"Phoenix" (former Sputnik)

[Gernot66]

soon ready to make it public, i emoved the critical classical music, what's left is pioneer, some amiga modules and some public midi files (in .ogg certainly).converted MIDI files which are PD i will include in future more, because it's a safe way to implement classical music to the game.or even some rock music, most isn't good what you fnd of rock music in midi, but some aren't bad.i downloaded a midi of pink floyds "echoes" and since it's composed on the piano it sounds well played only on a piano.other sound completely shitty and usually they replaced the voices with a chorus or even "voice", but argh it sounds stupid.also some only read in the notes to produce the files, you can use a software to read a scanned notes sheet and it will convert the notes to a midi file.while the result is simply piano and sounds usually very artificial.for Bach's music this works well, it's almost artificial anyway, straight mathematics.i really would like to playback midi or soundtracker modules (modplug is opensource and can be used in any software, it plays all module formats and midi as well)the advantage is the filesize, a midi or a soundtracker module needs only a few kB.you could fill the game with hours of music and use not a 10th of what you need for a mp3 or ogg.especially the soundracker modules are quite good or better as a midi because it uses own samples and not standard midi samples.i have a piece of organ from bach as module and it sounds damned good, almost like a real organ because the samples are took from a organ.the samples are very low in bitrate, usually 8bit in 8000 or 11025 kHz, but you won't notice such in a module, it wll be dithered to the bitrate and frequency you specify.it's somewhat "obsolate" nonetheless modules have advantages, not only the filesize. a module is controlled first by how it's made, but the player can do a lot with the content of a module, transposing, speed, loudness, almost anything you could control. if one likes he can even use it to generate music from samples, it's a true computer format and not "recorded music".thus it would be possible to let the machine compose, routines for such exist since computers exist.many years ago i had a proggy which converted any notes to Bach's style.you enter a couple of notes and the software generates a piece of music of it, certainly artificial and not really good, but i think it would open interesting possibilities for a game, compose music in each system based on the seed for the system. each system would have it's own "music" .endless music and the filesize will equal almost to zero.eh, the devs of "modplug" are certainly not from yesterday, it's still modern, it's still more advanced as a mp3, it's like i said a true computer format.and if the machine has a soul like some expect, then this soul will prefere it to compose & play music instead only to playback.TRON would be amazed i guess ;)the file is now about half of the size due to the deleting of the music.here we go:[**Phoenix0.0.1_Pioneer31.7z**]([url]https://www.dropbox.com/s/vjfdu61ovnl5lzq/Phoenix0.0.1_Pioneer31.7z?dl=0[/url] "https://dropbox.com/s/vjfdu61ovnl5lzq/Phoenix0.0.1_Pioneer31.7z?dl=0")thought that the PM's will be to open once (maybe they must pass a admin first), the links in it are dead, i removed the files from my dropbox.valid is now ony the above link.this "composition" (it's no build yet) is based on the remnants of "Sputnik", Vuzz's "Genesia (alpha31) and a alpha31which i still had on my drive and the new stuff i made.it's anything else as stable, don't be surprised, but i didn't exect that my models or scripts cause the errors, but if you find a specific one which is related to my models or functionsthen i wil appreciate a report.i appreciate also the other bug reports, but recently i can't fix them, first i have to manage to make a build with my existing garbled stuff of alpha31 or 30.the ain problem is like i posted already the "pioneer thirdparty" directory, the recent won't work for alpha31 and older ones aren't to find on GitHub,except for the one i found on Philbywizz's account, but i will first have to make proof if it works (it should).(and fix that goddamned keyboard, resp. trash it and fix your old MS Internet Kb., it's not to stand how many glyphs i miss and i hammer on that cheap Medion Kb).further there is still the option to go back to alpha9, it includes a "thirdparty repo", but somehow it fails nonetheless, i lost patience and made models then.i know i will lose a lot when i return to alpha9, but i even would like a older build.**if someone still hods such a damned old source from TomM i would really appreciate it to get this in my hands, because i like to go a own way from on the point where TomM stopped to actively develop pioneer.**it won't look as fancy as it does now, but i would like it, i would like to make my own "faults" and see where i get with it.most of all (but maybe exactly this is the cause why they aren't to find anymore) because of the unbeatable AI.i guess it's not appreciated if someone releases a pioneer in which you can play and not only visit and stare at the beauty of it.but i really miss the dogfights, since this change i never really played pioneer, i mean i do played, but with little nterest or only to check if my models work as expected.small "experiments" but no real play.as long as we had the old AI, damned i played a lot and it was a lot of fun to play it.missions are cool and certainly something which is needed, but well i would need no missions at al if i can win against a AI, if there would be only a slight chance.then it's enough to carry goods from A to B and fight against some pirates which wil await you.tome this is the game, this is the paragon FE2, of course you have military missions (some), but well this means batteling.this means for a recognize mission to fight against a hundred imperial (or federal) ships.**and that's the game!**which works well even still with the pure vector graphics of FE2.it's fun to play, even when it's 30 years old.and i guess i'm not wrong when i say "Pioneer was planned as a sort of modern Frontier", and if this is true then why it has gettin' so boring?to have a toy for the devs?Walterar made a very good job to get the last out of it with his "Scout", unfortunately i can't play it.and i guess i'm neither wrong when i recommend his scout over pioneer itself.at least the last scout i played or peeped in was fun with his modules, certainly a lot found their way into pioneer.and no it's not because he bunkered my models, i appreciate this much, but models didn't make the game, this i know well.conclusion:Pioneer was almost at it's best when we had only the sirius interdictor, ladybird, flowerfairy and walrus.4 "lousy" ships, but well it was a game and not just visiting a far system.these 4 "lousy" ships still stay in Phoenix, just to remind of who builded pioneer, who stood behind this and who had the right idea of it.

