Pioneer downloads and updates

[Gibbon]

Pioneer Website

pioneerspacesim.net/

[Geraldine]

Hello Freelancers!
Pioneer has just had a new alpha release, Alpha 24.
Here is a rundown of the features and tweaks for this month taken from Robn's Announcement post on the SSC
"New features

Background stars fade out in daylight (#1300)
Atmospheric flight restrictions. Ships that can't fit shielding can't purchased at atmosphere ports. Attempting to fly in atmosphere without causes quick death (#1328, #1240)

Minor changes and tweaks

Show orbital periapsis/apoapsis in system info with greater accuracy at small distances (#1311, #1303)
Sector view search box now supports the numpad (#1329, #1327)
Allow 10x timeaccel during docking sequence (#1332)

Fixes

Fix flipped vbuilding glowmap (#1280, #1279)
Fix scrolling in the mission list (#1292, #1291)
Fix UI elements responding to the mouse wheel as a click (#1307, #606)
Fix issues in the way multiple file sources (ie mods) are added to the union filesystem (#1359)

Script and model changes

Lua console now provides autocompletion. Press <TAB> to cycle through possible completions of the current identifier (#1286)
Lua console now accepts expressions and prints their result (#1304, #1313)
Lua updated to 5.2.1 (#1293)
Renamed UI to Comms (#1288)
Limited libraries available to LMR to debug, string and math (#1289)
Allow Characters to be created from random seed (#1299)
Improve printing of core objects to include their type (#1301)
Excluded package, os, io and various bits of math libraries and certain other core Lua functions for safety (see LuaUtils.cpp for rationale) (#1317)
Aliased math.deg2rad to math.rad (#1317)
Added util.hash_random to provide a repeatable source of "randomness" (#1317)

Internal changes

Abstracted out the normal Lua object type promotion test, and Lua ownership of refcounted objects (#1290)
Stop a broken Lua error handler triggering an infinite loop (#1289)
Changed LuaGame and LuaEngine to use the LuaObject system (#1296)
Simplify logic in LuaObject (#1301)
Change implementation of LuaObject attributes to allow overriding (#1312)
Code style cleanups (#1334, #1335)"

Download available from either Pioneers own site: pioneerspacesim.net/download

Or (shortly) from ModDB: www.moddb.com/games/pioneer

Have fun out there!

[Geraldine]

Hi There Freelancers!

Another month and another Alpha for Pioneer (25) has just been released. The dev team have put a lot of work into this month's build. Great work all round. Anyways enough of my ramblings, here is the announcement post from the SSC detailing progress for this month by Robn

"The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer Alpha 25. This month has seen more visual enhancements with gas giant rings, terrains and city lighting all receiving improvements. Full changelog and builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the download page.

New features

Planets with surface ports are now displayed with a blue ring in the system info view (F2,F7) (#1345)
Catalan translation (#1371)
Hyperjumps now have sound effects (#1379)
Terrains have been update, and more terrains added for asteroids (#1349)
Atmospheric height and appearance is now more realistic (#972, #1278, #1357)
Atmospheric pressure and temperature now follows a dry adiabatic model (#1363)
Rewritten gas giant rings, with better transparency and shadows (#1404, #1415)
Fade building illumination depending on time of day and atmosphere (#1390, #1428, #1427)

Minor changes and tweaks

On Windows, error messages for graphics are shown in a message box, so they can be read when the game graphics aren't working (#1362)
Atmospheric pressure is now displayed in atmospheres instead of bar (#1363)
Added essential surname-based humour to the name generator (#1403)
Include more limits and capability information in opengl.txt (#1408, #1410)
Text entry widgets (notably the Lua console) now support CTRL+LEFT and CTRL+RIGHT arrows to jump to word boundaries (#1392, #1372)
Scale all textures to power-of-two dimensions (#1422, #1251, #1035, #923)

