Gameplay survey - please give us feedback

[Gernot66]

to the above post, i'm really confused, the config.ini seems to have no effect on the keybindings and to assign them from in the game is a horror because this neither ends up like i wish or is confusing, sometimes the edit window pops up sometimes not, sometimes it works sometimes it fails.

In fact i lost patience already only to bind the keys i need to play.

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If i'm allowed to say the HUD is anything as intuitive.
How long do i know this game? 2009/2010 ?
And i can't engage the autopilot because i have no idea where to engage it.
No symbol, no button for this but 100 of things i don't need to know and all is as tiny that even if i wear glasses i get problems to read it.
(i can't afford a 3m wide screen i'm very sorry, i own a tiny notebook).
I can say i'm already happy i found out where to set the target by try and error but i can't find anything that tells me "autopilot" or is it engaged or not and how and where? no idea - i'm lost.

No i don't read manuals (and certainly not of pioneer), i never did, almost, i guess the last i've really read was the 300 pages strong manual for simearth and that was 1993 (the whole gaia theory, so someone really readed it, just because the author stated "no one will read this"), but that's something different, to play it you won't need it - it's intuitive.

Usually i first play and i know every player acts like this, you don't read manuals you play and if you have a question then you refere to it.

It is no wonder to me that "johnyliltoe" had no idea i haven't myself any idea and i'm not new to the game.

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Together with the keybinding problem this was the most obvious and most annoying i experienced with Pioneer, this and last build (any between alpha31 and this i don't know).

So in fact i didn't came to play even if i'm willing and tried since two hours without any success.
I'm lost, and i guess i would be completely lost if i would be new to the game.

Respectively to be honest if i would be new to the game i would have gave it up after 10 minutes. If a newbe don't get it in 10 minutes he will dislike it unless he's an addicted.

So i can't even tell how it is to play because i can't play it.
And really i'm not stupid and try to act not willingly stupid.

Let's refere to the manual,
Oh, which doc where is it?
Ok let's move to the wiki,
it referes to the old HUD

So who can tell me what i have to do?

Again imagine i would be new to Pioneer,
i really would have trashed it and would never tried a second time with it.

Yep i would say "ok i can write a short introduction" but dammit i have no idea myself.

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OK, i found out how, rightclick on target, but really that is not intuitive, it was the last i didn't tried after damned two hours of try and error.

What i ask myself what use has it to hide it this way?
What will tell me this if i didn't even have a quick reference?

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Apart from this very obvious stuff i can't tell much, else it looks fine the most annoying to me is really the HUD.
And well i didn't even played, just liked to make a screenshot, but it looks it has getting a little late

Imho it's to much to tiny and to less intuitive, at least to me.
(because i can't read minds)
To set the HUD on a diet (in amount and not in mass) wouldn't harm i guess.
50 percent of what i see i can use to play the rest seems to me useless info i don't need and which only distracts from the important things.
Therefore it wouldn't harm to show on the screen what i really need to know to play like to engage the autopilot and this maybe scaled double.
I've noticed i can fit the HUD to the resolution, i found this but a newbe?

Sure now i know how but i still don't like it.

Also sure the old HUD didn't reflects what is to expect of a spaceship, but it reflects what you need to play the game.
To compare this with something odd (or old) the HUD of old old "Space Shuttle?" is far from the control desk in a space shuttle but it shows what i need to know to play the game.

A plain Flight Simulator or a Shuttle Sim is something complete different here i like the exact replica, that's the goal (if i would play such).
The game one could say is to understand the controls, but not so for Pioneer i guess.

Besides what would be reasonable for 3200?
Mind control or i guess you would rather sit in a space vessel and the machine will do everything, that's reasonable.
Both is no game except to press one lonely button "lift off".
Reasonable can't be the goal here.

Just to explain a little why i like the basic HUD better might it remind of FE2 how much it likes, it made sense for the game, i would never change this.
It's imho optimized for this type of game.

