SpaceSimCentral

The Pioneer development team are very pleased to announce the release of Pioneer alpha 10. Downloads for Windows, Linux and for the first time Mac OS X are available from the download page.
New stuff


Over 1200 real starsSupergiant starsMany new and more complex terrainsNearby ship and firing alertsBulk freight ships outside starportsMore station backgroundsMac OS X portLittle things
Prettier background stars and hyperspace effectsReworked hyperspace ranges and durationsWide variation of faces in bulletin board adsCombat AI will give chase if the target tries to escapeVelocity measured relative to the frame rather than the targetImproved targetting squares and velocity indicatorsShips and other small objects not shown beyond a certain rangeUnguided missiles work againOption to invert mouse lookUnder the hood
Rewritten Lua module API (with documentation!)Hundreds of bugfixes and code cleanupsI'd like to personally extend my congratulations and thanks to everyone who contributed. This was a huge release with some major changes both to the code and to our processes that have placed the project in a great position for the future. And to the rest of you, thank you for your patience. We hope you love it

WooHoo This is a massive release isn't it... I think we have actually given people a game this time ;)Anyway, thanks and well done to you too Rob, you need a pat on the back as well you know

Wonderful news robn! Looking forward to trying it out

in most parts i love it, but where is italy? sunken? vanished?that's what we had beforenow it looks like thisand before someone can argue it was because of my changesit looks like no more oceans and everything is into a heavy fog? are the seas dried out?i mean the first pic it was far to clear, but now it looks not like my home...and i guess you britons aren't really satisfied with that?everything looks like desert instead of oceans, a desert planet? i never liked "the brown smudge" of FFE and it was the FIRST i wanted to get rid off.it's not that bad at all and i will see if i can fix that myself.after all a good new release,and points PRO are more then CONTRA- fixed look of gas giants (thumbs up)- improved HUD, even for external view (thumbs up)- control seems more smooth to me (thumbs up)- better framerate (thumbs up)i guess if a play a little further i will find even more positive things!but you can always expect critics from me, i am such.

Good News. Simple Moments alpha 0.9

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in most parts i love it, but where is italy? sunken? vanished?
Yes you already posted about that... its a bug and it is fixed right here: https://github.com/s20dan/pioneer/tree/sys-gen

sorry, yes the post WAS doubled, due to a interrupt of my connection after "submit".i have a very weak signal because i live upstairs, fortunately i have a very strong receiver* and can place it anywhere, but often i have to change places, because the signal changes, but i already know three or four good places to put it. but depending on weather and daytime i have to change sometimes. looks better no? i mean with the preview windowyou can embed videos here in a very simple manner, just mark the link and press youtube (upper right corner of the edit window).thx D1 better then many laptop, i know my neighbor has to sit downstairs to have a connection and former i lived in zürich city, and their was one he had to sit into the stairwell to have a connection while mine was still good. i had similar problems in the beginning with WLAN, but couldn't stand it especially because my machine isn't portable, so i bought me a rather cheap receiver, but a fantastic sensitive one.

let's say i have good reasons now NOT to compile pioneer or anything on my machine.that let's me see things like they appear to a common user of a rotten win XP machine, i guess you know already now that it is a difference if you have the redistributable to run a program or the developers version of MSVC.a different example, 2 years ago i had the developers version of MSVC2008 installed, and TWPGA2008 wasn't running, i couldn't create a character, so i couldn't play.took me a while to find out that it was the lib's of MSVC dev. release that hindered the game from running. again i stumbled then over that more accidentally.apart from that, i can't recommend any developers version of anything, except you're actively developing something with it, they have some disadvantages.simply because of the debug features that are removed from a redistributable. guess else there would be no need for a redistributable.i don't give a dam about titles, brands or anything that is blowing my head ;)to sad WE HAVE ALREADY A PINBACK here, it would be else my nick, for sure, that "stupid" fuel engineer, who ends up as the last normal of the whole bunch...i am a digger and digging has to be done underground, there is no way around that!