Fixes

Fix some Lua console completion edge cases (#1339)
Fix Lua error report format for missing objects (#1366)
Fix bug which prevented some Polish texts showing up (#1382)
Fix crash when autopilot tried to fly around a gravpoint (#1347, #1344)
Fix crash when calculating distance to a ship in hyperspace (#1393, #1388)
Fix shaders to avoid 'varying' value limits on some hardware (#1407, #1409)
Fix savegames not loading under certain circumstances (#1425, #1412, #1424)
Clamp planetary mass values to supportable range (#1423, #854)

Script and model changes

Gas giant rings can now be defined in a custom system using the :rings parameter (#1404)

Internal changes

Move platform specific code into src/{win32,posix} dirs (#1362, #1369)
Move video initialisation into Graphics::Init (#1362, #1370)
Add COUNTOF macro to safely get number of elements in a static array (1386)
Update scan_enums.py to deal with Unicode byte-order marks (#1389)
Always used logarithmic depth buffer with shaders (#1410)
Camera now passed to object rendering methods to make per-object lighting and other effects easier (#1390)
Many fixes identified by static analysis with PVS-Studio (#1402, #1399)"

Download from either Pioneer's own site pioneerspacesim.net/download

Or

ModDB: www.moddb.com/games/pioneer

Have fun out there!

Attachments:

[Geraldine]

Hi Freelancers
Another month and another Alpha build (26) of Pioneer for you to try out

Here is the announcement post from the Pioneer dev team.

"The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of
Pioneer Alpha 26. This month sees the addition of two popular features
of the original Frontier, the Imperial capital Achernar and the Imperial
Trader, as well as various graphical and internal tweaks. Full
changelog and builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the download page

Alpha 26 is dedicated to the memory of Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)

New features

Achernar (4,-9,-16) is now a fully custom system (#1452)
New Imperial Trader (a variant of the Imperial Courier) (#1069, #1496)

Minor changes and tweaks

Updated station splash advert (#1429)
Updated the Imperial Courier model (#1069)
Updated the "pilot" and "squadsign" sub-models (#1069)
Updated surface stations (#983)
Made month names translatable (#1490)

Fixes

Fix atmospheric pressure calculations (#1431, #1395)
Fix lighting glitches in systems with multiple stars (#1430, #1411)
Fix flipped EYE ship texture (#1436)
Fix Caribou laser position (#1435)
Fix broken planet ring textures on Intel GMA 900 chips (#1442, #1439)
Fix Lua console tab completion for some oddly constructed tables (#1447)
Fix Lua console tab completion for tables with numeric indices (#1461, #1462)
Fix ambient light state leak from intro/tombstone (#1472, #1445)
Fix blank UI after game load failure (#1481, #1479)
Draw the city before its starport to avoid a glaring graphical bug (#1487)
Fix Lua stack leak in console completion (#1492)

Script changes

Ships now identified by the filename the ship is defined in (#1444, #1474, #1491)
New Event system allowing Lua scripts to broadcast their own events. EventQueue is deprecated, for removal in alpha 27 (#1441)
New
FileSystem module so scripts can list data files (including files from
mods) and files in the game's configuration directory (#1350, #1483)

Internal changes

Show frame time in the stats overlay (#1437)
Update COUNTOF macro to fix avoid warnings when compiling with compiling with optimisations on GCC (#1451, #1450)
Force most icons to scale to their bounds regardless of their initial size. Allows hi-res icons (#1448, #1470)
Reimplemented Lua read-only tables (#1460)
Move the global Lua context so it can be used from modelviewer (#1473)
Rewritten material and shader infrastructure (#1432)
Many minor optimisations identified by PVS-Studio (#1480, #1399)
Fix a warning when building with clang (#1488)"

Have fun out there people

Attachments:

[Geraldine]

Hi Folks!

