Alpha 29 released

[robn]

The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer Alpha 29. This month we have a rewrite of the infoview, including per-mission screens and player name/face customisations. Also we have over a hundred new factions with varying government types, and sector map updates to view them. Full changelog and builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the download page. New featuresInfoView (F3) rewrite. Now has player name/face customisation and per-mission info screens (#1633, #1785)Economical autopilot. Trades fuel for time (#1582)Your ship's automatic rotation damping can now be turned off (#1570, #1156)Almost 100 new factions with varying government types (#1621, #1620, #1675, #1761, #1771)Zoom out the sector view to see a faction map (#1754, #1764, #1761, #1796, #1784)modelviewer can now dump models to Wavefront-format files (#1763)Minor changes and tweaksCargo scooping now only requires a collision against the ship rather than a specific part of it (#1674)Refueling now handled by Lua script (#1649)Fixed navigation lights on Courier, Trader, Meteor, Natrix (#1710, #1711)Added transparent backgrounds to planet icons to avoid some visual glitches (#1572)Don't clear hyperspace target when the current system is selected in the Sector View (#1662)Improved scanner draw performanceFixesWorkaround shader glitches for planets with zero temperature (#1712)Pioneer should not be marked as "Not Responding" on startup in Windows (MSVC builds only) (#1743)Fixed flight log crash after visiting 1000 stationsBarnard's Star is now a member of the Federation (#1620)Reduce use of random number generator in sector generation. Fixes super giant distribution and makes it go a little faster (#1765)Script changesCustom Systems: Faction allegiance can now be set for custom systems (#1621)Factions: More than one government type with weighting can now be specified for a Faction (#1621)Factions: A radius attribute is available on the Faction object (#1660)debug.deprecated function to warn when a deprecated function is used (#1718)UI changesGradient container to provide a linear gradient background (#1682)Expand container to force a widget to fill available space (#1685)SmallButton widget (#1722)Icon widget (#1737)TabGroup controllerLabel exposes SetText to Lua (#1690)Box containers no longer take expand/fill flags (#1665)Margin can now apply a margin to a single side or direction (#1747)Grid can now have nil entries and has a ClearCell method (#1723, #1738)Functions taking a widget can now take a table with a 'widget' field (#1723, #1738)Widget.SetFontSize has been replaced with SetFont to select both type (normalor heading) and size (#1684)UI constructors for 'Single' widgets take an optional final argument specifying the inner widget (#1723, #1738)MouseMove event also receives relative mouse travel (#1767)Improved UI sliders/scrollbars (#1720)UI elements can now be disabled (#1749, #1721)More flexible UI widget size control (#1746)Internal changesWrapper to allow new UI to provide views for the old GUI system (#1691, #1755, #1756, #1759)Fix the LuaObject the Check/GetFromLua, which were swapped round (#1730)Models moved to data/lmrmodels to make space for new model system (#1762)Code cleanup in StarSystem (making several members private) (#1773)

[emajogi]

Alas, the 64-bit Linux binary doesn't work on my Linux Mint box. (Sad face :codemafia: ) ra@Rockhopper ~/Local/Code/pioneer $ ./pioneer./pioneer: error while loading shared libraries: libGLEW.so.1.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directoryra@Rockhopper ~/Local/Code/pioneer $ sudo apt-get install libsdl-image1.2 libfreetype6 libsigc++-2.0-0c2a libglew1.5 zlib1g libvorbisfile3 libasound2[sudo] password for ra:Reading package lists... DoneBuilding dependency treeReading state information... DoneNote, selecting 'libglew1.5-dev' for regex 'libglew1.5'Note, selecting 'libglew-dev' instead of 'libglew1.5-dev'libasound2 is already the newest version.libfreetype6 is already the newest version.libglew-dev is already the newest version.libsigc++-2.0-0c2a is already the newest version.libvorbisfile3 is already the newest version.zlib1g is already the newest version.libsdl-image1.2 is already the newest version.The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:libasprintf0c2:i386 libgomp1:i386Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 110 not upgraded.ra@Rockhopper ~/Local/Code/pioneer $ ./pioneer./pioneer: error while loading shared libraries: libGLEW.so.1.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

[robn]

Note, selecting 'libglew1.5-dev' for regex 'libglew1.5'Note, selecting 'libglew-dev' instead of 'libglew1.5-dev'Yeah, looks like you don't have a libglew1.5 package. Does your distribution have a repository of older libs for compatibility?I build against 1.5 because its what's available in Ubuntu 10, which is what seems to be about the baseline for our users. Its a fairly common package; a lot of commercial Linux games rely on it too. It might be time to start using a newer version, not sure. Alternatively, maybe I need to start building it locally and bundling it.Anyway, see if you can find an older one, or build things yourself. It works pretty well

[Skodyn]

Just downloaded alpha 29, looking forward to seeing what I've missed in the past few months :santablack:

[pagroove]

Way to go robn. Although I'm from the Oolite community I follow this game with every step. I love it.

