!! Pioneer Question Time !! - Ask them here

[fluffyfreak]

@spazeman,Sorry not sure how this system works.It looks like the number of races is hard coded in "FaceVideoLink.cpp" and that there's a fixed number of genders.Probably not going to be as easy as you'd hoped. Don't give up hope though  It might just require a bit of tinkering to add a "species" set of options and then a bit of hard work to add all of the various options.If you could describe, or share, what you're trying to do then we can discuss it a bit and I might be able to make some time to work on it. Andy

[Arrakkh]

where can I find a combat tutorial? It looks similar like in Oolite, but more difficult. My missiles never hit the target, and using energy beam is difficult too.

[Vuzz]

=> use the force, young padawan :blind:

[spazeman]

Cheers Fluffy! I've basically just started photoshopping the existing facegen picture files. I think you've got what I was trying to do. Just replace the existing files and add a third sex/gender.

[Marcel]

Targeting tunnels are implemented in Pioneer. Press ESC or click pause twice to get to the blue screen, then select the Controls tab, and you'll see the button.I understand what you mean about the space dust giving you feedback about your motion. I remember jumping into a system in FE2 and skidding in sideways. I could tell by the space dust passing me from left to right. It was cool!I don't know if anyone is interested in coding it, but it presents some interesting possibilities.First of all, it wouldn't be something you could see with your eyes. Your HUD is displaying every bit of star soot around you, even though they're too small to affect your ship. Maybe it's tracking the atoms in the vacuum. It's 3200, why not?I'm not much of a programmer, but as I recall, in Frontier space dust was done by defining a bubble around the ship and pseudo-randomly generating the dust at the front of the bubble and moving it to the back where it disappeared when it reached the boundary. The speed at which the dust seemed to move bore little resemblance to the speed of the ship at high velocities or time acceleration.In FFED3D they made the space dust move with the motion of the ship. That made the dust disappear at higher velocities because it's moving too fast to see (or render).In Pioneer it could be made to work right by vastly expanding the size of the bubble. It would have to be huge to show movement at 1000kps and high time acceleration. This would add a lot of processing time. It could be mitigated by not attempting to draw dust specs that wouldn't have visible movement.

[Vuzz]

:crazy: :alcoholic:

[walterar]

@Biomechanoid You're absolutely crazy, and are in the right place. Welcome to Pioneer! :preved:

[Vuzz]

:smoke: :sarcastichand:

[XenonS]

Where are the planetary textures saved in Pioneer? Is it possible to interchange the textures from different versions, for example use the Genesia textures with Alpha 33 alone or Alpha 33 + Scout+ mod ? Or must planetary textures be downloaded separately? Thanks,XenonS

[robn]

There are no fixed planetary textures. They're generated during terrain generation. The only planets that are "fixed" are Earth and Moon, which use a custom heightmap format.

[XenonS]

Hi robn,sorry to disturb, caus' my question had a stupid background: I was flying away from Earth and didn't see any landscape, so I suspected that the texture didn't load or my settings were wrong. But it's all fine, maybe i should take an upgrade in Geography :)Another thing that I noticed, maybe an issue, is this: Playing Alpha 33, space station near Europa (Jupiter): 3 Police patrol ships; I selected one with left mouse and it stays selected forever, even when leaving the system. A bug? How do you deselect a ship target? The t command does nothing (or I'm using it at the wrong moment). Thanks,Xenon$

[XenonS]

The reason of your sudden acceleration is probably the change of the reference mass for which your speed is calculated (the change from planetary reference to system reference.) XenonS

[XenonS]