Just fyi, a 10.01 build has been posted for Mac OS X only. It has been rebuilt in a way that it should work on OS X back to 10.4, though this has not been tested. If you're using the OS X build and its working fine for you, then you do not need this update. Otherwise, head over to the download page and grab it.

A Button to turn the HUD off and on would be nice. I am referring to all the HUD Stuff for a clear View.

navi wrote:
A Button to turn the HUD off and on would be nice. I am referring to all the HUD Stuff for a clear View.
ganz meine meinung, dankeyes, i would like such to, a configurable HUD, certain info like the relative velocity (under the selected target) are a bit annoying to me or isn't needed from my pov, but others might like it.

navi wrote:
A Button to turn the HUD off and on would be nice. I am referring to all the HUD Stuff for a clear View.
Logged as issue #82.

before i open a new issue, (even if i guess now it's worth one, i am still experimenting)Pioneer no longer works together with Virtual Dub in windowed mode, it freezes virtual dubwhen i switch to fullscreen it acts like it's o.kbut the resulting capture is rubbishit looks like windowed, but i ran the game fullscreenwatch this clips,pioneer runs in 1280x1024 fullscreen, capture mode 1680x1050 and this time i set screen res. to 1024x768 for both programs all other setting are the same as when i made my clips beforeexcept that i preferred to make them windowed because it has worked out better then fullscreen for alpha9.i guess it would still be better, but like i said windowed won't work at all.that's sad for all those who liked their clips of pioneercounter testffed3d 1680x1050 fullscreen capture mode 1680x1050 again 1024x768 fullscreen capture mode 1680x1050, this time triple buffer and vertical sync on i just wanted to be sure, pioneer 1680x1050 capture mode 1680x1050has turned out to be a bit better, but unplayable (stutters) and the resulting clip has still this flickering. i managed it to capture it in windowed mode 1024x768, capture mode 1024x768 (my default settings for clips, because virtual dub needs less processing time in a lower res, for pioneer it doesn't matters much, to me at least). but still useless would it be a treat to compile it with msvc? just to see if that changes...i know i sworn already last year i will switch to linux, perhaps i do it, i am again frustrated about the mess MSN has produced when i installed it (i know MSN is a "killer", that's why i never installed it and removed it immediately from any new windows i had installed),but i wanted to shorten the way to vampiretta.of course i banned it again as soon as i recognized that it harms my OS.i guess that's why (msn is not the only reason) my over 5 year old machine still runs like at the first day.others that aren't aware of such like my ex, have a less old computer, but she can't run it no more, she said after 10 minutes it's game over! (not a game, the whole machine breaks down).should i tell you what MS would suggest, buy our new crap! :lol:i know maintenance is important, not only to dust it off sometimes even from the inside (even when old faithful A2000 was running with coffee inside, it hasn't harmed that thing, but i forget sometimes that this was no computer, it was only a toy, which i bought from someone who bought himself then a "real one". lolrog).but leave that up to no one else then yourself, watch what you need and what not and most of all, never trust a big company (any).

I don't know VirtualDub specifically, but I could imagine a scenario where the change of compiler/linker used affects one program running under another. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who can test this specific software combination and also anyone who can do a MSVC build and test with VirtualDub, as well as testing the GCC build (ie a stock alpha 10) with some other capture program eg Fraps.

o.k fraps results are o.k, but i don't like to invest money, which i don't have at the moment simply.i haven't eat a bite since three days because of lack of money. i live by black coffee and sugar if i had a few nickles i would spend them for food.free it's limited to a few seconds, not very funny, that won't work for me. it stops whenever it likes to stop, a bit strange.further you can only record in uncompressed format and even a full version will be limited then to 1GB, and that's not much for full avi, i know from "taksi".i will see....maybe i find another suitable one on sourceforge

Great news! Time for testing (when I have some time )

devs, you see that skeleton, that's ME congratulating you to setting all up so fine even a chimpanzee can compile Pioneer :mrgreen:after a first bite into it, it runs very well...

