actually the frontier manual is no good this game is actually i think well beyond it its a open source project started from sctrach to have the spirit of frontier only. That said back to previous comment about the geo domes its a good idea might be usseful for later colony management to to have somewhere to stash the worker bees

Whatever game you have pictured in your mind as you write this, it isn't Pioneer.

One needs hydrogen in their cargo to jump to hyperspace, I see.

Yes, hydrogen is the basic fuel for your hyperdrive.

Hello again!

I was wondering how one goes about making their own .hmap file!

I tried to just save my intended height map as "name.hmap" and it didn't work.

Also, are the heightmaps in greyscale or RGB?

Any assistance is greatly appreciated! = D

Heightmaps are one of the few dark corners left in Pioneer. The heightmap format is a Pioneer-specific thing and nobody really remembers where the earth map came from. s20dan has done a little bit of work with new maps for Mars etc.

The format (such that it is) is documented here:

https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pion ... heightmaps

The code that actually produces terrain height values from this map is:

https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pion ... ed.cpp#L28

If there was a lot of interest in heightmaps then we'd probably do more to make it sane. At the moment thought maps are really of limited usefulness. They'll be good to make Earth, Mars and the Moon look right but there doesn't seem to be a great deal of point past that.

Let us know if you come up with anything interesting!

very little 🙂 Ae from irc was the one who figured out the format and managed to convert the mars heightmap.

Hello all,

I cannot find any "underground spaceport" on planets , only launchpads !

Can someone tell me where there is one if someone has seen it ?

Thanks.

Same thing. They're buried a little bit.

Yes I remeber have seen some in previous alpha, but in the current one, can you give an example with the spaceport /planet/ system name ?

Enki Catena, Sol. Beware, the doors might be underground, too.

You are exact, I have been there and I saw the image beneath :

But what is starnge is that in the lua file (00_sol.lua) for this starport, it is written :

So How can you know this one was underground ?

I see a shader bug - you can see all the parts of buildings which should be buried, including the foundations. Believe me, half of that station's landing pad is buried. Landing there can be problematic, depending which pad you get assigned. (-:

Here's what mine looks like (bear in mind that I'm running a more recent version of Pioneer). Note that things being underground isn't rare here.

I think one thing needs to be clarified. The pads aren't intentionally underground. They just turn out that way sometimes due to the procedural way things are generated. Btw, I can't see shaders either. That bug occurs with some ATI cards.

The shader "bug" is about the way depth and distance is calculated. It needs to be analysed and fixed, but it doesn't affect gameplay.

The real problem is that buildings are sometimes placed under the terrain. When a building is placed, the terrain height is checked at a single point and the centre point of the building model is positioned at that point. If the terrain surrounding that point is steep and the building is wide, then the edges of the building can go under the ground. Its very noticeable with stations because they're huge and the central point of the model is the at the tower, which is always far from the pads.

Issue #7 documents our work on this problem so far. It is not easy to fix. There's other problems and shortcomings in our terrain engine as well as this so I've been reading as everything I can find on realtime procedural terrain generation over the last few days. The beginnings of a plan are starting to form in my head, but nothing much to report yet, and certainly no commitments. Something will be done, that I can promise. I just don't know what or when yet.

Hello,

I'm trying myself on a new job in Pioneer : Mining 🙂

To do this, I have read in an other thread that I need a mining laser + cargo scoop.

It's Ok for the mining laser (17 Mw).

Cargo scoop is present in "Ship equipment" menu but is never available to equip the ship

(there is no button next to it to install it onboard! )

I tried to put it on:

[*:1tgvznnw]default Eagle

[*:1tgvznnw]StarDust

[*:1tgvznnw]Lanner

[*:1tgvznnw]FlowerFairy

[*:1tgvznnw]Natrix

[*:1tgvznnw]Ladybird

How to do ?

There are currently only four ships that can fit a cargo scoop: Eagle MK-IV "Bomber", Adder, Constrictor, and Sidewinder.