Here it is, another monthly alpha for you to try out. Here is the change list for this month from Robn. I've just finished updating ModDB with the new build too. Have fun out there!

www.moddb.com/games/pioneer

"The Pioneer development team are pleased to announce the release of Pioneer Alpha 27. This month seems the introduction of our new (highly experimental!) faction system. Also new cameras to see everything around your ship, and the usual pile of tweaks and fixes. Full changelog and builds for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the download page, here pioneerspacesim.net/download .

New features

Factions, with custom goods illegality and colour coding (#1505, #1567, #1562)
New views (Left/Right/Top/Bottom, Cockpit Front/Rear) (#1454, #1539, #1544, #1564)
The settings screen is now acessible from the main menu (#1187, #1512)
There's now an option to enable texture compression (#1522)

Minor changes and tweaks

Smooth zoom animation in World, System, Sector and Galactic views (#1170)
Earth start location has returned to Los Angeles (in daytime now) (#1506)
Player cash is shown on the 'Personal' page of the Info (F3) screen (#1525, #1500)
Equipment listed on the Info (F3) screen is split over two columns (#1525, #1527)
Explosions are now slower and more visible (#1543)
Application icon for Windows builds (#1537, #1166)

Fixes

Avoid icons in some ternary systems overlapping each other (#1510, #1511)
Fix overlapping text for long system descriptions (#1494, #1498)
Fix crash in SystemInfoView from leaking widget references (#1526, #1493)
Clamp some newer terrain heights to non-negative values (#1534, #1530)
Try to avoid placing starports where they will be covered by mountains (#1503, #7)
Don't pass events through the load/save dialog to the widget below (#1547, #1553)
Fix crash when old hyperspace cloud is shown after game load (#1552, #1551)

Script changes

EventQueue, which was deprecated in alpha 26, has been removed (#1485)
Orbital phase (season) and rotational phase (time) can now be set in custom systems with :rotational_phase_at_start and rbital_phase_at_start (#1506)
Thruster values in ship definitions are now all positive (#1536)
New function Dev.SetCameraOffset to help find good cockpit camera offsets (#1130)

Internal changes

Terrain generation thread now sleeps until being signalled (#1169)
New C++ wrappers for Lua table manipulation and value persistence (#1438)
Terrain patches are now rendered more efficiently (#1507)
Many minor cleanups identified by valgrind (#1524)
Copyright and license is now made explicit at the top of all code files (#1515)
Max terrain height for heightmapped planets is computed more accurately (#1504)
Code to detect supported video modes has moved to Graphics (#1535, #1385)
Cleaned up UI view code for consistency and stability (#1528, #1558, #1547, #1557)
Removed duplication in key bindings code (#1545)
New view (DeathView) to deal with display after the player dies (#1543, #1540)
Simplified terrain thread locking (#1495)
Moved intro and tombstone out to their own cutscene classes (#1559)"
__________________

[Geraldine]

Hello Again Freelancers
Sorry I have been rather busy on the Frontier Forum of late
Anyways here is the changelist for this month for the lastest Alpha 32
Big news for this month is the dropping of all the Elite related content. The devs feel they want to take Pioneer off in it's own direction without any IP worries. However, check further down the post for new about an offshoot game called Genesia.

"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 Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (32 & 64-bit) are available from the homepage pioneerspacesim.net/

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)"

For those who might miss the Elite related content, SSC member Tourist, has created his own total conversion of Pioneer using the Alpha 31 build. It's called Genesia and has a thread on the SSC here

spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/3443-new-game-total-mod-pioneer-genesia/

Have fun out there

[Geraldine]

Hey There Freelancers
Thought I would drop in to let you know of the new build for Pioneer and news of an offshoot of Pioneer called Genesia and a mod called Pioneer Scout.

Anyways without further ado here is the changelist from Pioneer dev Robn.

"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 here pioneerspacesim.net/download

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)"

Also updating the ModDB page as I type this with the windows build.