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a short rant:
If i look at todays car cockpits i get pretty the same impression, 50 percent is show if not more.
Dad's old Mini haven't had even a speed counter only a tachometer, a oil warner , a water temperature warning lamp and the fuel meter that's it you won't need more to drive a Mini.
Yeah ok he bought a speed meter and a tiny racing steer wheel (wooden partially fur wrapped) to pimp his Mini

Two years ago i was allowed to sit in my therapists GT Nissan, feels like a fighter plane, no joke a lot of knobs and lamps even on the ceiling (not even his wife is allowed to. In fact he really liked me: "i guess it would be no problem for us to be locked for years in a bunker we would always find a topic to talk about". So it was rather a study as a therapy and i really learned a lot about how they treat today).

But no question i like the old Mini better.
Spartanic and its "HUD" (desk of course) shows exactly what i need to know to drive a car, not less and not more.
And sorry no GPS still no one drove in his neighbours garden like today, fascinating.

The purpose dictates the design and to me it looks much better as the design of the overloaded GT Nissan with 100 lamps and switches (i assume it even has one to fade out the wife, press a button... flush)
And that's why Colani statet "99 percent of the designers are boasters"
because the purpose dictates the design and rounded eges aren't design they are just rounded edges.
And i guess he showed well that a functional design mustn't be boring.

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Let's take a look at a classic space fighter and where this type of HUD with the circle in center comes from. Good old X-Wing.
But it has a purpose, a Tie fighter hasn't this why?
Simply because with the X-Wing you lock a target in distance.
You have the four emitters which reflect the beam over mirrors to the target for this the target must be locked in distance so that the four beams meet exactly on a single spot which i can move with without to move my ship.
But for anything else it isn't needed it has this sole purpose to show "target is locked in distance".
Besides this part of the desk only appears in engaged battle mode else it flaps aside because it has no other purpose.

SW is only fantasy but in certain parts it's a well thought fantasy.
The design of the X-Wing is i guess the best in the whole SW universe.

[Gernot66]

I hope you don't mind but a little "hmmmmm.....?" with the keybindings

Judge yourself:


As soon as i disable the joysticksupport i can't change anything to the keybindings.
While there is no Joystick connected to my notebook, the only input device connected is the mouse.

And such Keys
,"Key1073741915"
i don't have on my notebook???
(must be quite a large keyboard with many many keys - chinese though?)

Well if it's bound to such because if and under certain circumstances someone could in a very rare case use a different language as english and a different keyboard as one with 104 keys like:

Well, some of us live in the "western world", hard to imagine but it's true.

Just guess of someone who installs the game for the first time will be confused if not disappointed.

It disappoints me even if i can edit the config.ini and use my old keybindings, a newbe can't.
If he does the "mistake" to disable the joysticksupport he will be lost.

Most won't have noticed that because most probably you didn't changed the keybindings since xxx and kept the same for every build.

I installed it "new new" so to say, in a new directory and erased the user dir that it builds a new config.ini.

[Gernot66]

it's not because i don't respect you and the work it's just because i love pioneer.

[hommeslip]

Hi,

I don't know if i'm in the right place but i recently dl the last version of Pionner, it's really cool but when i load my savegame the city's buildings disappear only docks remains that's not a big issue but i'm a little bit crazy and it's very frustrating for me.
Did someone have an idea to fix it?

[Pinback]

Don't know how to fix your problem, but you may want to try their own Dev forum [url]https://pioneerspacesim.net/forum/[/url] as their may be an answer in their somewhere.

[vinny002]

Pioneer is a very good game! Thanks for the hard work on it! Cheers, Vincent.

[mmamais]

Hello and thanks for this great game. Big respect to your work. I find it excellent. The atmosphere, the realism, the endless galaxy, the flight model (hard, as it should have been), and generally i love almost everything. Just one remark, it appears as if all starports are the same place. For example one may visit an "anarchist world where armed forces contest" and find a peaceful and fully normal starport, with its functional shipyard, the police officer etc, pretty much like everywhere. I don't know if my remark is of any value, even so, how easy it would be to implement it, yet again, thank you for this fantastic game.

