SpaceSimCentral

The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer Alpha 15. Builds for Windows and Linux are available for download from the download page. This release contains a huge amount of new stuff, including star terrains, new ships, stations and buildings, new music and new translations.Alpha 15 is dedicated to the memory of Dennis Ritchie (1941-2011).New features[*:uiv102rc]Star "terrains". Stars now have complex surface colours and patterns (#567)[*:uiv102rc]Assassination missions (#290, #500)[*:uiv102rc]Restored "hoop" orbital station (#499, #516)[*:uiv102rc]Restored "Panther" ship (#497)[*:uiv102rc]"Long Range Cruiser" bulk ship (#626)[*:uiv102rc]Big mushroom station with four bays (#530)[*:uiv102rc]New futuristic city buildings (#518, #557)[*:uiv102rc]Four new ambient music tracks (#543)[*:uiv102rc]Ship drives now break down over time and require repairs (#552, #570, #610)[*:uiv102rc]Ship landing lights now only flash when landing gear is down or ship is docking (#236, #478)[*:uiv102rc]Station landing lights now coloured to indicate occupied (red), free (orange) and cleared for docking (green) (#4, #489, #498)[*:uiv102rc]Romanian, Dutch, Italian and Croatian translations (#565, #571, #573, #593)Minor changes and tweaks[*:uiv102rc]Landed and docked ships will no longer cause alerts (#454, #466)[*:uiv102rc]Bulk ships are now spawned on game start (#500)[*:uiv102rc]Trade ships will now repair damage and replace destroyed equipment (#481)[*:uiv102rc]Mushroom station now has ads in bay 2 (#524)[*:uiv102rc]Display surface gravity of bodies in system info view (#533)[*:uiv102rc]Model fixes: Ship bounding radii, LOD checked and fixed, adverts cleaned up and other minor fixes (#530, #542, #556, #515, #72, #582, #613, #614, #620)[*:uiv102rc]Support for glowmaps (#557)[*:uiv102rc]Terrains. Snow on mountains and polar ice caps. Various optimisations and fixes (#440, #566)Fixes[*:uiv102rc]Certain in-game keys will no longer crash when used in the menu (#453, #463)[*:uiv102rc]Don't try to save or load game with no filename (#487, #488)[*:uiv102rc]Fix set speed scaling when setting a negative set speed (#482)[*:uiv102rc]Don't spawn docked trade ships on game start (#495)[*:uiv102rc]Ensure docked trade ships take off after game load (#517)[*:uiv102rc]Fix crash on docking after failing assassination mission (#527)[*:uiv102rc]Old package delivery missions are now removed from the board (#534, #548)[*:uiv102rc]Fix LMR stack leaks that could cause heap corruption (#555, #342, #470)[*:uiv102rc]Fix display of co-orbital bodies in system view (#551)[*:uiv102rc]Don't respawn bulk ships on game load (#539)[*:uiv102rc]Fix rare crash when NPC ship is destroyed that previously attacked the player (#568)[*:uiv102rc]Fix a case where we try to access an object after its been freed (#342, #470)[*:uiv102rc]Fix various depth bugs when shaders are enabled. Fixes gas giant rings, hyperspace clouds, etc (#24, #234, #504)[*:uiv102rc]Fix black halo around gas giant atmospheres when rings are visible (#595)[*:uiv102rc]Update hyperspace button after cargo/equipment change (#550, #602, #609, #611, #612)[*:uiv102rc]Fix directory handle leak (#618)[*:uiv102rc]Don't allow scripts to add more equipment than a ship has room for (#617, #616)[*:uiv102rc]Interplanetary Shuttle can no longer take a hyperdrive (#613)[*:uiv102rc]Fix crash on attack after high-risk delivery (#631)[*:uiv102rc]Fix crash in if player arrives in system before assassination target (#643)[*:uiv102rc]Fix crash when setting equipment in a slot that a ship doesn't have (#647, #648)[*:uiv102rc]Fix crash when rendering non-ship models under certain conditions (#646)Script changes[*:uiv102rc]Experimental Lua console (#537, #597)[*:uiv102rc]Lua events onShipEquipmentChanged and onShipFlavourChanged (#544, #547)[*:uiv102rc]Lua method Ship.SetHullPercent to set a ship's damage level (#420, #472)[*:uiv102rc]Lua method Ship.SetShipType to change the type of a ship (#404, #507)[*:uiv102rc]Lua methods Player.GetNavTarget and Player.GetCombatTarget to get the currently-targetted bodies (#588, #583)[*:uiv102rc]Lua Lang interface to access core translated strings (#579, #575, #553)[*:uiv102rc]Lua Translate interface to let modules provide translations (#580, #625, #629)[*:uiv102rc]LMR methods fully documented (#615)Internal changes[*:uiv102rc]Lots of internal cleanups; silences many warnings under GCC (#477, #484, #604) and MSVC (#483)[*:uiv102rc]String and language updates (#509, #510, #514, #525, #528, #622, #623)[*:uiv102rc]Allow terrain generation to be aborted when the current set of terrains become unusable (eg after hyperspace or detail settings change) (#457, #490)[*:uiv102rc]Shield generators now occupy their own equipment slot to remove the for special-case checks with dealing with cargo (#308, #459)[*:uiv102rc]Targeting and trade functions moved from Ship to Player since they aren't really meaningful for NPCs (#38, #307, #485)[*:uiv102rc]Separated key bindings from individual key actions and added onPress and onRelease signals to the bindings (for key repeat) (#398, #493)[*:uiv102rc]Load glyphs up to 0x1ff to better support certain European translations (#415)[*:uiv102rc]LuaManager now allocated from the heap to avoid some startup/shutdown problems (#535)[*:uiv102rc](OSX Only) Refactored and Restructured ObjectiveC code to be more manageable (#559)[*:uiv102rc]Use FBO extension functions (GL2) instead of core (GL3) (#608, #605)

