!! Pioneer Question Time !! - Ask them here

[Geraldine]

Hi SneaksieFirstly welcome to the SSC Personally, I would like see kinetic weapons, rail guns, mini guns and the like make an appearance where you would have to manage ammo stores and recoil when you fire them. The bigger the gun, the bigger the recoil. Also anti ship missiles used in space might work better if they were round with thrusters covering their surface rather than traditionally shaped. That way, they could quickly change direction. Traditionally shaped missiles can still use fins to vector the missiles exhaust but its turning circle would be bigger. If you fire a round missile, the target has little chance to evade.

[Brianetta]

I can't imagine taking rail guns or mini guns into space with the serious intention to use them as weapons. The recoil would be ridiculous; you'd have to carry pretty much as many kilos of propellant as you are planning to carry bullets, just to counteract the recoil and avoid winding up lost in space.We're using reactionless engines, though, so I suppose that our guns would use exactly the same magic.

[Gfamad]

Hello everybody !Does anyone know where we can find the config file for the Mac OSX version ? I would like to desactivate the Antialiasing because of a performance drop compared to Alpha17 (Macbook air 11'' 2011 version).Thanks in advance.

[Geraldine]

Brianetta wrote:
I can't imagine taking rail guns or mini guns into space with the serious intention to use them as weapons. The recoil would be ridiculous; you'd have to carry pretty much as many kilos of propellant as you are planning to carry bullets, just to counteract the recoil and avoid winding up lost in space.We're using reactionless engines, though, so I suppose that our guns would use exactly the same magic.
True, except that rail guns don't use propellant but mag rails instead to accelerate their projectiles. And as for the ammo weight, the projectile does not need to be massive if its relative closing speed between ships is Mach 8 Its going to do plenty damage, likely going right through the hull! :twisted:http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/4231461And Gfamad? I cannot say for sure if this applies to the Mac version, but in Windows the config file is in the same directory as the save files. Perhaps someone could confirm if the Mac version is the same?

[robn]

Gfamad wrote:
Does anyone know where we can find the config file for the Mac OSX version ? I would like to desactivate the Antialiasing because of a performance drop compared to Alpha17 (Macbook air 11'' 2011 version).
I don't have a Mac so I can't test, but according to the source it should be in Library/Application Support/Pioneer in your home directory. I hope that means something to you

[Gfamad]

Thanks a lot Geralidne and Robn. If found the Library folder at the end. It is hidden, so here is the tip to access it:Finder -> Go to... and then write "~/Library" without quotes.Thanks again.

[Brianetta]

Geraldine wrote:
True, except that rail guns don't use propellant but mag rails instead to accelerate their projectiles.
I mention the propellant as fuel for the engines that will need to correct for the recoil of the magnetic gun. I do know what a railgun is; I've even tried (and failed) to build one. Like anything that exerts a force on a projectile, it exerts recoil. That's Newton's second law. Net momentum in any closed system cannot change, so if you send bullets in one direction, you send the gun (and anything bolted to it) in the other. You can compensate by throwing propellant (more bullets, exhaust from a rocket, irritating passengers) in the opposite direction at an appropriate speed.

[Geraldine]

Ah, I see what you mean now Brainetta. Yes to use a rail gun effectively is not only going to require skill, but use more fuel too, but Pioneer already has very powerful engines on all of its ships. A few blips of main thrust should negate most of that recoil, um a bit Wouldn't it be great though if the ship would shake a little when you did open up with it As for the passengers being miffed, they would be even more miffed if the ship there on got blown to bits! And yes I see what your hinting at here in avoiding combat while carrying them, maybe a feature request? Dip in rep (not Elite rating) and less money from passengers if you get involved in combat?Finally, you built a rail gun? What happened, why didn't it work?

