!! Pioneer Question Time !! - Ask them here

[Brianetta]

fluffyfreak wrote:
I believe the decision not to have visible "clouds" in space was done for realism. Most images of space are colourised to make things visible to the human eye that otherwise wouldn't be, however I can't actually find any unaltered images of space to know what it _really_ looks like through a window from the ISS of Space Shuttle with the naked eye.I personally think we could risk a little nicer looking backgrounds without going completely mad and having glowing green nebulae but it's a contentious point amongst all of the developers.
Here's what Sol's background "clouds" look like in actual fact:© 2011 - MOMENTUM BLOG | ALEXANDROS MARAGOSUnder Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 license Lovely pic, wish I'd taken it. Big problem here is that, pretty as it is, it's very faint. That's a half-minute exposure at 3200 - 6400 iso, f/2.8. You can only see it with the naked eye given very dark-adjusted eyes (oh, but it's so worth it if you get the opportunity), and you'd certainly never see it as a pretty backdrop to a sunlit object, such as a planet. The dynamic range would be way too high; either the background fades to black or the sunlit object dazzles you to blindness.Nevertheless, the discreet clouds represented in Frontier's background are the very ones seen in the image above. It's not totally unreasonable to want to include them, although it'd be a bit suspect if the view didn't change after a few thousand light years. Since we have players that will happily travel a few thousand light years just to see if the view changes, we'd be rumbled if we cheated with a simple background image.

[Cody]

Many years ago, I spent some extended time in a 'desert' and the night sky was truly awesome. So rare now with all that light pollution!
Brianetta wrote:
Since we have players that will happily travel a few thousand light years just to see if the view changes, we'd be rumbled if we cheated with a simple background image.
I have to chuckle at that... I'd be one of them.

[SimonR]

You mentioned the galaxy being static in the sky and that would reduce some believability, if the galaxy was a seperate 'strip' across the sky, it could be scaled or moved in the sky as needed to correctly represent a distance from the galactic core. Perhaps, if other more subtle sky elements were used they could be scaled inversely to become larger as the galaxy nearest becomes smaller. The galaxy strip and any other elements could be rendered in front of the background 'skybox'.

[Geraldine]

Thought I would give Pioneer's Mod DB page a bump as I feel it needs a little love http://www.moddb.com/games/pioneer/#2966746

[robn]

Geraldine wrote:
Thought I would give Pioneer's Mod DB page a bump as I feel it needs a little love http://www.moddb.com/games/pioneer/#2966746
Yeah, I have too many places to keep to up to date and not enough time. Would you like to take over the ModDB page?

[fluffyfreak]

SimonR wrote:
You mentioned the galaxy being static in the sky and that would reduce some believability, if the galaxy was a seperate 'strip' across the sky, it could be scaled or moved in the sky as needed to correctly represent a distance from the galactic core. Perhaps, if other more subtle sky elements were used they could be scaled inversely to become larger as the galaxy nearest becomes smaller. The galaxy strip and any other elements could be rendered in front of the background 'skybox'.
Good ideas but the problem is that rendering the galactic strip is more complicated than sticking it over the background because you're effectively moving around inside the thing that is the strip.If you wanted too you could head upwards and out of the band itself so you'd be looking down on the galaxy, or out to the rim where the strip would only be in one direction. Or head inwards towards the black hole at the centre where you'd be surrounded by the strip but also my the mass of stars that comprise the central bulge and you wouldn't be able to make out the strip at all.You can do all of that now, it's how to represent it that is tricker.

[Geraldine]

robn wrote:
Yeah, I have too many places to keep to up to date and not enough time.
Totally understand Robn, I don't know how you manage to put out those nightlys as well as all the other things you do!
robn wrote:
Would you like to take over the ModDB page?
I would love to Robn, but I wouldn't know where to start. If someone is willing to show me I would be happy to. You know already that I always push Pioneer where ever I happen to be on the net, but updating a web page................. To be honest I have never done anything like this before, but if it helps the project and someone could help me do it, then yes :)Someone PM me if you can help!

[Biscuits]

Hello all, so glad you guys are here to help. I'm running Pioneer 17 but I would like to upgrade however, if I install the latest version I am unable to load my previous game files. Can anyone help or advise?Kind regards,Mike.

