SpaceSimCentral

It's not for networking, it's for community ideas.The "ifdef" approach, and I've used it before and seen it on other projects, results in a nightmare everytime with a mishmash of builds and versions.Since it will eventually become an integral part of Pioneer, as all features are, there's no good argument for hiving it off now.

It's not for networking, it's for community ideas.Such as?The "ifdef" approach, and I've used it before and seen it on other projects, results in a nightmare everytime with a mishmash of builds and versions.Only if there are official builds for different combinations of macros.We might just as well have a single build with the macro defined but still let anyone willing to build Pioneer their own way without needing to modify the sources. Since it will eventually become an integral part of Pioneer, as all features are, there's no good argument for hiving it off now.Again, I don't see how it's ever going to be integral.No offense, but it sounds like the same bunk logic that was used to justify always online in Elite: Dangerous and earlier in many games such as that latest Sim City. Pioneer is going to be, by necessity, a single player game.Anything online is necessarily going to be just an extra.

It's optional and I'm not the one writing it so the best person is to ask Robn on IRC.Also as I said it's not multiplayer or "always online" or any of that crap just some cool web stuff that we hope will make Pioneer better for those who want to use it. You want to change your build, go nuts of course

Also from the PR Well at this point nothing, because there's no server. Or from another angle, EVERYTHING, just a simple matter of programming :)I have some ideas for a kind of player/community site with hooks into the game, but its nothing more than ideas and some paper notes. There's also things like querying for updates, sending in hardware info, that sort of thing. But obviously, needs server and client code.Its a building block

It's optional and I'm not the one writing it so the best person is to ask Robn on IRC.Also as I said it's not multiplayer or "always online" or any of that crap just some cool web stuff that we hope will make Pioneer better for those who want to use it.Do we have any sort of feature roadmap regarding this "cool community stuff"? BTW: We don't seem to have any sort of roadmaps regarding the other features either - are there any actual development plans or is it all mostly ad hoc?Maybe threads on dev forum for discussing how different aspects of Pioneer should end up looking like and what needs to be done in their context would be called for?

It's mostly ad-hoc, we've tried to roadmap[/url] it before but with very limited success. Basically we all work on whatever we want too. You've read the asteroid thread yes? That came about because I was I stuck on rewriting some of the terrain generation. That's not in the Roadmap either but the terrain stuff is one of the reasons I got involved in the project, so it's my primary area. I rewrote the rendering and updated us to OpenGL 3.1, that's because I have terrain plans, I started adding AIS transponders for ship and working on exploration? That's because I have terrain exploration plans... I can be a bit focused  I started doing procedural asteroids, they're kinda like terrain, basically... I had terrain plans.

It's important to realise why this ad-hoc development exists by the way.There are long absences for many from Pioneer development, nearly all of these coincide with the end of someone working on a roadmap feature, or something they had become "responsible" for because they happen to have worked on it last. We burn out if we're not doing the things we love.This isn't like a job, if I do something I hate in my free time for 3 months solid, I stop doing it - either during those 3 months or whenever it is that I come to my senses afterwards. I'll get back to the docking code, maybe some station-traffic-control, the exploration stuff, or AIS transponders at some point. However I am selfishly doing asteroids now because otherwise I risk burning out again, after the last docking code update - which tooks months and followed the renderer update which took weeks - I spent yet more weeks doing nothing but bug fixes and things other people wanted. I didn't really want to do the docking rewrite but felt it was my responsibility because no-one else would even try to touch that code.The renderer update was because, again, no-one else would touch that code but I had to deal with using it all the time and it was limiting the other things I wanted. That's why we tend not to stick too a roadmap, because employees would, but volunteers aren't here to do ideas arrived at by committee or design. The Roadmap serves mainly as a place to put good ideas that sound cool, or are technically a good thing to do, not an actual list of required things you must do next.