[Gernot66]

sorry for my long text(s), but i have to utter this.a week ago i entered "Frontier" (or something similar) into Google and stumbled over a guy who liked to create a modern frontier for his graduation."i like to make a game like FE2, with pure vector graphics"well i like this idea.because he likes to make a GAME an not something to stare at.did any of you ladies and gentlemen took a look at this:[spacesimcentral.com/forum/discussion/7033/space-adventurers-working-title#latest]([url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/discussion/7033/space-adventurers-working-title#latest[/url] "spacesimcentral.com/forum/discussion/7033/space-adventurers-working-title#latest")well it din't looks like much, but you have to read not to stare, "it didn't looks good" (it does to me)BUT IT SOUNDS GOOD what sort of game he likes to make!and this matters.the traffic is extremly low and except of me no one commented or enforced him in his project.now we look at the opposite[spacesimcentral.com/forum/categories/xfrontier]([url]http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/categories/xfrontier[/url] "spacesimcentral.com/forum/categories/xfrontier")here the traffic is enourmous just because of the overwhelming graphics, but it's no game, it's just a collection of graphical nice looking things.i don't like to be unfair but i assume it would even push my rampage III at it's limits.that's not a game that's just "see what nice stuff i can create with my super modern computer"see that's what i'm talking about, but i'm sure "space adventurers" will be real fun to play.the goal is not to show the most fancy thing you can get out of your graphics cardthe goal he has is to build a game, he's a pro and knows what is needed, unfortunately most are to blind to see it.**"space adventurers" would be my choice and i hope i can produce a little traffic on his projects site here to enforce him to carry on, because i know right now it will be a good game.**but yeah i understand if he would have cancelled it, because if no one shows interest i dont' have to make it.i know i'm right, i wasn't always that sure, but now i am.my former compagnion told me i'm absolutely right and as well this guys ideas about how such a game soould be to play even underscores what i think.damned "Astro Kid" is more fun to play as pioneer, believe me.and that's just pointing with a cosshair on countless ships in shitty sprites graphics.i have to post this here, the working title of astro kid was...?make a guess'Calvin and Hobbes - Goes for the Gusto'"...but due to copyright restrictions it couldn't be distributed via Aminet. So it was totally rewritten and the graphics were redone".i'm pretty sure, if the recent devs of pioneer couldn't have sit in a ready made nest, we wouldn't even know them.

