Alpha 4 (may fix lots of crashing)

[Potsmoke66]

milky way? no big deal just the slight milky colored ribbon you seethe "radar", scanner must be baught, the same goes to the autopilot, engage with F4had that "shader problem" too on my old machine, since NVIDIA it's gonei didn't think it's the grid.maybe disable antialiasing and or multisampling off or mipmapping off could help, try to fiddle around with that a bit.each have advantagesati tiles textures different, in i.e TWPGA2000 the ground is tiled with different sized tiles which looks quiet good even when the texture is very repetive, nvidia tiles them regulary which looks stupid like a chessboard.btw, nice to see pioneer get's slowly more and more attention

[KingHaggis]

Quote:
each have advantagesati tiles textures different, in i.e TWPGA2000 the ground is tiled with different sized tiles which looks quiet good even when the texture is very repetive, nvidia tiles them regulary which looks stupid like a chessboard.
Interesting... is this also the case with more modern games? Is there a difference in Pioneer visually, when using ATI instead of Nvidia graphics cars?I've only played the Alpha4 for half an hour by the way. In those 30 minutes gameplay, the game only crashed once. It was immediately after I loaded a savegame. With the older version, I used to have crashes every 10 or even 5 minutes so I guess there is progress.Pioneer rules! It's awesome, whiii

[RedRiver]

speaking of saved games. how come there isn't an option to delete them?

[Potsmoke66]

let's say that would be a nice extra, but the folder is known so you can delete or move them whenever you like.what i would wish is a support for folders in the savegame directory, like i used them in FE2, every career or test games can be stored into a own folder, but even that is not important.the missions list could be, i'm not shure which is best, maybe deleted after a year or month (each entry separate).or turned over so that the recent missions are on top, then they don't have to be deleted and it becomes like a log.a real log would be a quiet interesting feature.and a "design" comment, i didn't like the new starfield (background) as much as the old, to many stars imho, or they should be spread wider and stand closer where is the diffuse milkyway, that would be a option.to the crashfix i can't say much, it still does sometimes (mainly after dead when reloading a game, press then any button and...), but it was running same as good before on my system (ok, i didn't played more then half a hour until now i was busy whith my new buildings and some model refinements). a different lightsource in the station would be cool, i can fix the walls and floor to receive no light but i have no influence on the ship how (or if) it reflects environmental light.

[s2odan]

Is it just me or are the city buildings slowing everyone else down a lot too? I tend to have to use city size small or sometimes medium for it to be playable, with planet detail set to very very high.My Graphics card is actually a lot better than my cpu (GTX285 2gig vs q6600), so I would have thought it would be the other way round, trouble with processing planet and no trouble with viewing lots of models.

[tomm]

s20dan wrote:
Is it just me or are the city buildings slowing everyone else down a lot too? I tend to have to use city size small or sometimes medium for it to be playable, with planet detail set to very very high.My Graphics card is actually a lot better than my cpu (GTX285 2gig vs q6600), so I would have thought it would be the other way round, trouble with processing planet and no trouble with viewing lots of models.
Yeah I definitely need to look at model rendering performance. Probably they are slow because there are too many state changes when materials change, and when drawing the same model a bunch of times the draws are not grouped and the vertex buffers are rebound each call.If models avoid having dynamic geometry then there is no lua call at render time, which is the kind of thing that might freak out optimisation-minded coders. but it sure makes the ships look cool.

[s2odan]

Well at least my pc isn't dying a slow death.

[Potsmoke66]

well, today i decided to rework all, to simplify a lot and make the "standard" objects in a way they aren't that process intense. there was allways this voice in the back of my mind that it should be done this way but you can disable some other if it's just for a clip,try maybe the older version of the combo buildings but you will need the older arcology to make that work, it's in the post where i linked the buildings.if you disable the factories you will gain some to and get to a playable level, maybe open the script and comment 3 of the 4 versions out.something different, i know now why some pirates are disarmed, i guess they use there back lasers which simply doesn't work.but else, i love it. sometimes you meet a courier with a 10 or 20 MW laser, one hit and you are ashes.it's very interesting to see how different the ships act in fight.apart from that i have to "upgrade" the steering thrusters of all my ships, on planets with higher gravity it is difficult to start else (Epsilon Indi d).