@Biomechanoid yeah Biomechanoid, you are welcome to do such tutorials, there's a lot to say about those topics :girlcrazy:I remember, many years ago when I played FFE, I was wondering how pirates were able to intercept a ship flying 50.000 km/s. The result is simple: it's impossible (in the real world). But then, with the Aniso Mod they came 3 at a time which made it almost impossible surviving without cheating. Also the laser sound always recalled me my last visit to the dentist :haha: (one must be tollerant with games of the 90s). @Pioneer devs,I really like to see the work achieved by the Pioneer team, especially the "enter in orbit" feature and the exact orbit calculation and display. Great work, chaps .I would highly welcome the Mining implementation as well as the Military faction missions from FE2 (Bombing + Photography missions), but Walterar has done exceptional work with Scout + already. Still I have to fly the difficult ones. Pioneer has already gone much further than FE2, mainly because of the nice ship models and overall planet textures. But I would say: The time has now come to focus on the *mission* aspect, all which can be mainly done with lua coding, although difficult, much harder than to insert the 107th model, IMO. Please give now all these models a decent occupation ! As a practical idea, for example, AA guns on the planet surface that protect a base against human missions, all such can be modded with a ship model in a way to fire from a fixed position, and also be destroyed producing a "crater" in the landscape that would vanish from memory once out of sight (I'm almost sure the engine will work that way).The hardest thing is to produce "temporary" objects like special ships doing specific things like flying a precise route around a base, planetary vehicle activity (modded ships, yeah !!) etc. But: it's not written anywhere that Pioneer could not load an extra game engine for that, not all game aspects have to be "transitory", I mean, for doing interesting missions, I wouldn't mind a loading time of 10-15 seconds to do them.Just some generic ideas of pre-coding to hopefully involve imagination. Great work,XenonS

[Vuzz]

:flood: :punish:

[fluffyfreak]

@BiomechanoidParagon isn't Pioneer, Paragon is based on the engine written for Pioneer. Tourists "Genesia" and Walterars "Scout+" are mods for Pioneer, Paragon goes a bit further in that it takes Pioneers source code and extends it.They still regularly pull the latest code from us with new features and bug fixes, and I'm hoping that we can pull some of their changes back into Pioneer where appropriate. Andy

[nda0046]

Hi, I'm somewhat new to Pioneer... when I hyperspace to some stars and then try to go to a planet, a hostile ship appears on the screen and tries to attack my ship(fine until then). But when doing this I'm going at almost 2300km/s, so I don't explain myself how the other ship maneuvers so fine at that speed. Could you give me some advice on how to fight these ships??

[XenonS]

nda, Hostile intercepts:in the real world any ship starting with 0 speed should not be able to intercept you. Just do a 1 second turn in another direction when flying at high speed, and this would screw up the enmie's intercept line, so: no intercept possible. However, David Braben when doing his Elite, FE2 (Pioneer is based on that) and FFE, has decided to ignore this for playability: in fact, if not ignoring this, a player would never encounter any ships and no activity in space would be possible. Ship combat:This is the only thing which really sucks in the Elite series IMO, it's the *magic* capabilities of enemy ships in combat: magic fast turns in your direction, 100% gun hits etc. etc., not very appealing and your destiny is to die quickly, unless: The solution is rather easy: the more shield generators you get, the harder it will be to shut you down, unfortunately they will also consume your cargo space. So, if you want to be on the secure side you must buy a ship of 100+ tons capacity and fill it with at least 10-12 Shield Generators. A scanner, cloud analyzer, good fire weapons, autopilot, ECM, 3 missiles should be standard for combat too. Hope this helps,XenonS

[nda0046]

Thanks, XenonS... So, combat is almost impossible on a regular ship(like the one which with you start in the game)??

[XenonS]

Thanks, XenonS... So, combat is almost impossible on a regular ship(like the one which with you start in the game)?? No, I wouldn't say that, because you could be up against only 1 enemy. The Advanced Scanner will tell you about the enemie's weapons and equipment, that's the first thing you should look at, so you know who you are up against.Fighting against multiple enemies, you'll have to be very skilled OR have a very letal equipment.If things go bad you can always hyperspace :haha: XenonS

[nda0046]

And to fight against an enemy, I should just try to face it... Or is in another way how i should do it??