[Brianetta]

It didn't work because the principles of a railgun require a sweet-spot compromise between a load of conflicting physics. Mother nature doesn't want to launch a chunk of metal at high speed, and I couldn't talk her round.What compromises? Well, the magnetic acceleration requires a powerful magnetic field, which must be provided by induction in the rails. You need a ludicrously high current between the rails and across the (conductive) projectile. Even if your rails don't promptly buckle under the attractive forces and become one rail (my biggest problem) then the current required will tend to cause the projectile to weld itself to the rails if there's anything but the very closest contact. Close contact means high friction, of course, so if you get a good contact your projectile doesn't want to get going at all.Frankly, it left me understanding why railguns aren't standard weapons. They're an engineering nightmare, and mine was a tiny one. I've read that big ones have all the problems multiplied, including the cost. My little one only required a lead acid battery, and would in theory have lobbed its little metal slug across the room (not very quickly). The biggest ones made require a compulsator (yeah, I had to look that up) to provide the kind of DC current needed. The rounds needed a sabot (which tended to vaporise), and would leave at the kind of speeds that would raise eyebrows in the military. I wasn't trying to build a weapon, so much as a toy.

[fluffyfreak]

Geraldine wrote:
Finally, you built a rail gun? What happened, why didn't it work?
The police caught him first, that profile photo isn't for fun y'know, it's where they keep him now, well out of the range of any mischief Seriously though the recoil argument doesn't necessarily hold water. If we're firing plasma then it too has mass and being a compressed gas need accelerating to even higher speeds than a railgun projectile which is at least a solid blob.So "realistically" missiles make the most sense for ship to ship combat.Long range firepower between capital ships would probably be railguns because there's no warning or chance to evade the shot.Minigun/vulcan/etc would only make a limited sense for very close, i.e. 1 to 2 km, range between small ship and as anti-missile weapons like the goal-keeper/phalanx systems - maybe if we ever get around to sorting out turrets this could in fact be one good use/argument for them.Lasers, we don't really have them, we have some kind of plasma at the moment maybe there should be some renaming to avoid confusion?Or perhaps we can add in some limited Laser weapons in the future.Or whoever wants them could add them in?Andy

[Geraldine]

Still a great achievement Brianetta. I was looking at a you tube vid of the one the American Navy are building. Its scary stuff. They want a 64 Mega Joule version! Anyways back on topic Yes it would be good to have other weapons and turrets for use in Pioneer. Its one of the things I have noticed (across some forums among all the positive comments about the game so far, is growing criticism about the weapons. I try and explain its an open source project and its up to people with the know how to get involved. I guess there is no pleasing some people . Personally, I think Pioneer is developing nicely. Features and other things that have appeared so far make perfect sense. The planets look nice as do the stars, the models are functional and getting better all the time. Some of those shots of the possible new UI look very nice indeed! Hope to see that soon. I would put all that before the weapons. After all, its nice just to go out and explore and have a relaxing flight without worrying your going to be attacked all the time. However, one thing that does bug me though, it's something about the flight model. When you switch (hope I get the flight mode correct this time ) from manual flight mode to computer speed control mode, is that the ship lurches toward wherever the mouse pointer happens to be. If I center the mouse right on the cross hairs there is no movement switching between the modes. Also, I have mentioned before about the ship automatically going into computer speed control mode on take off to help new players (but only in this situation, nowhere else like combat for example) with their first flight. I know these are small things compared to some other issues, but could these be looked at in the future?

[ThornEel]

