Pioneer: new GPL Frontier Elite 2 style game

[Nic]

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

[Ezelite]

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.

[Pinback]

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 aboutfeatures we like to see in the game.

[Ezelite]

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.

[Straker]

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.

[Pinback]

I was wondering if multiple transaparent spheres could be used too,also if they could be made to rotateat 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,whichwould put your ship in a standard orbit,which would allow the player to scan the surfacefor mining or data collection.One of the things I love doing in Frontiers if taking off from Mars flying over the city thenup the side of Olympus Mons,through the clouds,switch to the outside view,then accelerateout the atmosphere. Its just one of the thing you can not do in newer games.

[Ezelite]

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!

[dertien]

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

[dertien]

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'[url]http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Griff_Industries[/url] 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.

[Pinback]

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

[s2odan]

I just made a couple of soundFX, I have attached them.Made with Reason 4.0 messing about with filters and various distortion fx.

[OSH]

I'm also impressed, but only because I see this brilliant screens. I can't launch this game under my system...after launch I got a message: Runtime error!The application has requested Runtime to terminate it in an unusal way.Somebody has some suggestions? My system: XP SP 2, Radeon X1550 1 GB RAM, Athlon64 2 GHz

[Pinback]

OSH wrote:
I'm also impressed, but only because I see this brilliant screens. I can't launch this game under my system...after launch I got a message: Runtime error!The application has requested Runtime to terminate it in an unusal way.Somebody has some suggestions? My system: XP SP 2, Radeon X1550 1 GB RAM, Athlon64 2 GHz
Your computer should be able to run it,don't know why you are getting a runtime error,but itmay have some thing to do with files the game needs and which are missing on your system.Must try out S20dan sound effects

[OSH]

PINBACK wrote:
Your computer should be able to run it,don't know why you are getting a runtime error,but itmay have some thing to do with files the game needs and which are missing on your system.
The question is: which files...

[Potsmoke66]

if you download the game(demo) from here you should have a running versionhttp://nic.dnsalias.com/pioneer.zipIf you have trouble loading the game you may need the MS Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Runtime!http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=A5C84275-3B97-4AB7-A40D-3802B2AF5FC2&displaylang=enReadMe files are there to read ;)be shure that it is the only instance of MS visual studio (check installed software in user control panel)

[Potsmoke66]

pitching lights (leuchtfeuer), will do that for you more ships, under construction download of some ships(wip), in a allready useful environment: [url]http://privat293.web.officelive.com/Documents/pioneer_p66mod1.zip[/url] [url]http://www.spacesimcentral.com/downloads.php?view=detail&df_id=277[/url]

[Pinback]

Its been a while since we heard anything from Pioneer,are they still working on it.

[Geraldine]

I sincerely hope so Pinback, but you are correct, its all gone a little quiet. I hope tomm will provide us with any updates on Pioneer's progress soon. <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_confused.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':?' />

[s2odan]

Don't lose heart, Geraldine. I'm on the mailing list and it seems that the guys are nearing the release of the next alpha.
Tomm wrote:
Hi people,I am almost ready announce alpha2. (I just want to integrate more of thenew sound effects).I'd like windows people to test that it still works and doesn't have anyvery easy to reproduce crashes.Since alpha 1:- cylinder, tapered cylinder, sphere, sphere_slice, textures, wavefrontobj loader for models- much better docking animations- autopilot functions to put ships in various orbits- c++ mission code replaced with lua modules. missions that previouslyexisted have been ported to this and more or less completed.- ogg sound effectshave fun
Shouldn't be too long now

[Geraldine]

Oh that's a relief! <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> I was getting worried there, thank you for that update S20dan <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//wink3.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' /> Alpha 2 sounds great! <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_cool.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt='8-)' />