SpaceSimCentral

s2odan wrote:
Btw, thanks for taking the time to do this, I've watched every episode so far
I'm happy to do it. It makes the game a lot more interesting when you have a mission and are playing for viewers. Thanks for all the support and thanks for the views!

Anyone else notice in ep 2, Star Trek Voyager is on in the background?

Subzeroplainzero wrote:
Anyone else notice in ep 2, Star Trek Voyager is on in the background?
YOU WIN SUPER BROWNIE POINTS AND A SHOUT OUT IN MY NEXT EPISODE.

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So, even when it makes its way into the game, don' t expect to be awed by the view from the ground. This is one piece of geology best appreciated from up high.
Oh, Olympus Mons is an impressive sight when standing a distance away from it and looking up at it, believe me. (No, I've not been there, but ORULEX has a Mars heightmap. I really have to open a Github issue about getting that into pioneer one of these days...)
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It might be fun to bleep them out during editing. I'll explore that option.
Oh, I don't mind the cussing, I only mind not being able to see the videos without deactivating my Web-blocker first (as it forces Google and YouTube into safe mode).

I think we should add an drive that doesn't ever require maintenance. That way people who really want to explore the galaxy can do so without modifying the game. It could be either really expensive or a reward for completing a certain set of missions. Maybe a lost piece of Thargoid technoloy? I don't have the same history with this game (nor its predecessor) that most of you do so forgive me if this is some sacred cow and I am speaking blasphemy.

prismra wrote:
I think we should add an drive that doesn't ever require maintenance. That way people who really want to explore the galaxy can do so without modifying the game. It could be either really expensive or a reward for completing a certain set of missions. Maybe a lost piece of Thargoid technoloy?
In this instance, it's a feature which can be painlessly removed from the game. We don't have any Thargoids, friendly or otherwise; Pioneer is a Frontier-inspired game, not a First Encounters-inspired game.
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I don't have the same history with this game (nor its predecessor) that most of you do so forgive me if this is some sacred cow and I am speaking blasphemy.
It's not blasphemy. We do plan to have crews in ships, and when we do we want them to serve a useful purpose, not just be lazy oiks required to counter-balance the player's obese mass or whatever. Anyway, one thing that a crew member might have is a qualification in drive servicing. Pioneer isn't as yet as awesome as it's going to be, let me tell you. (-:

Thank-you for your reply. That sounds like a fantastic solution and totally fits in with the Frontier style (as I understand it). I was afraid that the inability to explore indefinitely might have been considered a "feature" of the original and, as such, off the table for inclusion in Pioneer.

Episodes 5+ in production today. Will hopefully have them uploaded and processed within this 24 hour period. Sorry for keeping you waiting!

Episode 5 is up!

Episode 5 went down very well with my cup of tea and biscuit just now. I'm loving this series, great work!Some notes!* Sol didn't move much while you were hanging around Mercury with the timeaccel on because you chose a terrible planet for it. It was something like ~60 days rotation period and ~80 days orbital period? Even at max timeaccel that's going to take a while.* The planet "tilted" at higher timeaccels because set-speed locks your position relative to the body but not your orientation. We've been discussing the idea of locking the orientation as well, but it has some peculiar behaviour if the reference body is rotating quickly, as is the case with a space station. More thinking is required.* Venus is suffering from terrain brokenness just like Neptune. We significantly restructured the terrain engine for alpha 17, but our testing was apparently not as thorough as it could have been. Alpha 18 should improve the situation.* We have a long-standing feature request (#82) for removing the hud. The UI code is poorly structured right now which makes this quite difficult to achieve. Restructuring/rewriting that code is happening very slowly, and once its done it'll make this kind of feature trivially easy.* There's also quiet plans around for a free-roaming screenshot camera. No idea when that will happen, but I think that's something you'll like.* Barnard's star is "boring", but might have made a good stop because (iirc) you've not visited a space station yet?* The gas giant in 70 Ophiuchi is orbiting the binary pair, rather than just a single star within it. The A,B a designation tells you that - 'A,B' refers to the binary pair as a whole with the 'a' denoting the first object, as normal. I'm looking forwarding to seeing the view from there.Finally, can I suggest you link each episode from your original post? It'll make it much easier to find the new ones or the whole set for people that come later.Looking forward to episode 6!

Yeah I figured Merc wouldn't be good to watch the sun when i checked it's stats but I felt it was worth a try anyway. True, I havent visited a space station yet, but we'll get to one soon I'm sure. Very excited about the Hud, and yes I will link the vids in the original post.

Yeah Mercury is almost tidally locked, it made me chuckle when you were waiting for a sunset :)Anyway keep it up dude, I really like them and actually find myself anticipating the next episode Cheers.

s2odan wrote:
Yeah Mercury is almost tidally locked, it made me chuckle when you were waiting for a sunset :)Anyway keep it up dude, I really like them and actually find myself anticipating the next episode Cheers.
Glad you all can put up with my bumbling through space. I obviously wouldn't make the best astronaut at the moment. But that's what games are for right?Next ep will be coming out sometime tonight hopefully.Thanks for watching!

Episode 6 is up! I messed around with the brightness in editing, hopefully you'll be able to see everything this time. Youtube really screws up the darkness. (Link also added to original post)

bchimself wrote:
I messed around with the brightness in editing, hopefully you'll be able to see everything this time. Youtube really screws up the darkness.
I'll take the brightness down one notch for the next episode and it should be perfect.In fact, I will re-post this Episode if it bothers enough people. Otherwise, I'll just move on to Ep 7.

Also, I'm wondering what your opinion is on music. Should I be playing the in-game music (at a low level so you can still hear my commentary)? Should I play some background music of my own choice (I have a good selection fit for this type of thing)? No music at all? Or more random TV shows on in the background?I'll probably test some of these options out in the upcoming episodes.

bchimself wrote:
Also, I'm wondering what your opinion is on music.
One of my all time favorite Pioneer vids was an early one by King Haggis of Alpha 3. He got the music so right in this vid and served as an introduction to the game for a great many people, oh and it's up to 130 likes with zero dislikes by the way . I do hope he makes another Perhaps watching it could give you ideas? Here is a link

Geraldine wrote:

I remember watching this one before deciding to download. Great input, I definitely have some stuff like this I can play or add later.

You found some really nice planets in ep6. Sol and Epsilon Eridani don't really show off what the terrain engine can do (apart from the bugs) but I don't get out past them much because these days I'm only starting the game to test some bugfix or UI work or something. Nice to see things are still looking good out there!By the way, not all the devs are manual flight heroes. I'd be useless without the autopilot :)You asked about star types. The types are the Harvard Spectral Classification. Everything you ever wanted to know about how stars are classified can found on the Wikipedia page on stellar classification.As you've noticed, star draw is a problem at distance. That flicker and/or invisibility is apparent at around 20-30AU from the star. The flicker is a bug, but the stars being entirely invisible is a bit harder. I broke it a few weeks ago (for good reason) but the fix is .. weird. I need to think about it more.

One bit of advice I'd give, is to use the front view from your ship as the camera when in orbit. It gives you much more control, and the physics engine doesn't care which way you're facing while you fall along an orbit.