Hello everyone, and first, thank you for developing Pioneer! I already spent quite some times exploring this wonderful full-sized space, and will probably spend even more later. Now, I have a million questions and suggestions (most of which were probably already asked), here's some of them.Do you intend to make a mouse-control for piloting? Changing direction with the keyboard lack precision, which makes, say, combat very difficult.Here is the best system I saw so far : when moving the mouse, you move a 'cursor' crosshair indicating the direction you want the ship to point at. (If the 'cursor' is outside of the screen, it is replaced with an arrow, whose length indicates how far from the border it is.) Then, the ship fires its thrusters to point there as best as it can. I saw other systems, but this one is clearly the best, IMO.So, have you any plans for something like that? Or do you want to keep it the old way, for the sake of the challenge? Or is it complicated to code?Staying combat-related, why are the bolts so slow? I don't mind them having a finite speed instead of a hit-scan (which could break fighting gameplay), but every single space game I played at had bolts at least two time faster, if not much more, and it makes battles more dynamic. So, is there a particular reason for that?I read somewhere that it would be very difficult to generate a skybox with the 'true' stars in it. Could you detail why?How will in-system jumps work?My competences are mostly with web thingies like PHP, and UI design/ergonomics, and only basic skills in C/C++. Apart from making suggestions, is there something I could do to help if I find the time?Oh, and some alphas ago, I found something very strange on Triton (IIRC). It was a long line on the ground, like a shallow cliff a dozen meters high. But it was completely rectilinear, and made by a succession of small highs and red-coloured (still IIRC) lows. It made me think about a zip, somehow. It was absolutely fascinating. Chances to find it were negligible, as it was only some meters large on a remote satellite, and it gave me a sense of wonder, what was it, why was it here, who created it... Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to where it was exactly, which alpha it was, or simply taking screenshots.So, was it a bug? Was it intentional? Is it still there, somewhere? Are there other things like that elsewhere?By the way, don't try too hard to make it a realistic game. Some people spend time and efforts trying to foresee what space battles will look like (ex: here or here). And the conclusion is that there won't be space fighters, that battles will be done with constellations of autonomous/remote controlled weapon platforms without human intervention below strategic scale, that stealth in space is impossible (though I think I found a loophole), that light seconds will be the unit for short ranges... So it's simply impossible to make Pioneer realistic.Making it believable, on the other hand...I have many questions and suggestions left, but let's not lengthen this post more.

[WaveMotion]

Welcome to the forum, ThornEel!
ThornEel wrote:
Do you intend to make a mouse-control for piloting? Changing direction with the keyboard lack precision, which makes, say, combat very difficult.Here is the best system I saw so far : when moving the mouse, you move a 'cursor' crosshair indicating the direction you want the ship to point at. (If the 'cursor' is outside of the screen, it is replaced with an arrow, whose length indicates how far from the border it is.) Then, the ship fires its thrusters to point there as best as it can. I saw other systems, but this one is clearly the best, IMO.So, have you any plans for something like that? Or do you want to keep it the old way, for the sake of the challenge? Or is it complicated to code?
That sounds exactly like the system Pioneer already has! Just right-click and drag. You'll see a yellow cursor that the ship will point to.
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Staying combat-related, why are the bolts so slow? I don't mind them having a finite speed instead of a hit-scan (which could break fighting gameplay), but every single space game I played at had bolts at least two time faster, if not much more, and it makes battles more dynamic. So, is there a particular reason for that?
Nothing about combat is really nailed down yet. The plan by the devs is to hold off nailing down any details about combat until the systems are in place to have it happening more often in-game, such as in-system FTL. I agree that the speed of blaster fire should be boosted when we come to it, though (I'm imagining that bullet-like fire in the style of Battlestar Galactica would be appropriate.)
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I read somewhere that it would be very difficult to generate a skybox with the 'true' stars in it. Could you detail why?
I don't know too much about that. It would be great to do something like Infinity claims to have and be able to select stars to hyperspace to by clicking it from the ordinary camera view, but it would require loading up every system within a bunch of light-years from your current position, which may be tricky.
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How will in-system jumps work?
Figuring out the details of in-system faster-than-light travel is still a matter of active discussion in our IRC channel. Here is a good summary of the discussion so far.
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My competences are mostly with web thingies like PHP, and UI design/ergonomics, and only basic skills in C/C++. Apart from making suggestions, is there something I could do to help if I find the time?
I've just started contributing a little to Pioneer myself, and the advice that I heard was "start a game, fly around for 10 minutes, write down things that bother you, go into the code and fix them." If you'd like inspiration, we have an issue tracker where we note problems and feature requests. There's still a lot of very low-hanging fruit, and patches are welcome from anybody!
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Oh, and some alphas ago, I found something very strange on Triton (IIRC). It was a long line on the ground, like a shallow cliff a dozen meters high. But it was completely rectilinear, and made by a succession of small highs and red-coloured (still IIRC) lows. It made me think about a zip, somehow. It was absolutely fascinating. Chances to find it were negligible, as it was only some meters large on a remote satellite, and it gave me a sense of wonder, what was it, why was it here, who created it... Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to where it was exactly, which alpha it was, or simply taking screenshots.So, was it a bug? Was it intentional? Is it still there, somewhere? Are there other things like that elsewhere?
I don't know much about this subject, but word among devs is that terrain generation still has some problems and could stand to be improved. There was a big terrain refactor some time ago, but work hasn't stopped. Hopefully some of the more longstanding devs could tell us more.
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By the way, don't try too hard to make it a realistic game. Some people spend time and efforts trying to foresee what space battles will look like (ex: here or here). And the conclusion is that there won't be space fighters, that battles will be done with constellations of autonomous/remote controlled weapon platforms without human intervention below strategic scale, that stealth in space is impossible (though I think I found a loophole), that light seconds will be the unit for short ranges... So it's simply impossible to make Pioneer realistic.Making it believable, on the other hand...
I too don't think human-controlled dogfights are realistic at all, given that any seriously-designed AI would cream any human in Newtonian space combat. But personally I still think we can create a fun combat system that's still believable as long as we stick to two assumptions:
[*:25726jfk]There are no combat AIs in-universe.[*:25726jfk]There is no instantaneous weapon fire.Hope I cleared some stuff up!

