Pioneer Alpha 28
 

Hi Sub Sim Fans
Here is another new monthly Alpha for you to try out. The big highlight of this month is a new UI! :cool:

Anyways here is the change list from Pioneer dev Robn

"The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer Alpha 28. This month sees the debut of our new UI engine (main menu only so far), flight and combat improvements and a load of tweaks and fixes. Builds for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the download page.

New features

• First stages of the new UI system (#1586, #1625, #1623, #1622, #1642, #1634, #1639, #1651, #1615)
• Cockpit views have been removed (#1606)

Minor changes and tweaks

• Improve placement of cameras in Imperial Courier/Trader (#1599)
• Laser bolts are now faster (#1607)
• Thruster fuel (propellant) mass is now taken into account in the ship info view and shipyard screens, and in hyperspace calculations (#1574)
• Cargo jettison now handled by Lua script (#1443)
• Basic support for rendering Cyrillic characters (#1647, #1031)

Fixes

• Fix choice of non-/rotating initial frame in Space.SpawnShipNear (#1584, #1581)
• Hide thrusters in camera (not cockpit) views (#1578, #1577)
• Hammerhead's cockpit camera is now correct when the head is extended (#1594)
• Fix placement of docking bay text in 'nice_spacestation' orbital (#1154, #1605)
• Fix input (e.g., laser fire key) leaking from one game to the next (#1613)
• Don't generate an alert for ships parked in orbit near a station (#1636, #545)
• Allow non-ASCII characters in savefile names (#1632, #1627, #1482)
• Ensure frames for stars with no orbiting bodies are sufficiently large for the autopilot to compute orbits (#1645, #1626)
• Fix Achernar9 mass & radius (#1640, #1626)
• Ignore UTF-8 Byte Order Mark in text files edited with some Windows editors (#1661)

Script and model changes

• Separation and orientation is now specified for dual laser mountings (#1518)
• Removed Engine.userdir (deprecated since alpha 26) (#1602)
• Added StarSystem.faction attribute and Faction object to get information about a system's faction (#1568)
• Removed Ship.Jettison, added Ship.SpawnCargo (#1443)
• Ship.flavour attribute and Ship.SetFlavour method to fully customise the ship model's appearance. Ship.SetPrimaryColour and Ship.SetSecondaryColour are now deprecated (#1637, #526)
• New attribute Ship.shipId can be passed to ShipType.GetShipType. Ship.shipType is now deprecated (#1589)

Internal changes

• Code clean-up in the handling of world view cameras (#1601)
• All file access operations now go through FileSystem (#1632)"

Have fun! :up:

Pioneer Alpha 29
 

Hi Sub Sim Fans

Got another update for you, Alpha 29 of Pioneer. This month as well as the usual code clean ups, factions have an increased presence in the game.

Here is the change log for this month:

The Pioneer development team is pleased to announce the release of Pioneer Alpha 29. This month we have a rewrite of the infoview, including per-mission screens and player name/face customisations. Also we have over a hundred new factions with varying government types, and sector map updates to view them. Full changelog and builds for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the download page.

• InfoView (F3) rewrite. Now has player name/face customisation and per-mission info screens (#1633, #1785)
• Economical autopilot. Trades fuel for time (#1582)
• Your ship's automatic rotation damping can now be turned off (#1570, #1156)
• Almost 100 new factions with varying government types (#1621, #1620, #1675, #1761, #1771)
• Zoom out the sector view to see a faction map (#1754, #1764, #1761, #1796, #1784)
• modelviewer can now dump models to Wavefront-format files (#1763)

Minor changes and tweaks

• Cargo scooping now only requires a collision against the ship rather than a specific part of it (#1674)
• Refueling now handled by Lua script (#1649)
• Fixed navigation lights on Courier, Trader, Meteor, Natrix (#1710, #1711)
• Added transparent backgrounds to planet icons to avoid some visual glitches (#1572)
• Don't clear hyperspace target when the current system is selected in the Sector View (#1662)
• Improved scanner draw performance

