use the beast at the back 🙂 Trips would be faster as at the halfway point, the autopilot would turn the ship round and fire the main engine. It could be an additional upgrade that requires the autopilot maybe, or just a different autopilot.

Its seems so simple, yet I dont recall ever seeing it in a game.


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Pinback
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Stardreamer wrote:

Hmmmm. Well that might help it avoid the legal hammers of a certain Mr Braben but if Pioneer is supposed to be a clone of Frontier...I don't know. Perhaps having a whole suite of new ships to fly would be fun but I'd love to see the classic Cobra MKIII flying over one of these planets. 🙂

Best model to follow would be Oolite,that way anyone could add what they want to the basic game.

May be we should start a design of ship thread. ❓


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tomm
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Topic starter  
Ezelite wrote:
One thing i noticed is that some of the planets seems to break keplers limits on how large a body can exist so close to another, but it makes for interesting visuals...but i imagine on some worlds this will make landing very difficult, as the gravity must be pulling in several directions.

Yes, moons get generated far too near the primary, and far too close to each other. I'm aware of this but there is so much to code and so little time that I haven't worked on it yet. Actually, the limits your refer to are:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit (innermost limit)

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_sphere (outermost limit)

What do you mean by translational thrusters?


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Ezelite
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I mean controls to move the ship in the xyz axis, not around its own axis. Its handy when travelling at slow velocity relative to another object, and especially useful for docking. Basically using the rotational thrusters to move the ship left/right and up/down.


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Ezelite
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BTW

Epic Win for the Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, how about a hidden celestial teapot in the middle of the galaxy?


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Stardreamer
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Ezelite wrote:
BTW

Epic Win for the Church of The Flying Spaghetti Monster, how about a hidden celestial teapot in the middle of the galaxy?

😆 Gotta love the Pastafarians!


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s2odan
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Ezelite, there are translational thrusters, use the UIOJKL keys


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Ezelite
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😆 cant believe i missed them! They are fairly powerful, and should be good for manipulating orbits. Are there any plans to put more info on the HUD, such as orientation, ETA, etc? Would it be possible to put a targets velocity vector icon on the screen? This would help in cancelling out relative velocities with other spacecraft or cargo items. Its always been a guessing game with frontier. Its hard to even tell if your ships nose is pointed at 0 deg relative to a planet.


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Stardreamer
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More fabulous shots from my most recent exploration:

An Earth type world that was mostly water. This is me flying through the terminator - note the atmospheric shading from the system's four (!) suns!

This beautiful gas giant was lit by two stars

My next port of call was this little world shrouded in a sickly-green methane atmosphere. Spooky!

To the Devs - the planetary engine you have in place is very nearly perfect. The only jarring illusion breakers I can find are 1) flying within the atmosphere you should only see stars on the night-side of the planet. At the moment the atmospheric effects remain a ring around the horizon - there needs to be a lid over your head (One that still allows you to see in-system stars, moons and planets). 2) There's some break-up in the terrain drawing as you approach the surface - large triangles right at the bottom edge of your screen don't draw quickly enough allowing you to see beneath the surface layer.

Those early-alpha niggles aside, I'm pretty much in heaven! 😀


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Pinback
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Nice shots,find any crashed alien space craft on that spooky green world. 😀

Wonder if they will do the target tunnels.


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s2odan
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Cool shots Stardreamer, I like the green world, and the 1st pic almost looks a bit like the Aurora Borealis.

Quote:
find any crashed alien space craft on that spooky green world.

It would be great if there were a few things like this dotted about. Ancient ruins, relics, ships ect 🙂

Pinback, I recognise your Avatar pic. What film is that from? Would it be the one where one of the guys from the pic goes mad and kills the others?


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Nic
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A teaser pic, while I try to write neater texture code, to add to stardreamer's awesome pics.

Because stardreamer wanted to see a cobra mk III, here's oolite's in game:

🙂

-Nic


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Ezelite
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Mining ancient ruins for alien artifacts on distant worlds hundereds of light years away, that would certainly be in the spirit of Frontier. I remember back in 1993/4 when i first booted up my amiga and ran the game. It was like someone had taken everything i ever wanted in a game and put it there. Ive spent a lot of time with FFED3d, but i kept having to go back to Celestia and Orbiter to be reminded of how a space sim should look. This is the first time in 15 years ive seen a game that will bring together the elements that made frontier the greatest game of all time (imho). I have no doubt that it will only be a few months before most of frontiers features have been fully included in Pioneer, but most of all im looking forward to seeing what will be added to improve the gameplay and variation of the original. Theres a million ideas id like to put forward, but i keep biting my tounge because i know the devs must have a lot of work on their plate without having to take on new things. I would really like to see a sub-forum for this, so people can submit screenshots, ideas, talk on specific issues and so on.