[robn]

ThornEel wrote:
Hello everyone, and first, thank you for developing Pioneer! I already spent quite some times exploring this wonderful full-sized space, and will probably spend even more later.
Welcome! Glad you're enjoying our game
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I read somewhere that it would be very difficult to generate a skybox with the 'true' stars in it. Could you detail why?
Its not particularly difficult, though possibly difficult to do quickly as we have to generate all those stars. So far it hasn't really been seen as necessary and there's not quite enough interest from the current devs or demand from the community for it. It'd be an interesting experiment if anyone wants to try.
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My competences are mostly with web thingies like PHP, and UI design/ergonomics, and only basic skills in C/C++. Apart from making suggestions, is there something I could do to help if I find the time?
As WaveMotion noted, there's loads of stuff on the tracker, and probably several trackers worth of stuff that isn't there. There's also the misson module system which is all Lua code, so if you have any crazy mission ideas that might be a fun place to start.There are ideas kicking around that might tickle your fancy given your experience with web and UI stuff. We have some documented ideas for network features that would essentially be an (optional) integration with a set of web services, maybe with a user-facing website around it. There's nothing be done on it right now, but if its something you're interested in you might like to have a think about what's possible there. If you got serious about it then I'll make the effort to get a HTTP client into Pioneer so you have all the tools you need available.With the UI, I'm currently in the middle of refactoring the code to make it pretty and full of swishy special effects, and as part of that I'm about to start doing some mockups and paper prototypes in an effort to improve the general layout of things (I have some background in web usability). I don't have any solid plans as yet and it does require a fair bit of familiarity with the game, but if that's something you're interested in I'd be very happy to hand some of that off - I've got a lot on my plate as it is
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Oh, and some alphas ago, I found something very strange on Triton (IIRC). It was a long line on the ground, like a shallow cliff a dozen meters high. But it was completely rectilinear, and made by a succession of small highs and red-coloured (still IIRC) lows. It made me think about a zip, somehow. It was absolutely fascinating. Chances to find it were negligible, as it was only some meters large on a remote satellite, and it gave me a sense of wonder, what was it, why was it here, who created it... Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to where it was exactly, which alpha it was, or simply taking screenshots.So, was it a bug? Was it intentional? Is it still there, somewhere? Are there other things like that elsewhere?
With the exception of Earth, every planet in Pioneer is algorithmically generated. What you saw was not intentional, may or may not still be there (we tweak terrain constantly), and may or may not be as the result of a bug (though it will be some tiny math glitch that caused some knock-on effect, not something that produced that directly). And yes, there's loads of other interesting things to look at, most of which have never been seen before. You might like to check out bchimself's Let's play: Pioneer series. He visits some interesting places.
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By the way, don't try too hard to make it a realistic game. Some people spend time and efforts trying to foresee what space battles will look like (ex: here or here). And the conclusion is that there won't be space fighters, that battles will be done with constellations of autonomous/remote controlled weapon platforms without human intervention below strategic scale, that stealth in space is impossible (though I think I found a loophole), that light seconds will be the unit for short ranges... So it's simply impossible to make Pioneer realistic.Making it believable, on the other hand...
We love Project Rho in particular, and do borrow ideas from there. Pioneer isn't all about realism though. We're still trying to make a good game, and if we find that there's no way to make it realistic AND fun, then we'll happily tone down the realism.Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts!I have many questions and suggestions left, but let's not lengthen this post more.