[Brianetta]

mhollow2 wrote:
Hello all, so glad you guys are here to help. I'm running Pioneer 17 but I would like to upgrade however, if I install the latest version I am unable to load my previous game files. Can anyone help or advise?
We do not attempt to maintain saved game compatibility between alpha builds. I'm sorry to say, this leaves you with a stark choice: Continue with alpha 17, or start a new game with a more recent version.The unfortunate fact is that the game is changing too rapidly to keep the saved game format up to date.

[Geraldine]

Hi mhollowWelcome to the SSC There is the money cheat that you can use to equip yourself back up to the ship and specs you had in your save, ctrl m if that is any use to you?

[walterar]

Mhollow2, believe me, it's fun to start over with the experience gained. Pioneer has greatly improved from version to version. Worth it.If you are concerned about keeping his ship and the money earned, that's easy to fix.

[spazeman]

Hi everyone,I'm so impressed and addicted to pioneer it's absolutely great. Arse kissing aside, I've been so addicted to pioneer I've been playing around. I have no code skills whatsoever but i can do a bit of the old photoshop and love playing around with things i have no clue about. (This game has actually made me want to learn code!) Here are some icons and ads for fun, I'm sure not to everyones taste but they're mostly just pinched from google... have a look.I've also been playing with the cockpit making toggle switches and such. Will put some up and see if anyone likes them, though I have been struggling to make things fit as i'm a codephobe!Ta!

[Geraldine]

Hi SpazemanWelcome to the SSC! Certainly I will have a look at your Pioneer icons and glad your enjoying the game, it is rather cool is it not?

[JazHaz]

Having just downloaded Alpha 22, got a question. Can I run it in fullscreen mode or maximise the window (the maximise window gadget is greyed out)? My laptop PC is a full-HD model, so the Pioneer window is quite small.

[Geraldine]

If you start a new game, press the pause key twice on the star dreamer, that will take you to the options screen were there is a toggle button for full screen mode. There is also a config file in "My Documents/Pioneer" were you can set full screen mode (near bottom of page once open on notepad) by changing the 0 to 1 so that it looks like this StartFullscreen=1

[JazHaz]

Thanks Geraldine, that worked (I editted the .ini file).

[gjules]

Marcel wrote:


Quote:
im on em .........i like the look of the flowerfairy ......so im working on giving it specs more to my likeing with a new name lol .....just for me of course .....but yeah i will have a go at retexturing those ....now if anyones got the texture map ...or an unwrapped version of the model (since i cant find it in game) it woild be a help but it dont matter
The Interdictor and the Flowerfairy are scripted models. They're both in /data/models/ships.lua. Look at the Ladybird Starfighter for an example of how to texture them. Texturing the Ladybird was the first thing I did for Pioneer. I haven't gotten around to texturing the rest of the default ships in that file. I'm sure you'll do a much better job. I was thinking of using the Sidewinder's hexagonal texture on the Flowerfairy. There's a kind of serenata flowers effect with the different colored hex looking a bit like the center point of the flower. That thought is as far as I got before I started messing with the stations. Have fun!
I wonder - can someone do the Flowerfairy for Pioneer as a starter or is it too complicated? I am wondering because I really love flowers and I would love to start with that.

[Marcel]

The only way I know how is to go to the shipyard, accelerate time until one shows up and press ctrl-m until you have enough money to buy it. It's a very simple model and needs some textures put on it at the least. The real reason I'm replying, however is because of the link to an online florist in my quote. I'm sure I didn't put that in my original reply. Do we have some spam creeping in here?edit: I did some searching and found this.[url]http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2006/dec/14/serenataflowersapologisefor[/url]

[okydoky]

I downloaded and installed Pioneer but I have an 'error:open GL extension ARB_vertex_buffer_object not supported.Pioneer cannot run on your graphics card'Looks like a graphic card issue with my Radeon 4350?Sorry if i'm asking this question on the wrong forum.Thanks.

[Luomu]

okydoky wrote:
I downloaded and installed Pioneer but I have an 'error:open GL extension ARB_vertex_buffer_object not supported.Pioneer cannot run on your graphics card'Looks like a graphic card issue with my Radeon 4350?Sorry if i'm asking this question on the wrong forum.Thanks.
Radeon HD 4350? Should work, update your drivers.