Fixes

• Workaround shader glitches for planets with zero temperature (#1712)
• Pioneer should not be marked as "Not Responding" on startup in Windows (MSVC builds only) (#1743)
• Fixed flight log crash after visiting 1000 stations
• Barnard's Star is now a member of the Federation (#1620)
• Reduce use of random number generator in sector generation. Fixes
  super giant distribution and makes it go a little faster (#1765)

Script changes

• Custom Systems: Faction allegiance can now be set for custom systems (#1621)
• Factions: More than one government type with weighting can now be specified for a Faction (#1621)
• Factions: A radius attribute is available on the Faction object (#1660)
• debug.deprecated function to warn when a deprecated function is used (#1718)

UI changes

• Gradient container to provide a linear gradient background (#1682)
• Expand container to force a widget to fill available space (#1685)
• SmallButton widget (#1722)
• Icon widget (#1737)
• TabGroup controller
• Label exposes SetText to Lua (#1690)
• Box containers no longer take expand/fill flags (#1665)
• Margin can now apply a margin to a single side or direction (#1747)
• Grid can now have nil entries and has a ClearCell method (#1723, #1738)
• Functions taking a widget can now take a table with a 'widget' field (#1723, #1738)
• Widget.SetFontSize has been replaced with SetFont to select both type (normal
• or heading) and size (#1684)
• UI constructors for 'Single' widgets take an optional final argument specifying the inner widget (#1723, #1738)
• MouseMove event also receives relative mouse travel (#1767)
• Improved UI sliders/scrollbars (#1720)
• UI elements can now be disabled (#1749, #1721)
• More flexible UI widget size control (#1746)

Internal changes

• Wrapper to allow new UI to provide views for the old GUI system (#1691, #1755, #1756, #1759)
• Fix the LuaObject the Check/GetFromLua, which were swapped round (#1730)
• Models moved to data/lmrmodels to make space for new model system (#1762)
• Code cleanup in StarSystem (making several members private) (#1773)

Grab the windows build from Mod DB here http://www.moddb.com/games/pioneer

Mac OSX and Linux builds from here http://pioneerspacesim.net/download

Finally, I thought I would give The Elite Dangerous Kickstarter a little bump. Its just passed the £1 million mark in its funding with 8 days to go for it to reach it's target of £1.25 million. If you can offer any support, please do so.

Here is a link to the kickstarter http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...lite-dangerous

:salute:

I just reserved my copy!

Well done CaptainHaplo! See you "out" there come 2014 :up:

Elite Dangerous makes it's target
 

Just a little update on Elite Dangerous, the kickstarter in an unprecedented flurry of pledges cleared it's initial target goal today of £1,250,000 with 50 hours still to go before it ends. New stretch goals have been announced in the form of a Mac version of the game and extra ships.

:)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20897768

If they end up with a nice game welldone, I will consider to buy it. But I am thankful for having been cautiuous over Carrier command, and after seeing how that episode ended, I have become even more hesitent to separate from my money prematurely. So hope and good wishes, but no money from me until I can check the final product.

If something is really good, I accept however to pay more than the average game price for it then.

Fair enough Skybird. ;)
Mac goal reached, extra ship pack almost reached, just shy of £13k (ish) with 9 hours to go.

Pioneer Alpha 30
 

Hi Folks
Back with another monthly Pioneer update for you. Here is the extensive change list for this months alpha from the dev team, highlights include a new easier to use model system. :salute:

I have already updated it's ModDB page

"The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer Alpha 30. This month we have beautiful new atmosphere, lighting and terrain effects, a rewritten autopilot that now allows you to intercept other ships and fly in formation (and pirates to catch you!), and the introduction of our new purpose-built model engine, SGModel. Full changelog and builds for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the download page.

