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I'd have thought that by 3200, assuming we've colonised the stars, that Earth would be one of two things:[*:15t3ysob]A burned out husk of a world, rendered unliveable by pollution, war, right-wing government, etc[*:15t3ysob]A glorious paradise where people like
you couldn't possibly afford to visit.

Brianetta wrote:
2. A glorious paradise where people like you couldn't possibly afford to visit.
"Most rich humans will visit Earth once in their lifetime."

With the way the world is going and especially England, I would vote for 3: 95% of the world is a housing benefit system for immigrant workers or those unable or simply unwilling to work. This to me is a more likely outcome, as even today America the big flyer of the flag of capitalism is starting to cave-in to socialist demands. (25% seriousness rating hehe)I'm not against including Marcel's work on the Earth bases, it probably took quite a bit of time and its better than what is currently there If in the future we change how Earth and colonies are represented (and we most certainly should do) then it can be changed again.Or better yet would be to replace those starports with settlements or cities, not a place you would land your spaceship..? But I suppose we don't have any support for that yet.

There's been a couple of changes in 00_sol.lua in the alpha 15 daily builds.Nereid now has a radius, and Earth's ice cover has been reduced.This brings it up to date.One thing I noticed in the previous versions was that Gates Spaceport would change from the big_crappy_spacestation to the nice_spacestation. (Hey, these are tomm's names, not mine ) I've discovered that the position of Gates in the file is as important as the starting position. The starting position is number five and Gates must be number seven to be big and crappy. I've made the change in this version. Keep the above in mind if you wish to make your hometown the default starting position. There's a pseudo random number seed thing involved that I don't understand, and I'm not sure how this file changes the rest of the stations in the system. Once again, you must start a new game for this to work. Previous saved games will crash Pioneer. Tested with pioneer-2165aca-win32.[attachment=935:Hometowns_03.zip]Edit: I've seen some new names on the forum but I haven't added them yet. If you want me to add your hometown, let me know.

There's been some changes to planetary seeds and stuff in alpha15 since my last Hometowns version. Also, the starting position on Earth has, for some reason, changed to position #2. Keep that in mind if you change the starting position, and don't forget to keep Gates at position #7 so it'll be big and crappy. The other stations in the system are changed when using this file. Once again, you must start a new game for this to work, but improved error handling (thanks guys!) may give you an error message without crashing the game if you try to load a saved game.[attachment=936:Hometowns_04.zip]

Marcel wrote:
Also, the starting position on Earth has, for some reason, changed to position #2.
Done at the last minute because the airport station at Brasilia is partially underground. Work is underway to sort some of that stuff out

marcel, you can control the type of model used with a seed for the station/city (still possible?)of course size and appearance of a city change, else it's simply taken from the systems or the next parental objects seedso it's possible "i like to have four landing pads in my hometown but keep a small city" (needs the right number )
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Well, kind of. At the moment its less about the number of starports and more about their purpose - story stuff if you like. For example, why does Pluto Research Base have multiple landing pads, a shipyard, a commodity market, etc? I'd expect it to be a tiny scientific outpost with very little industry or commerce. At most it would let you sell basic items like fuel and food but not export anything. You might be able to buy fuel there and there might be an occasional delivery out there, but not much more. If you apply that kind of thinking to all of Sol, you start to come up short on reasons for many of the starports to be there.
that's a good one, settlements should reflect at least some system values (if not specific like a research base).[/hr]looks like there is no getting around of flattened terrrain. well personally i still prefere to workaround that and make buildings that fit both sitations.actually i lifted the groundstations to 100m to avoid "underground" stations that appears when a station is build on a cliff or mountain side, added very long stalks to let all look somehow reasonable even in extreme situations.of course this means a big disadvantage for a game ran without shaders.but it has been discussed from the start on to flatten terrain around cities.i guess the pro's are offensif once earthlike and hostile have separate architecture, a flattening for cities on earthlike planets would be more then just nice (but please keep the "exotic" places on hostile planets).[/hr]btw, if you feel my buildings stand to far from each, yes they do, i noticed that to and found that i used a collision mesh for the basements, which sometimes are very deep. but it's safe to use them without. i mean in a situation where you could touch such a basement with your ship your'e already crashed with the ground.else note that the space between buildings simply reflects the collision mesh's bounding radius.buildings sometimes must not have a collision mesh..... (ok, you can't collide, but also it takes up "no space")