Good work assasination missions are a good content addition

Yay! Now I have something to play at work during lunchtime! I think it's already safe to say "GOOD JOB GUYS!" even though I'm still downloading. Previous releases have already shown the Pioneer dev team's dedication to the project, excellent skills and eye for detail so I expect the same for alpha 15. Each new alpha release makes this game better and better. B.T.W., I really like those new city buildings. I hope the creator will continue his fantastic job.

This game just gets more and more amazing

Hi Guys,Just a quick note to announce that the OSX build of alpha15 is also up on the download page.Cheers,Philbywhizz.

Great news guys! I can see what a massive amount of work you put into this alpha Well done!

Philbywhizz wrote:
Hi Guys,Just a quick note to announce that the OSX build of alpha15 is also up on the download page.Cheers,Philbywhizz.
Cool beans! I'll try it out soon. Thanks to the devs for all the hard work.

Just loaded up the new release,The new buildings look absolutely fantastic, like stepping into a world of futurama, the start location looks great with the snow textures on the ground here and there and an awesome mountain to the right of the start pad, plus liking the fact that I see other ships nearby which I dont think i noticed in the past version (? not sure on this), looking forward to playing this one, also looking forward to seeing the textures in stars, that sounds pretty interesting (are there any sunspots?) , many thanks!

so any thoughts on where to from here

ollobrain wrote:
so any thoughts on where to from here
Your house! For free beer!

Any screenshots from this new release?

some nice touches, the cities look amazing - some great work eveyone i did notice that the sun had a diamond shape rather than a sphere - whats that nursery rhyme about a diamond in the sky?? - oh yeah twinle twinkle little star - well i have added a pic so you can see what i mean - also the stars seem to 'eat' my ship - must be my settings - ill have a play with them later and see if i can get a more rounded sun and less greedy Epsillon Eradani

there were problems with the suns at great distances, as they didn't show up very well or in some cases not at all, so a halo effect was readded to help counter this, still the suns do look great once you get clsose to them mind

Cheers Matthew - that could be it - its no big deal really and yeah it is nice to see the stars having a granualted textured surface, its all looking very good indeed

If you can see the texture of that star's surface, there's no way you should be able to see anything as comparatively dim as those background stars.

Yes, but we're not looking at the scene directly. We're either looking at a viewscreen or there's some type of canopy or visor that processes the image to improve visibility and protects your eyes. And the outside view is computer generated, so there! :PBtw, Sol looks round on my computer.

Marcel wrote:
Btw, Sol looks round on my computer.
gotta be my settings then - ill have a look when i get a moment - it is round when i get closer be nice to see some sun spots now and then - rotating ?? - do the stars rotate in Pioneer? - i've never considered that - but with a blank texture how would we knowill have to jet off to Sol again and have a look - should be able to tell now with textures

Rob wrote:
the stars seem to 'eat' my ship
That's one icky side-effect of our current HDR implementation. The postprocess glow is extended bast the normal high-contrast edge. That doesn't make sense, but its the best way I can explain it. HDR needs a lot of work - its great when it does the right thing, but terrible when it doesn't. Try it with a brown dwarf for another example.

robn or anybody else,i could need a comprehensive list of the new arguments used for models, that would really help, since i didn't find such on the wiki.actually i'm asking myself if get_arg_material() still works, i will have (again) check a existing model for that.

Did the existing model work in a contextual tense sense