[Gernot66]

me i'm just a "nobody"but i was well known as FE2 pilot before we started with pioneer,FE2 not FFE, i didn'tknew it existed at all before i subscribed to Frontier.forums.but i played FE2 since... it must have been 94 or 95 when i inherited the CD32 version from a friend who didn't liked the open ended FE2.haven't that CD anymore, it was complete with the system map of the core systems shipped with it, but i still hold the CDROM image i made back then of it.and stil it's along with the PC version my preferred Frontier, mostly because of the in FFE standard "navigation aid", which was first implemented in the CD32 version of FE2.unlike in FFE it's not everywhere available and you need a certain ranking before it appears in the commodities list.it's the most stable version of FE2, the PC version i only like because of the textured objects, that's fine, and because if you took a old version resp. a certain file of the first release you still have the "wormhole bug" present.now one could counter "buffet" does the same trick", no i doesn't buffet is heavy cheating and the "wormhole" in buffet will transport you immediatly to any target.unlike the "wormhole bug", to make use of it you have to calculate your jumps or use a special proggy which does it for you and thus you can see this as part of the game.it's not easy to use it right.i had earned some laurels already on elite-games.ru, because of my unconventional solutions.because of my deep knowledge of FE2's objects (models in other terms).maybe just because i showed them that this or that is possible even when they was told before it isn't.ceratainly when i look back to 2007 i was a bloody beginner and made hundreds of wrong guesses (but found nonetheles the right solution).not to talk about all the friends i made at frontier forums which still are my best friends in web, i share the most memories with them."draw curve from v1 to v2" or maybe even vice versa, return to vector1

[Gernot66]

Marcel can you do me a favour?i still have this problem with wrong coordinates when i rotate along the Y axis.do you remember that i posted once a lot of examples how some cities are displaced if i regulary position them along the aequator?but none of the devs took this serious, as if i would cheat to make a evience hapen just to post something, no there is a error.now i wonder if it has been fixed, to test this you can do what i did oncejust position cities on a planet in a regular manner like every 5 degrees oneif you don't like to make such a script i can see if i find my old example.but i really would like to know if this is solved because this is extremely vital! (at least i magine this as extremly vital)no it is, the coordinates will nfluence a lot behave of the game, pioneer is geometry and if something elementary is wrong the whole game is "wrong".this isn't bound to the LMR else it wouldn't show up when you create a custumized planet.i stumbled now over it because i liked to make a iris type hatch and use for this a "for loop" to shorten the process of typing (vice versa it turned out to a big problem)i listed then the sub-models separate and what had my bloodshot eyes to see?a irregular behave, instead that i can use always the same data, degrees to rotate, the parts flipped around such hat i thought "that's simply not possible".but it is possible else it wouln't have shown up in this manner.i checked my data, vectors and rotation a dozend times, but no there is no error i made, it behaves irregular.it's not the first time i used a for loop to rotate parts, but the first time it failed and it's just because of y axis and certain values.for this model it was in betwen 0 and 45 degrees.if i remeber right on a planet it was in around 10 degrees where the error showed up and the cities was slpattered anywhere but not where you expect them.i know that i reported this as a issue, bu i haven't been taken serious as usual, resp. they said it's neglectible,wrong coordinates are neglectible?to repeat pioneer is geometry and if something is wrong with the coordinate system the whole game will reflect this.(personaly i feel either they think they make no errors or it's just because i posted the issue).well if fluffyfreak thought it's good that there is no problem with the shaders and it really was one of my errors, i'm no god i'm human and do make errors."trust your computer but not it's programmer, errare humanum est"but well shaders are less as secondary to the coordinate system.

[Marcel]

I got the files this morning. Thanks! I'll test and give you some feedback.