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marcel, you can control the type of model used with a seed for the station/city (still possible?)
I didn't know that. Interesting. I'll experiment with a custom Eugene later. Right now, I've disabled all ground stations except the type I'm currently working on so I'm certain to have it at the start-up location. I remember that you were working with someone, getting his buildings into Pioneer. They were generally ovoid and looked like they were lowered to the surface by a hovering sky crane. I think they would be a nice addition to hostile environment building sets. I hope you guys are still working on them.

This version is for alpha17 Christmas Edition. I haven't messed with the starting position on Earth. The other stations in the Sol systems are changed when using this file. Once again, you must start a new game for this to work. Your saved games will not work. To install; extract the enclosed data folder to your pioneer-alpha17 folder. Happy Holidays and button up your overcoat, 'cause baby it's cold outside! [attachment=1004:Hometowns_05.zip]

Marcel wrote:
This version is for alpha17 Christmas Edition.
I hope you included the North Pole and the Lapland sleigh depot.

I didn't remove anything, just added the home towns. Looking forward to visiting the Lapland sleigh depot.

Here's an alpha 20 version for the four of you that use it. I haven't updated this since Christmas. My bad because it takes only a few minutes to do. The caveats and instructions remain the same.[attachment=1093:Hometowns_06.zip]

Hey, thanks for that Marcel!

You're welcome Geraldine! I thought you were one of the four. Btw, I know there are some new people here. If anyone wants their home town added, let me know.

i'm curious, it never made it to my mac (pioneer didn't runs before, but i just had to mute the sound)

I don't understand. Do you mean that it doesn't work on your Mac? The syntax is the same as the other ground stations, there are just more of them.

potsmoke66 wrote:
i'm curious, it never made it to my mac (pioneer didn't runs before, but i just had to mute the sound)
It never made it because it is not part of the master release. It is an add on by Marcel. so you will need to manually add it yourself.

slight misunderstanding of course it's not part of the master release and of course it works fine, no problems, except a extreme low framerate when you got a lot of cities in the viewfield.that's why i optimized the buildings a bit, to see what i can get out of that (not much **)it didn't made to my MAC, because i couldn't run pioneer until i found out that to simply disable the sound in "config.ini" will do the trick for me*.i can run the windows build via "Wine", but it's rather slow (of course) and only enough to use the modelviewer or for comparison.it has made no sense then, before i got the MAC build running.*what exactly stoods behind is still a riddle to me, but i don't mind to much actually, i'm happy i can play at all.** i have plans to remove the collision mesh from the buildings when you got a certain distance to them (even when i'm not sure now how to, needs doubled models perhaps). perhaps we can gain some of that. it will be just a experiment nothing more.because i noticed by my own groundstation mod, that even animations won't "eat" much FPS if they have no collision mesh. i.e. the big circular monorail thing. the one that encloses the city and not the one on the platforms (but even them).to have absolutely no collision mesh won't work, at least because the buildings would be placed one on top of the other.for the monorail it works because it's very wide, but occasionally it still crosses some buildings.

Here's the latest version for alpha 21. I've added 5 spaceports;Cardiff - SkodynCotswolds - OverlordRosario - walterarVersailles - NevilClavainAlso my daughter's hometown is in there so I can visit her. Read the instructions above if you haven't used this before. Hope you enjoy it![attachment=1162:Hometowns_07.zip]edit: Thought I'd better mention one more time that you must start a new game if you're going to use this. Previous saved games will cause Pioneer to crash.

Nice one Marcel, thanks