New features

• New model system (SGModel) (#1676, #1208, #813, #1852, #1914)
• Rotation damping icon and control on the panel (#1842, #1837)
• OSX: Hold the option key down when launching pioneer.app to launch the model viewer instead (#1803)
• New volcanic surface effects on some planets (#1782)
• New and improved autopilot (#1812)
• Improved atmosphere rendering: scattering, sunsets, thinner fogs and ground lighting fixes (#1888, #1891)
• Russian translation (#1899, #1713)

Minor changes and tweaks

• Don't allocate projectile geometry for every projectile. Huge performance increase during combat (#1822)
• Main menu now has keyboard shortcuts again (#1821)
• Player's name now updates during editing in Personal Information view (#1845)
• Rondel system moved further away from Sol and surrounding stars (#1861, #1815)
• Star fade-in has been adjusted to make stars less visible in daytime (#1881)
• Some missions now state the distance to the target system (#1886, #1909)
• Try harder to find a populated homeworld for a faction (#1860, #1792)
• Clicking cancel from the Load dialog now returns you to the game (#1847, #1325)
• Bulk ships are now only placed at orbital stations (#1890)
• Improve building self-shadowing and lighting (#1898, #1811)
• Low/medium/high orbit altitudes reduced to be more likely to fit in object frames (#1903)

Script changes and model changes

• New attribute StarSystem.explored (#1793, #1797)
• Custom systems can now define gravpoints (#1701, #1074)
• Added attributes in space/ground station models info table: ship_launch_stage, parking_distance, parking_gap_size (#1812)

Fixes

• Interpret galaxy density bitmap as unsigned values (#1818, #1813)
• Invert mouse cursor movement in rear view (#1820)
• Missions no longer vanish from view when other missions are completed (#1824, #1826, #1854, #1856)
• Fix crash when switching away from settings screen after death (#1844, #1698, #1742)
• Move SystemView time control buttons above the dash to work around input priority problems (#1853, #1851)
• Fix occasional bug that could leave a trailing slash on some filesystem paths (#1843, #1486)
• Fix division-by-zero bugs in missile AI (#1873, #1872)
• Fix loading of player's criminal record and fines (#1877, #1874)
• Selected systems are now always shown in the sector view (#1864)
• Fix crash bug in Lua function SystemPath.DistanceTo
• Fix long-broken mouse flight under Linux by disabling DGA. Set config option SDLUseDGAMouse=1 to revert to old behaviour (#1892, #5)
• Fix system info view to ignore irrelevant mouse wheel scroll events (#1894)
• Don't toggle labels and rotation damping while console is active (#1897, #1364)
• Don't save/restore GL_POINT_BIT attribute, it breaks GL state on old Intel chips
• Update all material light components when applying a material (#1908, #1887)

UI changes

• Improved appearance of Dropdown widget (#1789, #1766)
• Fix layout of non-contributing widgets inside pack boxes (#1789)
• UI widgets can now have keyboard shortcuts (#1821, #1841, #1840)

Internal changes

• Improvements in text rendering performance (#1791)
• Move MSVC headers and libs to pioneer-thirdparty repository (#1807)
• Removed legact MissionStatus code from core (#1824)
• Optimisation in access to ship type information (#1827)
• Add support for high precision timing and floating-point exceptions (#1836, #1846)
• Enable floating-point exceptions during AI processing (#1838)
• Lua methods can be marked "protected", stopping them being called by user-supplied scripts and mods (#1706, #1869)
• Rotation damping code cleaned up (#1866)
• Various minor cleanups (#1867)
• Allow point sprites to be rendered with different alpha blending modes (#1880)
• Unknown tokens for Lua translations are no longer treated as errors (#1865, #1862)
• Rename terrain noise macros to avoid global namespace polliution (#1883)
• Various code improvements in frame handling and other things (#1812)
• Cleanup SectorView system index usage (#1884)
• Split FileSelectorDialog and LoadGame/SaveGame out of GameLoaderSaver (#1847)
• Font optimisations and support for language-specific font overrides (#1899, #1907, #1904)
• Avoid use of strtof, it doesn't exist on MSVC (#1905)"

Other news
Oolite has had a new update 1.77. Have a look here for the change list.