[Gernot66]

part two (i'm a slow typer)you know that we two rebels Vuzz and i had never been taken serious by them, with exception of fluffyfreak and philbywizzright yesterday i opened occasionally a old issue he posted, the answer was "it must be YOUR graphics card"(it was a pic with far to large blobs (the spherical sprite stuff) and i guess it was when they made this error to enlarge the blobs for distance of the billboard lightsthus i suspect it wasn't his graphic card or a opengl error (how could that be opengl is if you use the same version 100% the same on every windows driven machine) it was this wrong behave of the blobs)..always we two received such answers instead that they would have taken it seriuos.if that was a small problem with some graphical stuff or a serious one like the coordinate system, it was always our fault or the machine we use.(in the very last case it will be the machine "trust your computer..." thus it's either my fault or... however "errare humanum est"the one who thinks he makes no errors makes the biggest error by thinking this.)you don't have to post it as a issue, i just like to know if this has been fixed meanwhile, let's say it's only good for my selfrespect.either result will help me, if it still stays, i was right - if they fixed it i was right even.**really even if i sad i don't like to do anything for pioneer no more, this is such a vital thing that i just have the players in mind and they are still important to me.**further if it's fixed or not, it will probably help me to find out where this evil bug hides and i can blast the life out of it.resp. if it's solved i don't have to care about that anymore, only for my own future releases.i'm not sure what hey thought "that it won't matter just because only a idiot will position cities along the aequator in a regular manner"?it wasn't because of the city coordinates, this is only a way to make it proof, it's the whole thing which must have a bug somewhere,else it wouldn't show up everytime where you like to rotate something along the y axis.that z don't works to rotate i know since a long time and understand also why.but x and y have to work in the same manner when i rotate.if i rotate along x this error didn't shows up, only y axis and only certain values.nether i think it has something to do with the radiants, the system works for x also it has to work for y.of course when you create a body i.e. a sphere it won't show up because the vectors are tied to each other by the geometry itself.neither it shows up when you rotate something dynamic, in other terms a animation, even this seems to me comprehensible, because it didn't stays at a certain value andthus the vectors are even "tied to each other", it can't flip around when it's moving.it only shows up for single vectors, such as when you rotate something to a certain position.there is a bug in the coordinate system and i would have interest in fixing this before fixing anything else, geometry is pioneers skeleton.dunno either if we still have a problem with the collada animations for rotate, even here it showed up, they "solved" it but well i don't know if they fixed the coordinates or simply wrote a workaround (i suspect the latter).collada animates like i animate in a script it doesn't uses a matrix to rotate and translate, it uses vectors and degrees(not radiants, the reason i guess to use degrees and not radiants in this format is caused by it's resolvability resp. portability, you can load it to any CAD and the animation will work proper)and here we are degrees to radiantsonce i supected it's the little difference of a fixed value for pi (3.1416) or math.pi which has i guess a precision of 9 positions after the floating point.of course also math.pi has a little imprecision but well far less as 3.1416.i noticed also in the source that all apearances of math.pi had been changed to a fixed value and dammit the bug can be reasoned exactly in this.3.1416 isn't pi it's close to but not close enough to.and obviousely this won't show up in a animation where i rotate with radiants, but with degrees which must be coverted first to radiants, well that could be the error.now this has come to my mind when i wrote this down (though it has a use when i write such walls of text, often i get the right idea when i write my thoughts down, the remembering of the collada format was the firing spark)and i guess i will check this for myself if it still shows up when i use again math.pi for deg2rad instead of the fixed value, i was told once it's "better" to use a fixed value(assumed it still works to use math.pi)(less to calculate and as it would be no good idea to use C expressions in LUA, i mean they removed some other legal C stuff, maybe just to make gernötli angry the few C expressions in LUA are absolutely legal for LUA, you can read this in any LUA trainer, it's not lunacy it's legal LUA)but it seems in case for pi this thought is wrong and in fact pi can't be exact enough it's only a nearing value and never exact.to make it really proof i would have to revert all appearances of 3.1416 in the source to math.pi whch is a legal C expression.