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Pinback
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Nic wrote:
A teaser pic, while I try to write neater texture code, to add to stardreamer's awesome pics.

-Nic

Nice Earth nick but more clouds if possible. 😀

s20dan wrote:

Pinback, I recognise your Avatar pic. What film is that from? Would it be the one where one of the guys from the pic goes mad and kills the others?

The avtar pic is from John Carpenter film Dark Star.

Ezelite wrote:
I would really like to see a sub-forum for this, so people can submit screenshots, ideas, talk on specific issues and so on.

You could aways start a thread about features Ezelite,then we can endlessly speculate about

features we like to see in the game. 😀


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Ezelite
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Cloud layers should be fairly simple, its a semi transparent sphere around the object. I imagine 3d clouds would cause lots of problems with many peoples machines. One thing ive noticed on similar engines is that adding another cloud sphere can spoil some of the horizon and star effects. One of the best things about Pioneer is the way in which the fog blends with the terrain on alien worlds. In my opinion, the finest vista is that of the rings of a gas giant rising up with the dawn, fading off into the horizon. Ive recreated the Ross 154 system from Frontier in Celestia several times, and the result is astounding. A fast rotating cloud layer mixed with the howling winds outside of Sirocco Starport really gives the impression of being on a hostile ice-world.

As for gameplay mechanics i would like to see the trade and mining system improved. Mining should be a more lucrative option available earlier in the game. Mining machines should come in much larger sizes as well. It would also be good to see more bulletin board variation. Picking people up from systems, seeing goods for sale as well as wanted (this should be limited as well, i know it was nice finding people willing to buy an unlimited amount of luxury goods for 3800 credits, but it was a bit unrealistic). Being able to leave goods in a hanger bay (for a fee) would also make a great deal of difference, as well as being able to do something with the vast amounts of wealth you can accumulate. Whilst playing FFEd3d i managed an above average rating, boa freighter and 7 million credits within 2 days of a new game. Non military recon missions looking for ruins and landmarks, as well as tourism missions, would also help spice things up a bit.


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Straker
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Re Clouds:

imho, an even better solution is to have MULTIPLE transparent spheres around the planet representing different cloud layers. 2D simplicity giving a semi-3D effect via layers.


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Pinback
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I was wondering if multiple transaparent spheres could be used too,also if they could be made to rotate

at different speeds to simulate the depth of the atmosphereIt could also be done as options if theres too much slow down on lower end machines.As I have said before I would like to see an orbit key added to the game,which

would put your ship in a standard orbit,which would allow the player to scan the surface

for mining or data collection.

One of the things I love doing in Frontiers if taking off from Mars flying over the city then

up the side of Olympus Mons,through the clouds,switch to the outside view,then accelerate

out the atmosphere. 😀 Its just one of the thing you can not do in newer games.


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Ezelite
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Orbit could be achieved in about 3-4 steps with engines as powerful as the ones available in the elite universe. You can reach orbital speeds in a matter of seconds, and fuel efficiency is totally irrelevant on those scales. If an orbit autopilot were included, it would be helpful to have a variety of options; polar, stationary(space eleveators???), low/high, retrograde and so on. Polar orbits would be most useful if you had to scan for mineral data, as it allows for toatal surface coverage. Im sure it would also be a nice feature if it were possible to deploy satellites in orbit. The universe is MASSIVE, and empty. Maybe ive been watching too many episodes of Deadwood but i want to go out there and stake a claim!


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dertien
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FINALLY... YES, I could let go easily of GLfrontier if this one comes out. Looks like this game is going to have the thing that the X-series misses....

gameplay.

Well done, and please keep it up and alive.

Steve


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dertien
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Hi everyone.

Here's a link to the classic ships from elite, revamped and normalmapped for oolite. They look awesome ingame. They however do not have any landing gears. Griff is redoing all the ships for oolite now in 'normalmapped version'

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Griff_Industries

In Silent Hunter 3, which is a naval simulation btw, you could add extra ships, by adding them in their own folder, and an entry in the shiplist.txt file. The game would then pick up that ship from the shiplist.txt and spawn it ingame in the campaign.

It would be cool to have that in pioneer too, so everyone could import (if they so desired) additional ships, and buildings, or replace the originals completely.


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Pinback
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Has anyone come up with some new sound for the game,I see it uses the wav format.


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