Pioneer is programmed using C++, if you're on windows you can just grab Microsoft Visual C++ Express 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/visual-cpp-express . If you're on something else then one of the others is going to have to walk you through getting setup 🙂

GitHub, is just where the sourcecode is hosted in Git repository. It's how the project manages peoples contributions and versions.

The game internals are in C++.

Then there is the concept of modules, which are Lua scripts under data/modules. Missions are scripts. NPC trade ships are controlled by a script. The music player is controlled by a script. This is the place to start, if you have no programming experience but want to contribute to the game. You can learn by examining the existing modules, and reading this: https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pion ... -Scripting

Back to C++ is there any um open source c++ programs out there to use

What do you mean open source programs to use?

You need a compiler so that you can build the game. You do this after making any changes to the source code. I gave a link to the the compiler/IDE (GUI) that we use for Windows.

What operating system are you going to be using? Windows / Linux / Mac OSX?

For Windows you just need to start by installing the program I gave a link to earlier.

For Linux you will need to read to install GCC, this is usually pretty simple but feel free to ask here.

For Mac OSX you will need a copy of XCode.

There are instructions for getting the libraries required, and for building the game on the wiki here: https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/wiki/Getting-started-with-development for each of the supported operating systems.

C++ is going to be quite a bit harder than Lua

Andy