two slight fixes, one will make deliveries to barnards star possible.i know i tried once to setup a system without a planet, but because i can't get no population there, whatever seed i tried, i pushed this idea over board.i guess the game neither likes it to make runs to a unpopulated system, i never have let it come that far, like i said i couldn't get no population with such a combination so i left the idea aside.to get some population to barnards star, use perhaps this script, it's generating now a "dumb" random system, therefore a populated one.at least this allows deliveries without crashing the program.i also changed the description somewhat and left the short description up to the game, mainly because i need that to check quick if a system has a economy type or not when i search for a seeding, the seed i used has produced to my own surprise a similar system as before.but behind the used seed are some numbers you can try and which should work to. each results into a different system constellation.further, personally i guess the short description should be left mostly to the game, for some like a prison colony it will be o.k, but else it gives the player no longer a hint what goods they deserve and what they offer. but with some experience and the short description you will know "mining colony... o.k they need narcotics perhaps or food" and don't have always to check the system info chart. i liked that in the earlier releases and it's a leftover behave of mine from FE2. like i said some can have a special one like a prison colony, but i wouldn't go to far with such, else you always have to check the system chart. you still will have the long desc. to write there what kind of system it is, i mean history and all that, just like good old FE2.[attachment=701:barnards_fix.zip]since it is stated on top of pienums.lua that it should be kept in sync with EquipType.h, i did so,i can't tell you right now if that helps really something, but at least it didn't harms to do so.[attachment=702:pienums.zip]simply copy the zip to your pioneer folder and unpack it with "unpack here" it should end up in the right location.it was a nice idea, to make this prison system, but i guess that won't work without any population in the system and without a economy, i never tried really, like i said, as soon as i noticed i can't populate such a system it was not longer of interest for me.sometimes it still crashes when i finished a delivery, but i have to make more different runs to barnards star, to see where that comes from, of course not specifically from this system, but this allows at least some comparisons.first i was relatively sure it has crashed when i succeeded the mission while failed (late) was working, actually i managed some successful so i guess it's something else.there is one error message left in "stderr.txt" but i guess you know, just for completeness of my report
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opendir: couldn't open directory 'data/libs': Bad file descriptor
i haven't found out yet where that comes from...a little bon-bon[attachment=703:PIC003.jpg]for all the "windows boy's and girls" (even if i am NOT specifically a windows boy, if i had the opinion i would use my A4000*) i will push here my MSVC compiled version as soon as it is cleaned.*there is NOTHING that can replace the M68k family and when you know what has driven all arcade machines, of course no intel.... unsuitable for a high performance machine running all day and all night, being hit and pushed around like a piece of wood.apart from that only a EPROM technology allows to setup a specific machine for a certain game and leaves all power to the game, only one of the many reasons to chose a M68000 for a arcade machine. consoles from up the sega master system until CD32 used it, i found a clip of a then revolutionary game for the CD32. with evolution of technology you couldn't have simply tuned the "overclocking", no each time it was possible to double the so called "chip mem" you gained a ^2 in power,without overheating that poor worker inside, a M68k untuned needs no cooling vent. it's not a "frying pan". while overclocking works ^-2, means a doubling of frequency didn't means a doubling of power and each time you have to overclock it more to gain only a bit, a reason why this evolution will stop soon, or in other words the difference between a 500MHz and a 1GHz intel is far bigger, rather the difference between 1GHz and 2GHz and to gain what you have gained between 1GHz and 2GHz you will have to overclock it to 8GHz, it's a fact. you see some have simply preferred the completely wrong technology. GPU's have left the CPU far behind, because they use a different physic, simply said.dual and quad core is only another helping solution, but not the real thing. still its a x86 that ticks inside. well you know me, that "paper tape feed waving machine controller".for which it was good enough, to control simple dumb industrial machines. not to play games or doing graphics (it can't do much without the GFX card) or run a sophisticated GUI.there is only one advantage of a intel, you don't need no radiators in your flat... sadly they stopped development or is left up now to some and , but who knows once this will come to a end, i swear!just for the next time when you call "gernötli" a "windows boy", i can't stand such

Haha I used to have a cd32 and microcosm. That was easily the most difficult game I have ever played, EVER! Roadkill was AMAZING though!

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That was easily the most difficult game I have ever played, EVER!
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