Just for Fun, Your Hometown!

[Marcel]

This will add the hometowns of everyone I could find on SSC to the planet Earth in Pioneer alpha 12.WARNING!! IF YOU USE THIS FILE ALL YOUR SAVED GAMES WILL BECOME USELESS! LOADING A PREVIOUSLY SAVED GAME WILL CRASH PIONEER AND POSSIBLY YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM!!OK, disclaimer aside, drag the data folder in this .zip to your main Pioneer folder. It will replace 00_sol.lua and copy 00_sol.lua.backup to your data/systems/p00p00 folder.If you want to make your hometown into the default startup location, open 00_sol.lua with a text editor and cut the section with your hometown in it and paste it above Brasilia.Each point of light represents an intelligent being on the surface of the planet. Hope you enjoy the populated Earth! [attachment=855:Hometowns_00.zip]

[Azimech]

Thanks Marcel! I will enjoy this.

[Geraldine]

Resistance is futile, many thanks Marcel

[Marcel]

Resistance is useless! Now just let me shove these two into this airlock before I mention that there are some places on Earth that confuse the autopilot when you travel there from Brasilia. It acts like it did in Frontier sometimes. One of these places is Scotland. Sorry Geraldine. Just go to speed control and nose up when you're near Croslee.

[Geraldine]

No worries Marcel, I prefer a manual landing anyways

[s2odan]

Quote:
I mention that there are some places on Earth that confuse the autopilot when you travel there from Brasilia. It acts like it did in Frontier sometimes.
That is odd and should not happen.... Does it just crash you into the ground?

[Mysibrat]

Thanks for that addon : )

[Marcel]

Quote:
That is odd and should not happen.... Does it just crash you into the ground?
Yes, it usually locks into a final approach at around 20 km, but in some locations it just pitches and hits the ground sideways. It only happens in a few locations. Anyway, glad you all like it.

[Marcel]

There was a slight change in Earth from alpha 12 to 13. This will keep it up to date. The disclaimer above still applies. You must start a new game for this to work.[attachment=874:Hometowns_01.zip]

[Geraldine]

Many thanks for this update Marcel

[Marcel]

This will add the hometowns of everyone I could find on SSC to the planet Earth in Pioneer alpha 14 daily build 6280df6, the one with the full 3D galaxy. There are changes to the folder structure and a change in the line describing what sector Sol is in, which makes hometowns_01 crash the game. This will keep it up to date. Also, I've found a few more people on SSC so I've added them in. Once again, you must start a new game for this to work.[attachment=880:Hometowns_02.zip]

[Marcel]

I just tested Hometowns_02 in alpha 14 and it works.

[Geraldine]

That's great news Marcel, now that I have just fixed Alpha 14, I will get this added again too. Is there any chance the file could be added into the main build thread as an optional file within the full package?

[Marcel]

There's always a chance. Right now the alphas are breaking save game compatibility, so it would seem to be a good time. I wonder what the devs think about it.

[Brianetta]

Marcel wrote:
There's always a chance. Right now the alphas are breaking save game compatibility, so it would seem to be a good time. I wonder what the devs think about it.
Breaking save game compatibility isn't something the devs strive to avoid. You've just been lucky recently.I think the general consensus on the hometowns file is that it's a bit of fun, and you can play with it if you like. I wouldn't have thought it would make it into the game. We don't have any mechanism for making files in the download optional, but then, we already have a solution for that! People who want this version of the Sol system can grab it from the forum.

[robn]

Brianetta wrote:


Marcel wrote:
There's always a chance. Right now the alphas are breaking save game compatibility, so it would seem to be a good time. I wonder what the devs think about it.
Breaking save game compatibility isn't something the devs strive to avoid. You've just been lucky recently.
Actually the save game version has been bumped in at least the last three alphas, but the games might have still loaded if you were lucky. Going forward though save game version bumps are being enforced, and older save games will refuse to load. That's already happened this dev round so alpha 15 will not run alpha 14 saves.
Quote:
I think the general consensus on the hometowns file is that it's a bit of fun, and you can play with it if you like. I wouldn't have thought it would make it into the game. We don't have any mechanism for making files in the download optional, but then, we already have a solution for that! People who want this version of the Sol system can grab it from the forum.
I don't see that the hometowns will ever be in the game proper. If anything we want to remove starports from Sol, not add more. Something I do want to do one day is make some sort of mod manager so people can search for mods like this and download them in-game. We're still a long way off from having the infrastructure to support that though, so unless someone wants to step up and do it now its probably a couple of years away.

[Marcel]

Quote:
If anything we want to remove starports from Sol, not add more.
I don't understand that. Wouldn't you want Sol to be one of the busiest places in the galaxy? Anyway, as I said before, this is intended to be a just for fun add-on, I never expected it to become part of the game. It's really nice to be in Eugene and recognize the surrounding terrain. The Willamette Valley looks just about right!

[robn]

Marcel wrote:


robn wrote:
If anything we want to remove starports from Sol, not add more.
I don't understand that. Wouldn't you want Sol to be one of the busiest places in the galaxy?
Well, kind of. At the moment its less about the number of starports and more about their purpose - story stuff if you like. For example, why does Pluto Research Base have multiple landing pads, a shipyard, a commodity market, etc? I'd expect it to be a tiny scientific outpost with very little industry or commerce. At most it would let you sell basic items like fuel and food but not export anything. You might be able to buy fuel there and there might be an occasional delivery out there, but not much more. If you apply that kind of thinking to all of Sol, you start to come up short on reasons for many of the starports to be there.Of course right now we have no way to describe different styles of starport and surrounds, which is why nothing much has really been done yet. It'll have to be considered seriously at some point.

[Marcel]

I understand what you mean about Pluto, but on Earth we have a high population outdoor world and the cradle of humanity, (as well as the home of the hamburger). It seems logical that a larger population would equate to more star ports. More people and goods would want to move around. A spaceport in Pioneer is analogous to an airport in the present day. Travel between planets and systems would be routine when one can buy a spacecraft for a price equivalent to that of a private aircraft. I think, therefore that Earth should be a difficult place to fly to because of all of the traffic buzzing around it.

[Geraldine]

I am with you on this Marcel. Mother Earth should be a busy place. However, I think Robn does make sense too. Correct me if I am wrong Robn, but did you mean to trim the starports? In the further reaches of the solar system, that does make sense. High populations (and so fully featured starports) should be reserved just for out-door worlds. The cost of maintaining a massive infrastructure on an airless world for example would be too high. Therefore smaller "Sirocco" sized ports would be more in fitting with the game. Oh noes! Get ready for "All Bays Are Full!" messages again Also, there is another reason for this too. If city modelling starts to become more and more complex, frame rates could be effected. So it might make sense to have a few highly detailed cities in the game rather than have lots of low detail ones. Would be great if you could choose between them though! As for mods, my suggestion was for something like the inclusion of a simple mod folder within the game directory itself. If in the future, you intend to incorporate some kind of mod manager (like FLMM for Freelancer as an example), it could access this folder to enable the mods. Standardising the folder layout (which I think is pretty much done now) is a good thing as future mod makers will know where their files should go if installing a mod manually. The inclusion of a mod manager will streamline this.