The Elite kickstarter finished with an impressive total of £1,578,316, not including (still ongoing) pay pal pledges.

Put a small paypal donation in. Will gladly pay top dollar for the finished product.

Been waiting since Frontier on my old A1200. 1993?

Still play that one on emulators. First Encounters autopilot was bugged and regularly flew into planets at high time compression so never really got into it. Also it didn't look much better than Frontier I guess the same engine. Am now downloading Pioneer for a test before I decide to donate but looking at the screens and vids it definitely seems like something I'd like to support.

Cheers for the thread, I was unaware that Elite IV was actually rolling again, I checked a couple of years ago and it sounded pretty negative. How things change. :)

Regards,
Sam.

Hi Sammie
I think I just recently welcomed you to the Frontier forum here.
I had no idea you were a sub sim fan too! :up:

One thing about Pioneer, most of the mods for it are on the SSC and unfortunately that is down at the moment for maintenance, it should be back up soon. However, for yourself and anyone else wanting to try out a whole host of Alpha 30 mods, Vuzz has put together some very neat packages of the most popular ones and updated them too. Have a look here :rock:

Hey Miggy!

So that was you amongst the many warm welcomes?

Thanks for that it has been the highlight of my decade to learn about this project. In the meantime as I wait I have downloaded Oolite, Pioneer and FFE3D - modding Oolite is very satisfying, I have my own personalised HUD already! Plenty there to keep me going while we wait for Dangerous.

Cheers!
Sam.

Pioneer Alpha 31
 

Hi Sub Sim fans!
Back again with another Alpha for you, 31.
Here is the announcement post from the devs...

"The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer Alpha 31. This month sees the introduction of crew. Hire folks for your ship and they'll do things for you and improve your skills in trade and combat. We also continue the conversion to our new model system, with several ship and station models converted. Full changelog and builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the download page

(Note: This is the last alpha release that will include LMR).

New features

• Crew! Hire people to do stuff for you (experimental) (#1973, #2025, #2030, #2039)
• New ship "Deep Space Miner" (#2023)

Minor changes and tweaks

• Cargo scooping now only requires a collision against the ship rather than a specific part of it (again) (#1922)
• Improve point sprite (LMR billboard) rendering performance (#1927, #1929, #1928)
• Improve city rendering performance (#1927)
• Removed per-light ambient color and building fade (#1930)
• Ship thrust and fuel tank size have been rebalanced (#1689)
• Restore "Pioneering Pilots' Guild" text (#1987, #1989)
• New Hope is now located on land (#1977)
• Debug information overlay now includes latitude and longitude (#1994)
• Missile spawn and control moved to Lua (#1663)
• Add more names to the name generator (#2021)
• Labels on SGModels can now be set (#1979)

Fixes

• Collisions with stars now work again (#1942)
• Dates before 3200-01-01 no longer display negative (#1955, #1954)
• Text on SGModel ships now uses correct character offsets (#1980)
• An unset decal no longer displays a black square on Intel graphics (#1976)
• Fixed various crashes caused by console completion (#1998)
• SGModel animation timing fixes (#1978, #1970)
• Greatly reduced chance of police ships spawning on top of each other (#1993)
• Fixed station names being repeated within a single system (#1958, #1911)
• Handle missing material definitions by providing a basic white default material if none are specified (#1817, #1916)
• Detect conflicts between animations (#1938)
• Animations now work correctly across detail level switches (#1978)

