Alpha 25 released

[robn]

The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer Alpha 25. This month has seen more visual enhancements with gas giant rings, terrains and city lighting all receiving improvements. Full changelog and builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the download page.New featuresPlanets with surface ports are now displayed with a blue ring in the system info view (F2,F7) (#1345)
Catalan translation (#1371)
Hyperjumps now have sound effects (#1379)
Terrains have been update, and more terrains added for asteroids (#1349)
Atmospheric height and appearance is now more realistic (#972, #1278, #1357)
Atmospheric pressure and temperature now follows a dry adiabatic model (#1363)
Rewritten gas giant rings, with better transparency and shadows (#1404, #1415)
Fade building illumination depending on time of day and atmosphere (#1390, #1428, #1427)
Minor changes and tweaksOn Windows, error messages for graphics are shown in a message box, so they can be read when the game graphics aren't working (#1362)
Atmospheric pressure is now displayed in atmospheres instead of bar (#1363)
Added essential surname-based humour to the name generator (#1403)
Include more limits and capability information in opengl.txt (#1408, #1410)
Text entry widgets (notably the Lua console) now support CTRL+LEFT and CTRL+RIGHT arrows to jump to word boundaries (#1392, #1372)
Scale all textures to power-of-two dimensions (#1422, #1251, #1035, #923)
FixesFix some Lua console completion edge cases (#1339)
Fix Lua error report format for missing objects (#1366)
Fix bug which prevented some Polish texts showing up (#1382)
Fix crash when autopilot tried to fly around a gravpoint (#1347, #1344)
Fix crash when calculating distance to a ship in hyperspace (#1393, #1388)
Fix shaders to avoid 'varying' value limits on some hardware (#1407, #1409)
Fix savegames not loading under certain circumstances (#1425, #1412, #1424)
Clamp planetary mass values to supportable range (#1423, #854)
Script and model changesGas giant rings can now be defined in a custom system using the :rings parameter (#1404)
Internal changesMove platform specific code into src/{win32,posix} dirs (#1362, #1369)
Move video initialisation into Graphics::Init (#1362, #1370)
Add COUNTOF macro to safely get number of elements in a static array (1386)
Update scan_enums.py to deal with Unicode byte-order marks (#1389)
Always used logarithmic depth buffer with shaders (#1410)
Camera now passed to object rendering methods to make per-object lighting and other effects easier (#1390)
Many fixes identified by static analysis with PVS-Studio (#1402, #1399)

[Geraldine]

Yaaay! <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//girl_crazy.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':girlcrazy:' /> Looks like a ton of stuff you guys have done for this month, great work guys! <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//girl_in_love.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':girlinlove:' />EDIT: Mod DB updated! <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//girl_crazy.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':girlcrazy:' />

[walterar]

It is regrettable that has been released before correcting the horrible bug that makes it unusable on Linux with Intel video i3 and Nvidia video cards.See [url]https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/issues/1411[/url]

[fluffyfreak]

I wouldn't call that unusable, the game still runs and it only happens if you deliberately fly close to a Brown Dwarf Star.Unusable means that you cannot play the game rather than you get a bit of graphical mess <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//wink3.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' />

[walterar]

If for you this is a game "playable" we have different concepts of what is right and what is wrong.See there is no "brown dwarf" nearby.

[robn]

Its an alpha release. Its not playable by definition. And this is hardly a showstopper - its a highly situational graphical glitch that does not affect gameplay in the slightest and is not reliably reproducable.Seriously, some (not all!) of you need to lower your expectations. There's a handful of people working on Pioneer, spending what little spare time we have trying to make a game. Smile, enjoy the couple of new things in this release and be happy. Or, grab the code, roll up your sleeves and fix something, or at least file a bug report. We'll get it all sorted out in the end. But carrying on just makes us sad and unmotivated, and that sucks.

[walterar]

More than two weeks ago that this failure is known. I never thought anyone would take in solving it. If you were not able to resolve it in time, for whatever reason, should not have released the A25 with all the pomp and the expectation that entails.And it is really not able to reproduce the error. I have tested it in more than three different machines.At least be able to recognize a mistake and not hide behind that blah, blah, blah ... [background=rgb(33, 47, 58)]and that sucks.[/background]

[Guest]

'walterar' wrote:
[background=rgb(33, 47, 58)]More than two weeks ago that this failure is known. I never thought anyone would take in solving it. If you were not able to resolve it in time, for whatever reason, should not have released the A25 with all the pomp and the expectation that entails.[/background]
The severity of this bug was not known two weeks ago, or even today until you pointed it out after the release. The bug report indicated that it was only a problem close to brown dwarfs, and although multiple people looked at the problem (including you), no one commented to say that it happened more widely. It is unfortunate that it wasn't fixed before release, but sometimes problems slip through.The problem has now been diagnosed, so hopefully someone will produce a fix in the next few days.John B

[walterar]

John, I am aware that there are very few people working on the project. Rest assured that I will continue contributing my work and my observations. Next time, yell louder, but before the release version. I appreciate the seriousness that you print to Pioneer.