[s2odan]

potsmoke66 wrote:
......apart from that i have to "upgrade" the steering thrusters of all my ships, on planets with higher gravity it is difficult to start else (Epsilon Indi d).
I prefer it when the ships struggle to hover over a high G world, but it would be nice if on high g worlds there was a way to launch your ship in the upright position, like a rocket, as you can normally land there but just not take-off.The Boa freighter I'm making will not fly on a high g world with a full load. So you have to pick your targets with more care Some people might not like that though, so I suppose there can be 2 versions and you pick which one you like.Will it be possible to have different sounds for different ships? (I'm just thinking out loud by the way ) With different sounds we could have some of the newer ships having different engines, like an Anti-grav drive or something. Antigrav drive would produce very similar or equal amounts of thrust in any direction, and would produce no rocket plume.Older ships would have the normal reaction drives (rocket engines).In FFE it was a little like this. The newer ships did have better all-round thrusters but they still had the same sounds and exhausts. Whereas the older ships had the standard big dive on the back, with piddly little retro and hover thrusters.

[OSH]

Is Radeon X1550 supported? I can't launch this game on my GFX card......

[Potsmoke66]

i guess yes, any recent card supporting open gl2 is supported.i had a older 9700 and it worked on it to.but msvc is needed to make it run, best msvc 2008, i found out new msvc2010 works not that good for memsvc2008 redist, don't use the SDK version and be shure no double instances of it found on your machine.forget this sentence in the instructions:

Quote:
Important: Make sure you have the latest service pack and critical updates for the version of Windows that you are running. To find recent security updates, visit Windows Update.
don't do that, read the spoiler why.of course you will need a recent dx version for open gl2, here is the latest version the best, imo.but i guess your gfx card isn't very old and the drivers that came with it will be as good as.use also no sdk version for dx, else the game slows down, due to one little .dll that is different to the redist.make also shure no double instances found of this, usually it's not possible to have two dx, but the sdk will install and stay present no matter if there is a redist version installed or not.but i can only speak for XP, i guess windows7 can act different and imo this is wanted from MS to keep us buying new softs, best from them to make them even more rich...nah, but i "heard" from a lot of people using win7 that they can't run their "older" (not really old) games no more.pah, i have only one explanation to this.... further some so called "security relevant updates" can prevent certain softs from running well. personally i had to strip once my XP completely from my computer and reinstall it, because some of the updates was not to revert even not with a system recovery. now autoupdate is disabled again (i had the same shit on ME) and i have no, really no problems. if you ask me, another trick to make the user feel his os is outdated i've acted like a stupid nube, only to be shure of what i allready knew before, now i can say, ok it has messed up my os twice that's evidence enough to say what's behind.so be careful what you update from MS, it could harm your machine and no attacker from outside is to see, only ms (and other big companies) itself, they are the only ones interested in bothering you.DX and MSVC updates are usually "clean".if i think logical, no small business company or private could have interest to get data from you or prevent certain softs from running.programs written by non profit developers have often the better gui, run smarter and won't leave you in the dark.think about that... why could that be, they should have better educated people under contract, no?then it is willingly!simply: "go buy our new os and feel happy that your "old" software won't run no more and you have to buy some new from us" sometimes programs put on blacklists because i don't know no virus or trojan hidden, maybe just because they don't like when they get no profit of a good soft (so for a very old cad "carCAD", i had to pull all registers to make that work again only because my system protested against and f-secure stated it is infected, what it is not for shure, btw, i never had a software written by a private including a virus or trojan (except a 100 years ago, beginning of the 90's i was infected by a harmless virus once spreading a "greetings to...". and years later when i downloadet a lot of softs from unsafe channels, but still i think the trojans are not put there by the admin of the site, MS or others does this to harm or block them), but i know it is used by the big ones to receive data from you.one is the music library gracenote, disable delete do whatever you can to get rid of it, it ports statistics of music you listened to the database and maybe more (who knows), further once you received the titles for a CD or DVD from them you are not able to make a digital copy again from it, except you reinstall your os.the key for that is hidden somewhere in the registry and it's not readable (hex) in most parts, i stumbled over one many years ago on old ME.just as a example who is interested bothering you and get data from you.you see windows media player is one of the biggest security leaks in your system (you can't disable gracenote there),whatever MS may state what is "security relevant", bullshit, imho. maybe good for them, but not good for you.software and os's in first degree are a big, big business and money plays a important role in this "game".i will test pioneer under linux and see what advantage that may bring, shure i keep you informed.

