Alpha 14 released

[robn]

The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer alpha 14. Builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux are available for download from the download page. This release features a new 3D galaxy view, a complex trade ships AI and in-system delivery missions.New features* 3D galaxy (#394, #429)* Trade ships AI. Ships now dock, undock, hyperspace and buy and sell things (#412, #11, #448)* Delivery missions to other starports in the same system (#388)* Press CTRL while clicking time acceleration buttons to override the lockout due to nearby bodies (#417, #358)* Settings to adjust terrain textures and fractal detail (#442, #416)* Polish translation (#443)* Lua attribute SBody.parent to find the parent of a system body (#359, #368)* Lua methods Player.SetNavTarget and Player.SetCombatTarget to let script control player targets (#422, #444)* Overdue deliveries will now be checked and reported as "failed" immediately after hyperspace (#445)Fixes* Remove a couple of hardcoded references to the data directory (#363)* Fix crash when closing police form triggered from inside a advert (#371, #372)* Fix occasional crash in DeliverPackage when cleaning up old ads (#123, #379)* Fix inverted mouse control (#389)* Tweak to texture scaling to make edges sharper (#391)* Fix occasional crash when rendering certain hill terrains (#364)* Fix flickering when HDR enabled (#266, #401)* Fix crash when trying to display tooltips when their parent UI element is no long on screen (#59, #410)* Disable thrusters when docking (#409, #418) and in hyperspace (#431)* Restore NPC (Lua) hyperspace functions (#414, #362, #269, #426)* Fix bug where NPC flight state was not reset upon exiting hyperspace* Nereid now has a radius and can be found* Don't allow scripts to jettison non-existent cargo (#430)* Fix crash when selecting own hyperspace cloud remnant (#427)* Fix occasional autopilot crash into planet (#424)* Fix buy/sell message output (#452, #288)Internal changes* Lots of internal cleanups; silences many warnings under GCC (#373, #375, #389, #392, #383, #399) and MSVC (#434, #435, #436)* New utility functions for floating-point comparisons (#389)* Dump Lua engine state to file on exception in Lua module (#370)* Lua documentation fixes (#380, #403, #475)* Abstracted the HDR rendering pipeline into discrete components (#396)* New string formatting system for translations and other strings (#405, #449)* Gracefully handle attempts to load old savefiles (#428)* Redirect stdio output streams to files in user dir. Do this by default on Windows builds.* Use SDL mouse button defines instead of hardcoded numbers (#446)

[ElectricSkies]

Thanks! I'd like to build this for myself in Mac OSX. How much do the instructions in the Compile pioneer page apply to building for Mac?

[robn]

ElectricSkies wrote:
I'd like to build this for myself in Mac OSX. How much do the instructions in the Compile pioneer page apply to building for Mac?
I think it doesn't for the most part. See COMPILING.OSX.txt. Our OS X guy (Philbywhizz) hasn't been around much lately (also why there's no OS X build yet) so the XCode project might be slightly out of date (missing new files). If it doesn't work for you the GNU way should work.

[Geraldine]

Great news robn. Looking forward to trying this one out with the new map!

[RayvenQ]

Sadly, it seems pointless playing because if you save a game in A14 (and i noticed this in the previous nightly build) and then subsequently try to load it, it gives you the "this save contains errors" message.

[Geraldine]

Confirmed, saved games refuse to load. Could this have something to do with the music player? The game reported something like unable to determine music player state. I also tried turning off the music, but got the same error. Otherwise this is a great release. Has something been done to the ship controls? Flying around "feels" better Also the game reports on the title screen it is Alpha 15!

[durandal]

I cannot reproduce it on master, even if I enable sound and music, sfx is playing.Change DisableSound to 1 in config.ini and it should make game load, but you will get no sound/music/sfx...

[Robsoie]

I noticed i didn't visited Europa in last nightly builds, didn't visited it since a while actually.So after getting Alpha 14, i went right to it, and well it's rather weird but i don't know if it is intended or if it is a bug to report, is Europa supposed to look like this .From orbit :From flying close :I have not noticed other planets/moon/asteroid doing that on the few i visited in Alpha 14.

[Brianetta]

We are aware of Europa's 35km high cliffs. (-:

[RayvenQ]

durandal wrote:
I cannot reproduce it on master, even if I enable sound and music, sfx is playing.Change DisableSound to 1 in config.ini and it should make game load, but you will get no sound/music/sfx...
Did that, still getting this save contain errors.Tried making a brand new fresh save and then loading it immediately after (with DisableSound set to 1 before launching the game) came back with the same thing.Also got this in the STDerr file
Quote:
Game saved to 'C:\Users\Username\Documents/Pioneer/savefiles//test'Savefile version 30. This saved game cannot be loaded because it contains errors.
Could it be because of the flipped around and doubled slashes messing with the game?