Secondly, I thought I would also highlight an offshoot of Pioneer. It's called Genesia based on the Alpha 31 version of Pioneer and has a ton of new models and old and new ships. For details have a look here spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/3443-new-game-total-mod-pioneer-genesia/

and for the latest download here. www.dropbox.com/s/mkc3cf04vax77s3/Genesia_R7.7z

Finally a mod for Pioneer, called Pioneer Scout. This comes with new missions and more ships for you to try out. Again, for details look here spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/3229-new-game-mod-pioneer-scout/

and for a download link, here. dl.dropbox.com/u/15391580/pioneer/Pioneer-Scout-Plus-light.zip

Have fun out there folks!

[Gibbon]

Thanks for the link Geraldine. I was looking through the Genesia posts when i saw the image of one of SolCommands models leaving a space station. I use a few of his models in my Genesis mod, nice to see them being used in other games

[Geraldine]

Your welcome Gibbon. Sol Command's models are popping up all over the place, have you herd about Dominion? He is doing models for that too, have a look here for a special one he is going to be working on soon. spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/3542-space-sim-central-space-station/

Also, loving Genesis. Just running around in the single player mode exploring, lovely work Gibbon!

Which reminds me, must download the update!

[Geraldine]

Hi there Freelancers.
Back again with more info for you.
First up is Pioneer news. Up to now Pioneer has had constant monthly Alpha builds, but that is now no longer going to happen. Instead much smaller updates will be released instead. This is to save folks constantly re-downloading the full game over and over again.
Anyways here is the official announcement from Pioneer dev Robn

"As you know, for a couple of years now Pioneer has had an alpha release on the second Friday of every month without fail. The dev team has always considered this to be an immovable deadline, and it has been useful in giving us something to aim for. To try and help make sure the alpha releases are sort-of stable, we've also had a "freeze" period a week before the release, to allow testing and last-minute fixes to happen, ensuring a stable release.

Lately its become clear that that model isn't giving the best results. Very few people actually do freeze testing, so we don't usually find any problems, yet real actual bugs are often missed, leading to the situation we've had a couple of times recently where the alpha has a nasty bug. Its usually fixed hours later, but that fix doesn't make a release until the next alpha a month later. Meanwhile, new development continues to happen on the master branch during the freeze week so that by the time the alpha is released it's already obsolete.

All of this means the alpha releases are becoming more of a burden than a useful part of the process, so we've made the decision to drop it. Obviously though we need to get something out into the hands of players and testers, so we're intending to promote the nightly builds to "official" status as follows. Twice a day a complete build for Windows and Linux will be run and uploaded (though obviously not if no changes have been made). Version numbers will be changed to YYMM.BB, where BB is the "build number" for that month. So a build for today might be 1305.2. The latest build will always be linked from pioneerspacesim.net, and the last week's worth of builds will be archived, just in case.

To keep the changes visible, we'll be making a "what's new in Pioneer" post to the SSC, the G+ page and a few other places at the start of each month with the changelog for the previous month. Of course, the current changelog will always be available from the homepage and in the release archives proper.

This should mean that if you encounter a bug, the fix is available to you in an official, supported build as soon as possible. Of course, there's also challenges involved with this. It will mean that we need to be more careful about ensuring that broken code doesn't make it to the master branch, and we can't be as blasé about breaking savefile compatibility as we have been in the past. That's good though; it puts pressure on us to work towards things that we've been wanting to do for a while now, like a new save system that better supports upgrading old savefiles and stabilising the procedural generation so that minor code changes don't break the entire galaxy.

Right now OS X builds won't have the same twice-daily build schedule, as they're currently compiled semi-automatically by Philbywhizz when he has time. We're working on getting these happening as soon as we can, which might mean changes to this process, not sure yet. We'll let you know the outcome of that. The homepage will list the most recent build available for OS X.