[Brianetta]

Oolite is awesome.

[StarMax]

Kudos for the latest release...and thanx for all the hard work.Now time to space.

[shadmar]

Great release, nice work.

[StarMax]

I just had to comment on the awesome Faction MAp. Worlds of awesome. Especially the toggle function.Makes for some serious StarChart studying.

[Potsmoke66]

@philbywizz... it doesn't had to be that quick... thanks i will try it tomorrow, now it's time to greet the sandman.

[baobobafet]

* Internal changes changelog ommissionBeside the notification of "models" directory name change to lmrmodels should be added:pioneerdatasub_models" directory renamed to "00_sub_models" and moved to pioneer-alpha29-win32datalmrmodels directory. All have a Merry Xmas :santaclaus:

[robn]

Not really an omission. I didn't say "models dir has been renamed". I said "models have been moved". All of them.

[baobobafet]

NP robn, it was the only dir outside the models directory I noticed was moved/renamed and is of some importance for mods.

[ataribaby]

Hmm, Just tried Lave start in 29 version. Flew to Zaonce, manualy flew to Station and requested land. Cleared to bay 1. When i entered station etrance tunel nothing happens. I cant land and dock there.

[fluffyfreak]

@AtariBaby,Several things to make sure you're doing,you must be flying very slowly as you enter the station for it to take control of your ship, less than 30m/s.you're landing gear must be down.It might be worth starting on Earth at first as this is the easier beginning, or buy an autopilot until you get used to Pioneer. It's like Frontier but different!

[Potsmoke66]

@ataribaby i can't reproduce this, i even flew from Lave to Zaonce, docked manually, "all systems are go!" . perhaps you was a little to fast?the collision mesh to detect your ship is a quad (2 tris), i'm not sure if it fills the whole tube, in certain situations when i aproached a station very uncommon, means to far left or right or the ship was bad aligned i also couldn't dock, but that's quite long ago since this happened the last time to me. or one of the rare "unknown" things has happened. anyway it worked well for me, first test flight i made with a stock alpha29. and comrades, Landing Gear mustn't be down as this clip shows well. --- it's always a good idea to countertest a error or glitch, sometimes rare exceptional errors happen, if they didn't appear a second time, forget them.but if you found one is repetive, might it will happen from time to time without a noteable reason, then it's worth to report them to the issue tracker.or even here if you aren't sure, also i like a echo of other players to see if they have the same problem, before i post something to the issue tracker.

[Loki999]

@ataribaby have yu equit the auto pilot on the ship in Lavestation ? in thesepoint of depart of the game itsno equip on the cobra MK III , because its like a "hardlevel game". and have you put your landing gear down ?Haha, Vuzz, that's two posts i've just read of yours that barely make sense. Have you been drinking? :drinks:

[ataribaby]

I had gear down. I go to try again. I have save game just outside station after i approached it manualy as no auto pilot is available on Lave.

[ataribaby]

Here is my video. First try was unsucessful, gear down, sure. At second try docking was finaly registered. Dunno what i made wrong. 

[funkybibimap]

Hello all, this is my first post and want to thank all the people who helped so far with the development of Pioneer. I've been a fan of Elite II since I stumbled upon it in a games compilation in the end of the 90s. More than once I dreamed of starting a modern remake of the game, thinking about what could be fixed/improved, but never made it real. You guys did it, and undoubtedly well. I hope the game will keep improving while keeping the Elite II spirit of Newtonian physics and open-endedness. I'd like to make a few comments about that new release:InfoView (F3) rewrite: I miss the possibility of switching between screens with F3, I think it's not very ergonomic to have to cross all the screen with the mouse to click on the tabsZoom out the sector view to see a faction map: awesome! I'm not sure it's consistent with the discovery of hyperspace flight only 400 years before the beginning of the game, but then background story can just be rewrittenEconomical autopilot: is there any way to switch that off? I got stuck at 15000km/s while travelling in a ternary system (more than 380 AU to cross) even though I had prepared extra fuelRefueling now handled by Lua script: how to refuel now? Again, during my travel in the ternary system, I was unable to refuel with the interface, even when my tank got empty