[robn]

There's a couple of issues at play here. One is that I accidently built a 15dev build and released is at alpha 14 (14 has savefile version 29, so the "version 30" thing is a giveaway). The other issue is that there's a bug in 15dev right now that's breaking game loads.I'm doing a rebuild right now. I will repack alpha 14 and make a single binary available so you don't have to re-download the entire thing. I'll post again here when that's done.

[Vlastan]

I noticed that the terrain loading seems considerably slower in alpha 14...

[robn]

Ok, the builds on the download page have been updated. If you already downloaded alpha 14 then you can just grab the binaries:pioneer-alpha14.exe (Windows, 41MB)pioneer-alpha14 (Linux, 1.8MB)Note that these will not load save files from the "original" alpha 14. As I said before, it was actually a later developement build and has a couple of internal differences that make the save files incompatible.

[RayvenQ]

Got this error when starting a new game with the new exe
Quote:
nError: data/modules/TradeShips.lua:39: couldn't find constant with name 'SHIELD' in namespace 'EquipSlot'stack traceback:[C]: in function 'GetEquipCount'data/modules/TradeShips.lua:39: in function 'addShipEquip'data/modules/TradeShips.lua:297: in function 'spawnInitialShips'data/modules/TradeShips.lua:668: in function Error: data/modules/TradeShips.lua:39: couldn't find constant with name 'SHIELD' in namespace 'EquipSlot'stack traceback:[C]: in function 'GetEquipCount'data/modules/TradeShips.lua:39: in function 'addShipEquip'data/modules/TradeShips.lua:297: in function 'spawnInitialShips'data/modules/TradeShips.lua:668: in function
Gonna get the repackaged alpha 14 and try that and then see what happens.Tried it with the repackaged alpha 14 and got
Quote:
Error: data/modules/TradeShips.lua:39: couldn't find constant with name 'SHIELD' in namespace 'EquipSlot'stack traceback:[C]: in function 'GetEquipCount'data/modules/TradeShips.lua:39: in function 'addShipEquip'data/modules/TradeShips.lua:297: in function 'spawnInitialShips'data/modules/TradeShips.lua:668: in function Error: data/modules/TradeShips.lua:39: couldn't find constant with name 'SHIELD' in namespace 'EquipSlot'stack traceback:[C]: in function 'GetEq[/qu]te

[Geraldine]

robn wrote:
Ok, the builds on the download page have been updated. If you already downloaded alpha 14 then you can just grab the binaries:pioneer-alpha14.exe (Windows, 41MB)pioneer-alpha14 (Linux, 1.8MB)Note that these will not load save files from the "original" alpha 14. As I said before, it was actually a later developement build and has a couple of internal differences that make the save files incompatible.
Thank you robn! I will give that a try and update my post on the Frontier Forum too if it works ;)EDIT: Using just the new exe, save games wil still not load. Also starting a new game creates this new error report"ERROR:data/modules/tradeships.lua:39: could'nt find constant with name `SHIELD` in namespace `EquipSlot`[C]: in function `GetEquipCount` data/modules/TradeShips.lua:39: in function `addShipEquip`data/modules/TradeShips.lua:297: in function `spawn InitialShip`data/modules/TradeShips.lua:668: in function "Going to try downloading the full packaged version again

[Robsoie]

The new windows binary applied on the "bad build" lead into this error after selecting your starting point (and i tried the new build and it does the same error too) :And once clicking OK, it crashes with a runtime error.The windows version of the "bad build" didn't have this error.edit : just noticed someone posted the error message already.

[Geraldine]

Robsoie wrote:
edit : just noticed someone posted the error message already.
No worries Robsoie, too much information on a crash is better than none at all. It all helps the devs Oh, and welcome to the SSC :)Edit:Tried out the full package and getting the same error when staring a new game. Also, getting this error when loading a save game:Error: data/modules.TradeShips.lua:411: bad argument 0 `pairs` (table expected, got nil)stack traceback[C]: in function `pairs`data/modules/Assassination.lua:411: in function Edit Mk2: Oh just noticed robn said the older save files would'nt work with the new exe.

[robn]

That's a known bug that was fixed a few days ago but didn't make the deadline for alpha 14. A workaround is to delete lines 39-47 from data/modules/TradeShips.lua.

[Geraldine]

Thanks again robn, I will try that ;)Hey robn, thats fixed it. Old games still wont load, but new one will and it also starts up as normal now too! Many thanks, I will post those fixes on the Frontier Forum. If I dont they might get a bit tetchy

[robn]

Yeah, old games don't load - we're bumping the save version about every week at the moment. The joys of fast-paced development