[robn]

'walterar' wrote:
More than two weeks ago that this failure is known. I never thought anyone would take in solving it. If you were not able to resolve it in time, for whatever reason, should not have released the A25 with all the pomp and the expectation that entails.
Oh please. Pioneer has loads of known bugs, many of them much worse than this one. Frankly I don't care if problems "slip through". Pioneer is in development. Its not finished. It doesn't pretend to be remotely close to usable, functional or playable. As the download page says, alpha snapshots are done as a courtesy to the community that supports us and encourage us because we know you all like to see what's been happening but can't always be downloading the code and building it yourselves.We don't delay these snapshots. Ever. There's important reasons for that, including maintaining visibility and giving us clear targets to work towards. The alternative is to drop them entirely, which in some ways would make life easier, not least because of the amount of time it actually takes to do one of these releases.
Quote:
And it is really not able to reproduce the error. I have tested it in more than three different machines.
When I wrote that, before the problem was diagnosed yesterday, my understanding was that it was not reproducable on Windows. The person most likely to understand and fix the bug develops on Windows. His inability to reproduce it makes it a more difficult thing to solve than a simpler bug that occurs everywhere.
Quote:
At least be able to recognize a mistake and not hide behind that blah, blah, blah ... [background=rgb(33, 47, 58)]and that sucks.[/background]
Bullshit. There was no mistake. Pioneer has bugs. End of story. If a particular bug is really really important to you, then either fix it yourself or send me or someone else money, gifts or kind words so that they feel happy and motivated and fix it for you. If you can't do that then shut the fuck up and just try to just be happy that a bunch of people are working hard to make something nice for you.

[Fish]

Hi im new to this game and the forum and befor i go any further i just want to say WOW you have created the game i have been looking for since my amiga died so long ago. my cousin showed me this about 4 days ago (the alpha24 version) and i was hooked straight away. thismorning i realised that you had released alpha 25 and so i grabed it straight away but (and this is why im posting) im getting an 'Error compiling shader: shaders/geosphere'. as it stands im runing on a prity bad gfx card so im happy to except that there may be nothing i can do about this and will have to wait till i can aford some better hardware but if there is a simple fix or workaround for this could somone please point me in the right direction.any help is much appreciated and once again WOW this is a great game that will most likely suck away all of my free time.

[walterar]

"blah, blah, blah...[background=rgb(33, 47, 58)]then shut the fuck up"[/background]Oh, I never would ask anyone that. It would be stupid on my part. Clownish say.Obviously you can not handle anything.

[autumnlover]

Unfortunately there are more bugs, which were not present on 24 - almost no atmosphere on Jupiter! But on Venus ... pressure at milions of atmospheres. I am also noticed similar artifacts like walterar mentioned - when I begin to shoot at Long Range Cruiser parked over one particular starport - its hull began to glow very brightly. It had nothing to do with shields glowing and LRC had no shields at all, it was different kind of glow. Two bugs I just mention occured on Win7 32bit, with Nvidia 6200 AGP card, latest stable nvidia drivers. So I will be stick to alpha 24 for the next month.

[robn]

Both the lighting glitches and the atmosphere pressure bug have been fixed in the latest development build. The missing atmospheres on gas giants has been known for a few weeks and is tracked in issue #1395.

[Marcel]

I'm just getting alpha 25 modded up to my specifications and here you go with another build! <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//tease.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':tease:' /> Seriously, good work. Thanks! <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//biggrin.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':biggrin:' />

[robn]

Well its mostly alpha 25 + two bugfixes. You'll be fine <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//wink3.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';)' />

[walterar]

Robn good job, a25 does not exist, but the problems have been resolved.Do not forget to send the bill so they send the check. <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//fan_1.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':fan:' />

[walterar]

I have to really highlight stability after many hours of actual game. The visual differences are remarkable.And there is no way to break it. <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />I am referring to the new, ¿pre alpha 26 or alpha 25.1?You can download it from here [url]http://sourceforge.net/projects/pioneerspacesim/files/nightly/[/url]

[robn]

It was every bit as stable before, just a bit uglier. And its a nightly/dev build. Call it "26 dev" if you like, but remember that its a moving target - there will be more dev builds before 26 proper, and they might (but hopefully won't) be utterly broken <img src="'[url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/public/style_emoticons//icon_e_smile.gif[/url] class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

[trumpet]

Wow. Did we just receive a broadcast from planet Troll or what?!Great effort once again guys. Adulation and appreciation tight beaming now from my humble gap courier...