The way that the scoop works in the game engine requires that the ship model has a scoop on it and those four are the only ones that do.

OK, thanks for the info.

I will try it this evening. 🙂

Well, I tried (on Phobos and on Nereid) and it's quite very hard to catch any floating mineral.

Wonder if there was a special key to activate the cargo scoop functionnality ?

No, scooping happens when the material collides with the surface of the cargo scoop.

Using the target relative set speed mode makes it easier to catch them. Hold CTRL while targeting the material, then press F5 to enter set speed mode.

Hello, its great to see that Frontier is being improved after all these years.

However, i just started playing it (visuals are great!) and almost immediately fired a laser to see its effect. To my dismay it fired some kind of a moving red blob and not the ray.

I assume this was changed from original?

Is there a way to return normal lasers, maybe by editing a lua script? I can't stomach space games where 'laser rays' fly like moving objects like in Star Wars. 🙁

No. That would be a fundamental physics change, rather than a quick job. Opinions are divided on the subject, but the Pioneer devs have basically made the decision to go with "laser bolts" for gameplay reasons.

Hi Sneaksie, welcome to Pioneer and to the SSC forums.

There's no way to return it the Frontier style. There are still vestiges of some raycasting code from the beginning of the project, but it would take a fair bit of work to bring it back to life.

I'm curious though. What exactly is your objection to the projectile setup? Certainly they're not "lasers" in the real-life sense but then neither were Frontier's - a true laser light "beam" would not be visible from side-on. We use the word "pulse cannon" in the code more often than we use "laser" (though of course "laser" is still prominent in the UI) and we tend to think of the projectiles as sub-light blobs of energy/plasma/antimatter/etc.

Thanks for the info, it's a pity that old lasers were ditched. I understand that developers have their own vision of space game they want to implement, but i had hoped they at least left a hidden option somewhere.

In my opinion, Frontier and FFE nailed down how the space engagement will (?) happen - 'jousting', momentary (speed of light) effect weapons and secondary weapons like missiles, ECMs and so on. It may be hard to survive when you and your enemies have momentary effect weapons, but its far more likely that future space ships will have something similar than plasma weapons. Lasers exist, while 'plasma', 'pulse' and any other usual space game weapons don't. It's not clear whether a way to stabilize a plasma ball even in vacuum will be ever found. Stabilization is quite a problem, because of it we still don't have thermonuclear reactors.

Most space arcade games have 'flying object' weapons where you must lead the target to hit it. I think it all started since first Wing Commander - space ships were made to behave like WW2 era fighters and an entire game played like dumbed-down WW2 dogfight - turning, evading, drag and so on. This model continued in most space games - Freespace series for example. Shoot-em-up gameplay in them was very captivating on its own accord, but it was quite laughable to read the description of a first weapon that said something like 'laser cannon, projectile speed 220 m/s'.

On the other hand, Frontier and FFE (and a few other games) offered a LOT more - Newtonian physics, almost real galaxy and 'real' weapons. If its a laser, its 'projectile speed' can be only 300000km/s in my opinion. Its a pity that Pioneer developers removed what i think was one of the unique game features. Well, maybe you would implement an option to turn normal lasers on in some future release. Unfortunately, it seems i would have to return to glfrontier and jjffe (maybe ffe d3d) for my space fix, Pioneer looks georgeus though 🙁 Thanks for reading 🙂

Not wanting to get overly picky, but plasma does exist and is easy enough to manufacture in a microwave oven. It can be accelerated magnetically, and it's extremely hot. It'd be a great weapon for use in very close quarters, although it's arguable that such close quarters are rare in space.

I suspect that the only weapon that would be seriously employed on board a spacecraft for use against other spacecraft would be a self propelled missile. It doesn't suffer conic dispersal, doesn't impart a reactive force on the launcher, doesn't heat up the launcher (if properly engineered) and the technology is simple and well proven.