Model changes

• Converted Lanner ship to SGModel (#1957, #1969, #2002)
• Converted Wave ship to SGModel (#2022)
• Converted "big crappy" spacestation to SGModel (#1964, #2017)
• Converted "hoop" spacestation to SGModel (#1932)
• Converted standard building set to SGModel (#1923)
• Removed "mushroom" ground stations
• Removed long-unused building models (#1923)
• Modelviewer: Reloading model also reloads textures (#1968, #1939)
• Modelviewer: View controls are improved (#1982)
• Modelviewer: Larger models are displayed without z clipping (#1982, #1933)
• Modelviewer: Improve zoom behaviour (#2020)
• New material parameters: unlit, two_sided and alpha_test (#1995, #1935)

Script changes

• Remove deprecated Ship methods.SetPrimaryColour and SetSecondaryColour and shipType attribute
• Ship thruster efficiency can be specified with effective_exhaust_velocity value, instead of thruster_fuel_use (either can be used) (#1689)
• Add max_crew & min_crew params to ship def (#1973)
• Missile control methods Missile.Arm, Missile.Disarm, Ship.SpawnMissile and Ship.AIKamikaze (#1663)
• Separate station defs from LMR station models (#1913, #1931, #1934)

Internal changes

• Cameras are no longer attached to a body, and World View camera controllers are no longer derived from Camera (#1889)
• Remove kill count from core (#1944)
• Intro & tombstone can now use SGModels (#1956, #2006)
• SGModels now have priority over LMR models of the same name (#1956)
• Console completion now handled through the LuaObject dispatcher (#1945, #1672, #1972, #1974)
• Queries for near-by objects now use a very basic acceleration structure (#1910)
• String <-> Integer enum mapping tables have been separated from Lua (#1996)
• Improve MultiLineText draw performance (#1999)
• SGModel nodes all carry a pointer to the renderer (#1986)
• SGModels can now be instanced, with separate appearance and animation state for each (#2007, #1975)
• Bad terrain generator output will now emit lots of debug info before crashing (#2005)
• Fixed some memory leaks (#2011)"

I have also updated it's ModDB page with the new Alpha, have fun out there! :salute:

Edit: One of the Frontier Forum members Synchromesh, has set up a fan site (after getting Frontier Developments ok to do so) called Elite Forever with all the original games and the re-makes in easy to use packages (with emulators included) that can run on most setups, highlights include all the BBC versions Of Elite!

Pioneer & Genesia News
 

Hi Sub Sim friends!
Some more Pioneer related news for you. The next build Alpha 32 (due soon) will be dropping its Elite related content as the dev team feel they want to take the game off in it's own direction.

This decision has caused some controversy within it's fans, but with Elite Dangerous now being worked on by Frontier Developments, the dev team feel this is the right time to do such a move and make it a fully fledged game in it's own right without any IP worries.

However, for those who may miss the Elite content, there is an alternative. An offshoot of Pioneer has appeared called Genesia which still contains many Elite related goodies plus a whole load of spanking new ship and Starport models.

Have a look at this screenshot
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/[IMG...3030515252.pnghttp://i1003.photobucket.com/albums/...3030515252.png
If your interested have a look at this thread on the SSC. Currently the latest Genesia build is R4. Have a look for that here.

Have fun out there! :salute:

Pioneer Alpha 32
 

Hi Sub Sim Fans!
Back again with news of the new Alpha 32 Build of Pioneer. As I said in my last post, all the Elite ships are no more, however a range of spanking new ship models have replaced them with more to follow I am sure. Lots of little changes and tweaks for this month so have a look at the change list for this month. I have also just updated ModDB with the new build and that should be available shortly, here. If you cant wait of want the linux or Mac OSX builds, drop by Pioneer's homepage here.

Anyways, here is the changelist.

"The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer alpha 32. This release is the first running entirely on our new model system, and includes three new ships to show it off. There's also the usual bunch of improvements, fixes and other tweaks. Full changelog and builds for Windowws, Mac OS X and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the homepage.