[Gernot66]


[Marcel]

I couldn't follow all the technical details, but I think that making a variant of Pioneer that runs on lower spec machines is a worthy goal.The Frontier ships aren't allowed in Pioneer, but in variants like Genesia and Scout Plus they are. I'm sure you could use them if you wish.It'll be a week or so until I can try out what you sent me. Thanks again!

[Gernot66]

i gues you misunderstoof me a littleI don't want the FE2 ships in Phoenix, i have quite enough own ships now.I know that it would be n problem, but well i decided myself not to have he in phoenix, nothing except the game itself should remind of FE2 or FFECertainly i will make a "FFE complete mod", but it has absolutely no prioritythe FFE mod wil change all to FE2 / FFE as far as possible, but it will be a mod, that's what they are forlike i.e a starwars mod or whatever themesuch mods will change most not only the ships and to make it really good i will have to change some vital things in pioneer, because and planned such long ago,to have a nice SW mod, Sol can't be the default location for Pioneer, it has to be modifieable.this would make it possible to recreate the SW "galaxy", a least the systems we know from the movies.it would also open the possibility to create a fantasy environment, with i.e. animal like spaceships.of course this won't change the gameplay but i think it would be a nice feature ot make it possible to recreate any sci-fi environment.from perry rhodan to star-wars, or even a trek mod is to imagine or f you ike a sace ranger mod containing only tailsittersit won't be perfect and it will be still pioneer but i guess pioneer is the sole project which can open this door.but it's a long way to get there and a FE2 mod is easiest to made or i can say i have this ready, i made aleady some FE2 modsafter my ships was removed from pioneer.i' not longer angry about that, a little maybe i still don'tunderstand why the other ships had to leave to, while a obviousely ELITE franchise like the Lave system could stay, but i don't mind much anymore. and it's not oly leaned on elite, lave is a straight copy of it (except for the location). imho this is far more a violating of copyrights as my ships was. but i'm not brianetta and i can't make myself look as i would be a god or something."wenn eins und eins dasselbe tun so ist das noch lange nicht das gleiche" we sayand it means if one and another do the same thing it doesn't mean that it's equal.which should mean some poeple have always right even if they do wrong.such is our world, no one has to tell me this, poor dudes like me know this too well.psst...but hey i have cool friends, here and in real life, not many but trustworthy and this counts really.just guess of phil the hooligan he will nail anybody unsharpened in the ground who will harm me.and with such a friend you can go midst through hell and you won't loose a single hair.it's caused by his unpleasant youth he had, he lost his mother very early and his daddy as well, they put him in a orphanage and it was not for his good.i remind him of his dad, except that i'm no body-builder, but he was deep into electronics of which he "nothing understands".often he let's me feel that he thinks he's stupid but this guy has more aspic as many who think that they have a lot of it.he's lost, but no looser, nonetheless he drowns it all in beer.ah, it's not easy to be intelligent and if you are and if you ar a proletarian then it's really hard,most of them drown their problems in alcohol, thinking isn't good it makes you feel bad thus you drink until you stop to think.

[fluffyfreak]

Quote:
thus i suspect it wasn't his graphic card or a opengl error (how could that be opengl is if you use the same version 100% the same on every windows driven machine) it was this wrong behave of the blobs)..

Because that isn't how OpenGL works. Each vendor (_GPU maker_) writes their own implementation of the specification - aka: the driver.These drivers have bugs, optimisations, clever code and neat tricks to achieve better performance and newer drivers often break older features because there are too many combinations to check.So when we get a bug and say: "_Please try the latest driver_", it's not that we think it's YOUR fault, it's just that it's the most common cause of problems AND the most common fix for the problems :)There have been problems with the sprite size rendering, that is my fault, some older drivers (_5+ years old_) especially have trouble. SO should everyone else miss out on better performance because someone won't/can't update their drivers? It's not fair on everyone else.

