Just for Fun, Your Hometown!

[Geraldine]

@ Gernot & Fluffy Freak, yea you two are well safe! <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_lol.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' /> But I am sure you can understand Marcel's dilemma. If he keeps adding more and more starports, poor old PCs (like mine <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_redface.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':oops:' /> ) wont be able to cope. When you visit mother Earth you want it to be there in all it's glory with nice smooth framerates.

[Marcel]

The 4fps is with everything set to the max. With the city detail set to 'low' and everything else maxed out I get about 24fps. Starting a new game at Epsilon with all settings at maximum gives me 40fps. The problem seems to be that the cities are drawn with a high level of detail even when they are not in direct view below the horizon.I suppose I could limit it to the hometowns of the people who actually download and use it, putting in hometowns only by request.

[Potsmoke66]

what do you think how good that runs on my macbook? 1fps but i don't take that to serious, i guess we would all appreciate a improvement of that.

[Marcel]

1fps was what i got on my old computer starting a game @ Epsilon all maxed out. Actually, it may have been fewer than that. 1fps is probably the minimum that ctrl-i can report. I paid $350 for this used gamer machine, and it's well worth it to see Pioneer in all of its glory. The guy I bought it from just bought a new $3500 gamer machine to replace it.

[Potsmoke66]

phew, $3500 is a lot of money imo.while $350 is a good price.i know for certain people it can't be powerful enough. what is only good for you and me

[Marcel]

This is the hometowns addon for alpha 23. Thia addresses the problem I had with previous versions. If there were too many spaceports visible at the same time the frame rate dropped dramatically. It made travel around Europe practically unplayable. In this version the only spaceports visible are the ones that come with Pioneer, plus the ones that came with Frontier, plus the actual present day spaceports. This gives a nicely distributed population around the planet. So where are the hometowns? They're in there, I just disabled them all. All the surface spaceports are now listed in alphabetical order. If you want to enable your hometown you must open the 00_sol.lua file in a text editor and enable it yourself. This is simple to do. For example, my hometown is Eugene. In the file there is this 3 line listing;-- CustomSystemBody:new('Eugene', 'STARPORT_SURFACE') -- Marcel-- :latitude(math.deg2rad(44.1246))-- :longitude(math.deg2rad(123.2120)),The "--" is what tells the computer to ignore the rest of the line. To enable the town you simply delete the "--"s at the beginning of the lines so it looks like this.CustomSystemBody:new('Eugene', 'STARPORT_SURFACE') -- Marcel:latitude(math.deg2rad(44.1246)):longitude(math.deg2rad(123.2120)),Save the file and start a new game. You must start a new game if you install this mod. It will make your previously saved games incompatible.If you use this the startup location will change. It will be London if you don't modify the file, or your home town comes after London alphabetically. Otherwise it will start you out at Kourou, except for Azimech who gets to start out at his home town of Leerdam. You can make your home the default start up position by moving the lines so that it becomes the sixth enabled spaceport if you wish.To install the default version place the hometowns_alpha23.zip file into your mods folder.To modify the file you can extract the enclosed systems folder into your Pioneer data folder and make the changes. It includes a backup 00_sol.lua file.[attachment=1261:hometowns_alpha23.zip]

[Marcel]

Ok, I know I just uploaded a version of this yesterday, but I've been thinking about the three large stations that were orbiting Earth in the Frontier games. In Pioneer we only have Gates spaceport. What about the other two guys? I figured it would take some math (which I fail at) to place three equally spaced stations around Earth, but this morning I simply copied the code for Gates, pasted it twice, renamed the stations and viola! The game took care of the spacing for me. I figured I had to share this.One other thing I should mention is that the stations have a seed value. This is because every time you add a spaceport the types of all the other spaceports are pseudo-randomly changed because of the procedural generation nature of Pioneer. The seed allows you to set the type of spaceport to a particular type. I made them all the "big_crappy_spacestation", but I made it easy to change or remove the seed. Simply add a "--" in front of the line :seed(2) or change the 2 to a different number. The line just below with the single comma must remain. Also, you'll have to start a new game if you install this, but you can change, remove or add seeds to stations and still use saved games as long as you keep the list of stations themselves the same.[attachment=1262:hometowns_alpha23a.zip]

[Geraldine]

Excellent Marcel. I missed those extra stations too <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' /> Mind you, I always rename Gates to Jay Miner Starport <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_lol.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':lol:' />

[Marcel]

Hmm, maybe there should be a fourth station. A spherical one, with a red and white checkerboard texture...

[Geraldine]

Marcel wrote:
Hmm, maybe there should be a fourth station. A spherical one, with a red and white checkerboard texture...
Go for it!

[whisper979]

Is there a way to add only my hometown to Pioneer? When I finish the simulator for my son I would love for him to be able to take off from Gadsden, Alabama, US, instead of Los Angeles. I don't really need or want any other extra space stations or hometowns. Thanks!

[Marcel]

Well, I usually go to Great Circle Mapper to get the airport location. Failing that I can usually find the city's location on Wikipedia.The easiest method for you, however, is to put this zip file into your mods folder. [attachment=1266:Hometown_whisper979.zip]

[whisper979]

You are a wonderful human being! Thank you so much!

[whisper979]

Marcel, I don't know if that was hard or easy for you to do but it is GREATLY appreciated! Now when my son takes off in his simulator I can tell him that this is what home will look like in about 1200 years from now!!!

[Marcel]

You're very welcome! It only took a few minutes, but I've had a bit of practice.

[Marcel]

I've uploaded a new version for alpha 25. You can find it here.[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/files/file/944-hometowns-alpha25-modzip/[/url]

[Geraldine]

Thanks Marcel, I will get those installed right away! <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//nyam.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':nyam:' />

[Skodyn]

Thanks for the latest (and thanks for changing mine from Cardiff to Welshpool.) and I'm so pleased you can just enable the ones you want, it was slowing my pc down badly before

[Marcel]

Thanks to both of you and you're welcome! <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//biggrin.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':biggrin:' /> And in case you haven't noticed, the pad stations upgrade mod is available too.[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/files/file/945-ground-station-update-alpha25-modzip/[/url] I'm working on getting Vuzz's and potsmoke's stuff integrated into spacestatons.lua. <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//moil.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':mole:' />

[Geraldine]

Oh I noticed Marcel and did you notice I sneaked that screen shot you did a while back onto ModDB? <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//biggrin.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':biggrin:' />