[tomm]

OSH wrote:
Is Radeon X1550 supported? I can't launch this game on my GFX card......
I develop it on a Radeon X1300 mobile, so X1550 should be fine. Maybe the crash on startup is due to the many bugs in alpha4. Try this WIP exe:http://pioneerspacesim.net/sites/default/files/pioneer-wip20101015.rar(yeah built a month in the future, october 2010...)also needs these put in data/shaders/http://pioneerspacesim.net/sites/default/files/bgstars.vert.glslhttp://pioneerspacesim.net/sites/default/files/bgstars.frag.glslMaybe I should bang out another alpha release, since big bugs have been squashed since alpha4, and these bugs will be messing with people doing modelling.

[s2odan]

tomm wrote:
....Maybe I should bang out another alpha release, since big bugs have been squashed since alpha4, and these bugs will be messing with people doing modelling.
If you have the time to put it together, we will certainly make use of it

[OSH]

Still doesn't work...here is contents of stdout file...
Code:
SDL_GetVideoInfo says 32 bppGLSL shaders on.data/shaders/model: Fragment shader(s) failed to link, vertex shader(s) linked. Fragment Shader not supported by HW

[s2odan]

Have you tried turning shaders off in the options file?

[tomm]

OSH wrote:
Still doesn't work...here is contents of stdout file...
Code:
SDL_GetVideoInfo says 32 bppGLSL shaders on.data/shaders/model: Fragment shader(s) failed to link, vertex shader(s) linked. Fragment Shader not supported by HW


Hm how awful, i didn't make it report which shader failed to compile...Do you know what your graphics card is? So on my to-do list: make pioneer fall back to shaderless when this happens, rather than crashing

[KingHaggis]

I'm glad to see the disappearing terrain bug has been fixed! That makes the game 50% more attractive i.m.o. Also, I haven't had a single crash and I've been playing the whole evening so Pioneer is getting better and better. The starfield being used since Alpha 4 is also awesome. This game is so atmospheric... I hope one day we have the option to land our spaceship, get out and hop around the terrain in a spacesuit or explore the surface in a buggy. That would be so cool, especially since I've recently discovered a few nice new planets.Also, I really like the fog in this game and I don't want it to leave, but sometimes the fog is overdone i.m.o. At certain altitudes terrain can become real misty and you can hardly see a giant mountain which is only a few hundred meters away from you. Then again, from different altitudes the mist can look very nice. I don't know whether to hate it or love it.Tomm, is there any way this will be possible in Pioneer or maybe a variant of Pioneer in the future? I've always wanted to see the option to explore alien planets on foot. Naturally, I don't want to come across as demanding but I'm just wondering what you're planning to do with Pioneer. Is it going to be an exact replica of Elite or are you going to give it a bit of an own identity? I assume, with limited time and manpower, the game will in time only receive small, doable extra features of course.

[OSH]

tomm wrote:
Do you know what your graphics card is?
ATI Radeon X1300/X1550 Series...

[tomm]

OSH wrote:


tomm wrote:
Do you know what your graphics card is?
ATI Radeon X1300/X1550 Series...
Yeah i have the memory of a goldfish Sure do is odd that it says hardware doesn't support shader when it is the same hardware more or less as I test on

[tomm]

KingHaggis wrote:
Tomm, is there any way this will be possible in Pioneer or maybe a variant of Pioneer in the future? I've always wanted to see the option to explore alien planets on foot. Naturally, I don't want to come across as demanding but I'm just wondering what you're planning to do with Pioneer. Is it going to be an exact replica of Elite or are you going to give it a bit of an own identity? I assume, with limited time and manpower, the game will in time only receive small, doable extra features of course.
Well the idea is that it becomes a big open source game with lots of coders working on it, and it gets bigger and better forever and ever, kindof like a mix of nethack and flightgear or something. I have always planned to make v1.0 mostly as featureful as elite 2 was, and avoid getting sidetracked with new features and consequently never releasing a playable game (. After v1.0 I'd like to add dynamic changing of systems and evolution of the gameworld over time (like places slowly getting more inhabited, wars causing allegiance changes to systems and destruction of cities, etc).I'm not against getting out of ships and walking, although planets are big places so it might be a slow way to get around. Also it would need cool things like dust and footprints and golf to give it some zest.