New features

• Ship parade on the menu screen (#2112)
• New ship "Kanara Interceptor" (#2037)
• New ship "Lunar Shuttle" (#2082)
• New ship "Deneb Transport" (#2119)
• New fast random number generator (#1893, #2078, #2079)
• Upgraded hoop station (#2046, #2131, #2114)
• Removed Lua model system (LMR) (#2029, #2071)
• Removed LMR-based ships (#2061)
• Removed Elite/Frontier content (#2093)

Minor changes and tweaks

• Balanced DSMiner fuel use (#2062)
• Added laser mount to DSMiner (#2055)
• Model animation state saved and restored to savefile (#2044)
• New missile AI (#2094)
• Shortcut key to launch missiles ('m') (#2094)
• Show realtime orbit positions in system view (#2104)

Fixes

• Work around missing model UV coordinates (#2034, #1952)
• Fully initialise Body object in its constructor (#2048)
• Fix crash when refueling (#2050)
• Reduce terrain "grid" effect (#2053, #1631)
• Fix crash in several mission screens when accessed during hyperspace (#2064, #2056)
• Fix crash when missiles explode before activation (#2067, #2066)
• Fix duplicated model animation groups (#2063, #2024)

Model changes

• Converted Natrix ship to SGModel (#2033, #2095)
• Upscaled DSMiner model (#2096)
• New missile model (#2036)
• New cargo model (#2101)
• Downscaled building models (#2052)
• Add test_gun model (#2060)
• Converted tombstone to SGModel (#2083)
• Basic support for station door animations (#2046)
• Support for navigation lights (#2080)
• Support for per-instance skinning (#2088)
• Modelviewer: Scale/landingpad test model (press 'p') (#2034, #1981)
• Modelviewer: More/better log output (#2034, #1876)
• Modelviewer: Enable mods (#2032)

Script changes

• UI: MultiLineText objects now have SetText and AppendText methods (#2045)
• ShipTypes is deprecated, and EquipTypes has been removed; use the new ShipDef and EquipDef tables (#2026)
• Player.SetHyperspaceTarget and GetHyperspaceTarget methods (#2028, #2027)
• Model: Ship.GetSkin & SetSkin and skin manipulation methods (#2080)

Internal changes

• Removed Text::VectorFont (#2041)
• Removed Renderer: DrawPoints2D (#2041)
• LuaObject wrapper cleanup (#2026, #2049, #2073, #2075)
• Fix SGModel NodeVisitor not applying correctly to all node types (#2076, #2074)
• Remove ShipFlavour structure (#2069, #2135, #2113)"

:salute:

Pioneer Alpha 33
 

Hi Sub Sim Fans
Back again with news of the new monthly build for Pioneer, Alpha 33.
Have a look at the change list below from Pioneer dev Robn. Have fun exploring out there! :salute:

"The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer Alpha 33. This release sees some new eye-candy: eclipses and missile smoke trails. For modders, this release brings a simpler way to define space station docking sequences, supporting stations with over 200 docking ports. Full changelog and builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the homepage

New features

• Czech language support (#2136)
• Planets now cast shadows (ie, eclipses) on other planets (#1353)
• Missiles now have smoke trails (#2154)
• Station waypoints are now defined in the mesh themselves and dealt with in C++, and their docking bays can be grouped together (#2058, #2175)
• The System View (F3, F6) now shows the player's current orbit (#2084, #2168, #2169, #146, #985)
• The Sector View (F2) now has options to hide vertical lines and out-of-range system labels

Minor changes and tweaks

• Clean up the Taxi, DeliverPackage and Assassination mission views (#2142, #2151)
• Tweak Polish translation (#2167)
• Gas giants now have a thin layer of atmosphere (#1788, #1395)

Fixes

• Fix hoop station unreliable docking detection (#2153, #2125)
• Fix ground and "big_crappy" station docking detection (#2197)
• Fix redscreen from TradeShips module when entering a system with only surface ports (#2172, #2171)
• Fix object viewer crash (#2187)
• Fix Lua console to allow continuation of incomplete commands (#2198)

Internal changes

• Converted some remaining GL code to use the renderer interface (#2184)"

The windows build will also shortly be available from ModDB once I finish uploading it. :)