[s2odan]

robn wrote:

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Oh, and some alphas ago, I found something very strange on Triton (IIRC). It was a long line on the ground, like a shallow cliff a dozen meters high. But it was completely rectilinear, and made by a succession of small highs and red-coloured (still IIRC) lows. It made me think about a zip, somehow. It was absolutely fascinating. Chances to find it were negligible, as it was only some meters large on a remote satellite, and it gave me a sense of wonder, what was it, why was it here, who created it... Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention to where it was exactly, which alpha it was, or simply taking screenshots.So, was it a bug? Was it intentional? Is it still there, somewhere? Are there other things like that elsewhere?
With the exception of Earth, every planet in Pioneer is algorithmically generated. What you saw was intentional, may or may not still be there (we tweak terrain constantly), and may or may not be as the result of a bug (though it will be some tiny math glitch that caused some knock-on effect, not something that produced that directly). And yes, there's loads of other interesting things to look at, most of which have never been seen before. You might like to check out bchimself's Let's play: Pioneer series. He visits some interesting places.
Ah its most assuredly a big bad bug These days I ignore it, both Tom and I have looked and have no proper idea why it gets made Every planet should have at least one and its been there through several terrain re-writes which is pretty odd .There is a really ancient post made about a year and a half ago somewhere where I mention this actually, in the post IIRC I called it the Great-wall of Mercury (Since thats where I found one)Ah, quoted for extra emphasis

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(though it will be some tiny math glitch that caused some knock-on effect, not something that produced that directly)

[ThornEel]

WaveMotion wrote:
That sounds exactly like the system Pioneer already has! Just right-click and drag. You'll see a yellow cursor that the ship will point to.
Thank you, no I feel a little bit stupider. Piloting is easier, though. Now, I can take down one police ship with a large plasma accelerator, shields and boosters before being turned into dust.Hey, I was not cheating with money! I was ... testing combat with high end gear.
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I too don't think human-controlled dogfights are realistic at all, given that any seriously-designed AI would cream any human in Newtonian space combat. But personally I still think we can create a fun combat system that's still believable as long as we stick to two assumptions:
[*:298z43pe]There are no combat AIs in-universe.[*:298z43pe]There is no instantaneous weapon fire.

Yes, that sounds like good base assumption (plus some well-chosen magitek, like hyperspace and absurdly-efficient thrusters). A coherent setting based on those should be quite interesting. I have a habit of nitpicking about coherence and believability in SF settings, but I'll try to come up with solutions instead of only problems
robn wrote:
There's also the misson module system which is all Lua code, so if you have any crazy mission ideas that might be a fun place to start.
Some friends told me how Lua is a groovy language. Maybe it's the occasion see that.
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There are ideas kicking around that might tickle your fancy given your experience with web and UI stuff. We have some documented ideas for network features that would essentially be an (optional) integration with a set of web services, maybe with a user-facing website around it. There's nothing be done on it right now, but if its something you're interested in you might like to have a think about what's possible there. If you got serious about it then I'll make the effort to get a HTTP client into Pioneer so you have all the tools you need available.With the UI, I'm currently in the middle of refactoring the code to make it pretty and full of swishy special effects, and as part of that I'm about to start doing some mockups and paper prototypes in an effort to improve the general layout of things (I have some background in web usability). I don't have any solid plans as yet and it does require a fair bit of familiarity with the game, but if that's something you're interested in I'd be very happy to hand some of that off - I've got a lot on my plate as it is
The network feature is an interesting idea, but doing prototypes for the general layout sounds quite interesting. I may also go with in-game UI and HUD prototype, but you will have to stop me if something is too complicated or impossible to code. Even when knowing the technical aspect, I tend to forget it when making mockups (officially, to not give limitations to the thinking).
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Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts!
Be warned that this will encourage me! I'll try to not spam the forums, though.Also, another question : as I'm not that often on IRC, if I find an issue, bug, unexpected behaviour, possible amelioration or new feature, in which case should I post in the forum, or directly create a Git issue (when I'll have learned how to use it)?
s2odan wrote:
Ah its most assuredly a big bad bug These days I ignore it, both Tom and I have looked and have no proper idea why it gets made Every planet should have at least one and its been there through several terrain re-writes which is pretty odd .There is a really ancient post made about a year and a half ago somewhere where I mention this actually, in the post IIRC I called it the Great-wall of Mercury (Since thats where I found one)
Well, bug or not, it was really fascinating, one of my best memories with Pioneer so far. I'll try to find it back one of those days...Thank you all for your fast answers! I'll try to come back soon with some more questions, suggestions and hopefully one or two UI mockups. And maybe after some digging into the code...