[Gernot66]

do i have to excuse me for my hard head?> SO should everyone else miss out on better performance because someone won't/can't update their drivers? It's not fair on everyone else.no(i have to add here maybe that couple of years ago when i still ran a win7x64 i never encountered problems with updated drivers, especially graphics and sound, while under XP it was in the end always the driver that was once shipped with the hardware which worked best and usually the problems start with updates, and i can say i have experience with XP, if ilike it or not. i dindn't ike it and i have to do my worst to get to a better machine)i should shut my goddamn mouth, anyway that's past i didn't wanted to be confronted with it again, that's why i made this long pause (too).the best i can do from ward is really to go back as much as possible (to me) in pioneer releases and more and more i'm sure i will restart with the oldest release i obtain a source of.i will lose a lot of features due to that but i really looks to me as the best option, also that i can keep calm.but foremost it is if i really like to work on it then it should be as slim as possible, i'm just a single person,if i miss the simplicity it had once then i should return to this simplicity.**it's not my business to mind about what changed later and if that is good or not.**and what i like to do most and do best this i can use as well in alpha9 release (even if i would go pre-alpha, but unfortunately i obtain no source of such a release, resp. no longer)this is no "i guess" or i "feel"on the other hand, it's nice to see that my posts get read by someone

[Gernot66]


[Gernot66]

a strange guest

[Marcel]

I just tried to run Phoenix. When I try to open it I get the message "An error occurred when opening this archive". Phoenix0.0.1_Pioneer31.7z is 133.8 kB in size. It's too small, obviously. I don't have an idea about what's wrong. I'm running Linux if that's a help.

[Gernot66]

i would try it a second time :)i downloaded the file as guest and the download broke the first time, but second time it was ok (complete new download, continuing a failed download often doesn't works).alternatively i uloaded it new to both file clouds[**dropbox: Phoenix0.0.2_Pioneer31.7z**]([url]https://www.dropbox.com/s/kyu4g6uvt5p51f8/Phoenix0.0.2_Pioneer31.7z?dl=0[/url] "https://dropbox.com/s/kyu4g6uvt5p51f8/Phoenix0.0.2_Pioneer31.7z?dl=0")[**onedrive: Phoenix0.0.2_Pioneer31.7z**]([url]https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhX1Ed1178sOhUrpupoL5BL19Mat[/url] "https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhX1Ed1178sOhUrpupoL5BL19Mat")

[Gernot66]

a couple of new typical lmr ships, all except one have a similar basic shape.to give th ship a name and not to use "Cobra" isn't always easy**Draco** (looks like a kite)move a few vectors, size it down and you get a**Toceh**

[Marcel]

I like those ships! Both of the links worked. Phoenix is looking good. I got Petra @ London in a cool enclosed hangar and saved it. We'll go for a flight tomorrow.

[Gernot66]

**Firefly**a somewhat different design**Buteo**small fighter in a a similar design as the first twothe station is slowly growinghmm... i didn't pressed "post comment"

[Gernot66]

looks lie i disabled the "aurogenerate faction" (factions0_AutoGenerate.lua_), just remove the underscore to enable themthey need quite a time to be generated cause they are spread widely and 160 is a large amount but i recognized more factions close to the core systems if i use i higher amount, however many small factions (totalitarian regimes) is better. they are recently very small and can be sized to your choice if you like them a little larger (more systems as only 1 to ~5)that's in the respective script (00_AutoGenerate.lua)`-- minimum and maxium expansion ratelocal min_expansion = 0.05local max_expansion = 0.1`if you set a higher expansion rate the systems will be larger.

[Marcel]

Petra just took her first flight. It's nice to see the other planets in the system. I miss that. I was surprised to see London in daylight at midnight GMT. She's going to have to do a lot of grinding to equip her ship. She inherited that Rapier and quit her job at the fish cannery to take a package delivery to Paris. She flew as a newbie in the atmosphere at 500 m/s, so she's not an astronaut yet. I found the keyboard to be sluggish and am getting 5/6 fps regardless of detail settings. I'm running this on Linux and may be able to improve this with some adjustments to WINE. I saw that Firefly in the shipyard. I want one! You're making some nice looking ships! Anyway, she landed at that Sydney Opera House station and cleared 19 credits.Oh, and I like the music!