[Guest]

The new trading system is a big improvement - having different prices for goods at different stations within a system.
It would be nice to be able to filter the Bulletin Board missions by distance and by type so that you only have to look at the ones you might be interested in.

[Guest]

There is a small sound sample called metal_creaking which plays incessantly and gets really annoying. I had to edit the sample to reduce the volume so that I can't hear it.

[mmamais]

Smuggling:
If you enter a system and you are carrying illegal goods, you may be scanned by a patrolling police officer and get caught. In this case you are chased. You may well be faster and manage to reach a starport. In this case you are accepted as if nothing happens, you can trade normally, even say hi to the local police, and even sell your stuff to one of the "independent traders" that exist in almost every system. Usually one of them is a disguised police officer and he fines you. But even so, you can just pay the fine, then go to another independent trader, who will probably be a real trader and sell there your cargo. This is strange. Normally, if you have been detected upon entry to the system, the authorities should have been informed and you would not be allowed to dock, at best. Not to mention your ship should be confiscated. Instead, all that happens is the police officer who detected you upon entry, may chase you and attack your ship, even if you are landed and the rest of the starport could not care less.

[impaktor]

@mmamais My intention is to change smuggling detection, to not happen at entry of system, but rather when docking at port, by police boarding your ship. You will be given mechanics to circumvent this (hidden cargo hold and/or bribery). This is something that I hope will follow when/if sturnclaw finishes his re-work of our equipment / slot system (eta: minimum 1 year, max: never; currently on hold).
@arfa wkfo has a PR nerfing it here, feel free to try it out and give feedback there: [url]https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/pull/5560[/url]

[mmamais]

As an old fan of Frontier, i like the detect-on-ontry feature, i find it realistic too (for systems that can afford a few extra police pilots). Not to mention gives you a feeling that "you have company", in contrast to Frontier where you would enter a vast and empty more-or-less system, where the only interaction would be a pirate trying to kill you, no "traffic" around, no police etc.

[mmamais]

But anyway, you are the man, you do the hard work, do whatever you like and we are always grateful.

[tsmspace]

I played pioneer for a little while. I found it was great, but not having what I wanted to do the most at present. I also found that there did not exist such a game as I was seeking. 
I made a game, it's not a terribly complex game, I posted about it here actually. My feedback is that one of the missions should be flight training. Flight training is not something that you do once, it's something you continue through life. This flight training ,, in my opinion, should be a mix of docking and landing practice, close quarters navigation, things of that nature. For me the best way to practice close quarters navigation is a hoop course. This is because while moving from one location to another is good, (like,, from one dock to the next) ,, a course achieves the same objective but in a format designed for easy repetition. 
My game is on itch.io ,, it's called "Ace Racers SP" ,, it has a few vehicle types. it's free. I wouldn't try to argue that the gameplay is within the same category as pioneer,, rather I would argue that instead, it is within the same genre of interest, while being in a different genre of actual gameplay. 
Basically flight training would be a mission that could be completed (just like the races in evochron, although I personally think that the evochron races did not properly represent the navigation styles that it should have... close quarters is not move fast and curve gradually,, it's move slow, very short distances, and turn very sharply) 
I personally feel that I would have spent more time in pioneer if I didn't feel like the only flying I got to do was scanning a planet. It's a really long conversation about the features I mean to suggest,,, but they're all in my own game, so if interested you can actually just try to play it, as it's free! I think there are some arguments to be made about the overall lack of popularity of games like pioneer, and why this is (which is complex , but largely amounts to "it's hard") ,, and the appropriate pathway to making it "easy" to develop the skills gradually. (of course you may have figured out,, I think my game does a good job of representing one of these areas of approach) 
My survey comment, therefore,, is that my games features should be in pioneer,, basically. And although much of the pioneer gameplay is quite different,, it would make a big difference for the player experience overall. (( since pioneer is basically so many great bid distances , the contrast would be impactful, for example there would be many more players desiring to manually dock ))