[WaveMotion]

ThornEel wrote:
Also, another question : as I'm not that often on IRC, if I find an issue, bug, unexpected behaviour, possible amelioration or new feature, in which case should I post in the forum, or directly create a Git issue (when I'll have learned how to use it)?
A git issue is the best way to note problems or submit code.

[robn]

ThornEel wrote:
I have a habit of nitpicking about coherence and believability in SF settings, but I'll try to come up with solutions instead of only problems
Nitpicking is good. We like realism. Just remember that realism has to be balanced with fun. If something realistic would make for a boring game, then feel free to grind up some pixie bones and mix it in with the military fuel
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The network feature is an interesting idea, but doing prototypes for the general layout sounds quite interesting. I may also go with in-game UI and HUD prototype, but you will have to stop me if something is too complicated or impossible to code. Even when knowing the technical aspect, I tend to forget it when making mockups (officially, to not give limitations to the thinking).
Sure. I have some ideas of my own that need to be written down. I'll create a new design issue in the tracker and we can work through that.
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Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts!
Be warned that this will encourage me! I'll try to not spam the forums, though.
If that's what you like to do, do it - that's what these forums are for
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Also, another question : as I'm not that often on IRC, if I find an issue, bug, unexpected behaviour, possible amelioration or new feature, in which case should I post in the forum, or directly create a Git issue (when I'll have learned how to use it)?
Something we like to say in IRC is "if its not on Github, it doesn't exist". I try to read every post on the forum, but some days I miss things. The issue tracker is the best place for things that you want addressed. Brianetta is our dedicated triage nurse, and he works hard to make sure that every issue that comes through is tested, tagged and discussed as necessary. Even if we don't action an issue for months or even years you get a guarantee that it will be addressed and discussed before its closed.Of course, the forum is often a better place for discussion and idle speculation, and has a larger audience, so its often preferable to talk about things here. If you want something addressed, it has to go to issues first. If you can't or won't put it into the tracker, then its up to you to hassle a dev to do it for you. We like polite people and are not above bribes
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And maybe after some digging into the code...

[Overlord]

Firstly I know nothing about coding/programming but was just wondering how complicated it would be to have analogue controls? I use a controller with the keys mapped to buttons etc because I just can't get used to mouse+keyboarding. Would be nice to have that varied degree of movement you get from analogue sticks. Great work by the way, not spent much time on it yet but I'm sure I will.

[fluffyfreak]

Overlord wrote:
Firstly I know nothing about coding/programming but was just wondering how complicated it would be to have analogue controls? I use a controller with the keys mapped to buttons etc because I just can't get used to mouse+keyboarding. Would be nice to have that varied degree of movement you get from analogue sticks. Great work by the way, not spent much time on it yet but I'm sure I will.
Very possible, for controlling the ship anyway. It won't affect the actual handling though as that's driven by the physics. I could certainly add windows XInput (Xbox360 joypad) based stuff quite easily as I have a handy wrapper for that but I don't know about the Linux/Mac side of things or handling generic joystick configuration screens.Andy