We're aware that asking people to regularly download a 150-200MB archive is a bit of a stretch, so we're also looking at ways to reduce the amount of stuff you need to grab to get a new build. That might be splitting the game data from the binaries, it might be a patch system, it might be something else. Again, we'll let you know.

This change is effective immediately (as soon as I've made the necessary changes to the build system to support it). So there won't be an alpha 34. The first builds under this scheme should be available in the next few days."

I will also update Pioneer's ModDB page as these updates are released.

Secondly Dominion news. This has just launched on Kickstarter and is looking for backers. Here is a link to it's page

Its from a small indie outfit called Mak Software Studios. Its a single player sandbox game, DRM free and will have a star map consisting of 200,000 stars, over 1,000,000 planets, at least 1,200 unique species and civilisations . In terms of roles, its very much like Elite: trader, miner, pirate, explorer or flying for the navy. Interestingly, (well at least for me) the game will feature both Newtonian and non-Newtonian ships in the game, flight model dependant on the ship you choose from.

Stretch goals include Linux, Mac, iOS, Android and mod tools.

[Geraldine]

Hi Freelancers
Due to a slight mix up on my part (sorry folks) about the new switch over from monthly alphas to ongoing builds, I am a little late this month with my upload. Apologies about that. Anyways here is the latest (Windows) build as of May and below, the change logs for both April & May. ModDB is being updated as I type this and the new build should be available shortly there. As always, Linux and MAC OSX builds are also available via pioneerspacesim.net/download

Have fun out there!

May 2013

* New features
* Multithreaded Job based Terrain Patch generation (#2163, #2268, #2262)

* Minor changes and tweaks
* Model level-of-detail now takes field of view into account (#2257, #2077)
* Improvements to translatability of joystick axis descriptions.
(#2272, #2280, #2281)
* New ships are always fully fueled (#2283, #2162)

* Fixes
* Crew can no longer be hired with a negative salary (#2254)
* Fix landing gear sound repeating when autopilot lowers the undercarriage (#2269)
* Fix landing gear button toggling briefly when lowering gear (#2269)

* Internal changes
* Enum mapping tables now have a visibility specifier (#2276)
* Removal of the unused BezierCurve and RefList classes (#2274)
* The game constants live now all in src/gameconsts.h (#2274)
* Silence some debug printouts for the faction code. (#2274)
* Object property system now uses LuaTable. (#2275)

April 2013

* New features
* New combat music track (#2209)
* Mission list can now be sorted by clicking the column headers (#2183, #2128)
* Mission list now shows distance to system and days remaining (#2234, #2244)

* Minor changes and tweaks
* Commodity Market buy/sell buttons now speed up when held down (#2188, #1734)
* Clamp ambient lighting to avoid pitch black (#2241)

* Model changes
* Station definition 'num_docking_ports' is no longer used; it is computed
from the bay definitions (#2219)
* Station model docking nodes are checked against the station definition
(#2219)
* New 6-bay ground station model (#2227)

* Script and UI API changes
* New method 'SetColor' on Label widgets (#2234)
* Player:GetHyperspaceTarget() now returns path of destination system when
in hyperspace (#2244)

* Fixes
* Fix lua system export (#2229)
* Fix Lua console so that it lets you continue incomplete commands (#2198 )
* Fix logical error in crew skill boosting code (#2253)
* Fix assertion when attempting to dock whilst you're also trying to leave (#2239)

* Internal changes
* SpaceStationTypes now loads data using the LuaTable wrapper (#2170)
* ShipType now loads data using the LuaTable wrapper (#2215)
* Reduced allocations and improved data locality in the eclipse code (#2200)
* New dynamic object property system (#2161, #2226, #2225, #2223, #2221)
* Support linking against the LDB Lua debugging library (#2147)
* Stars with flattening due to fast rotation, i.e; ellipsoids (#2178 )
* Update bundled Lua to version 5.2.2 (#2230)
* Model loader: improve instancing (#2228 )