Pioneer

[Steve]

How??? Been trying to sort out TOC creation myself.

I was working from an HTML document as the source, and the way to do it is to put the chapter headings inside <h1> or <h2> tags.

How you generate a TOC from another source, I wouldn't have a scooby

[SandJ]

On another note... I've downloaded all the MIDI tracks (from LOTF) and the computer is currently converting them to OGG format. If anyone is interested I'll see what I can do about putting them into an OXP for random in-game/docking music.

For the Random Docking Music OXP I downloaded a few hundred .OGGs, including virtually all the instrumentals from wikipedia's list of featured sounds. Having done so, I thought I'd cut it to CD - and failed. Apparently 252 tracks with 11 hours of music won't fit on a 700Mb / 80 minute CD.

80 Gb of disk space doesn't go very far, does it?

Anyway, that link above has loads of free, downloadable instrumental music, much of which may be suitable.

[Geraldine]

Hold the press Steve! There was some small conversion errors that crept into the text and it moved one of the pictures to the wrong place, so I've uploaded a new version called SOLOTF1.1.pdf. Sorry about that

[Steve]

Hold the press Steve! There was some small conversion errors that crept into the text and it moved one of the pictures to the wrong place, so I've uploaded a new version called SOLOTF1.1.pdf. Sorry about that

No worries! I'm not going to be hunched over a keyboard very much while this nice weather lasts, so the Kindle version may be delayed!

[Geraldine]

Hi Folks
Just a little reminder that Pioneer has just had a new monthly alpha release, Alpha 23. Here is a list of changes and tweaks taken from Robn's announcement post

"Minor changes and tweaks

Show target indicator on docking waypoints when clearance has been granted to assist with manual docking (#1260)
Jump to sector by entering sector coordinates in search box (#1274, #1253)
Optimised earthlike colour fractal when terrain textures enabled (#1277)

Fixes

Work around sector view crash on Radeon (#1062)
Fix handling of deep folders in zip files (#1270)
Fix redscreen hang (#1272)
Fix text metrics code to calculate text height properly (#1273, #1276)

Script and model changes

Lua updated to 5.2.0 (#1246)
Renamed Matrix and Vec classes to matrix and vector (#1245)
Renamed CustomSBody to CustomSystemBody (#1245)
Removed global data from Lua crash dump (#1272)

Internal changes

Fixed configure compiler warning tests for gcc and clang
Removed OOLua. Replaced uses of it with explicit Lua calls. Various other Lua-related cleanups and consistency fixes (#1245, #1246)
Move system generation and related classes under galaxy/ (#1245)
Renamed SBody to SystemBody, CustomSBody to CustomSystemBody (#1245)"

Download pages http://pioneerspacesim.net/download or Mod DB (once I update it today ) http://www.moddb.com/games/pioneer

[Geraldine]

Hi Ooliters!
Pioneer has just had a new Alpha release (24). Here is a rundown of the tweaks and changes 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)"

[Geraldine]

Pioneer's Alpha 26 is out and just uploaded to ModDB. Here is the change log for this month from Robn

"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)"

[Rxke]

puhleeeease add shadows!

I know it's not in the original, but....

[Geraldine]

The shader model is always being worked on, but the dev team hit problems with trying to get them to work properly across different setups and platforms. I am sure in the future it will be resolved eventually

[Geraldine]

Hi Ooliters!

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!

http://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 http://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 orbital_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 Ooliters

My oh my what a week this has been, apparently "something" is happening on the Frontier Forum
Anyways, new Alpha for Pioneer has just come out. Here is the change list this month from 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 OS X 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 out there!

[Cody]

This post in the Pioneer sub-forum at SSC caught my eye:

Recently we've been in contact with Frontier Developments about our use of various bits of content from the Elite/Frontier universe. After some discussion we've made the decision to remove content from Pioneer that is directly copied from Elite or Frontier.

Much of this has already been done anyway with the conversion to SGModel, but there's still a few things left. The main things to go are the Lanner (but will remain in the badge logo) and Lave & surrounding systems.

I'll remind you all here that we haven't considered Pioneer to be a clone of Frontier for a while now. We've always drawn a lot of inspiration from Elite and Frontier and that won't change, but this gives us an opportunity to step out and forge our own identity a bit, rather than living in Frontier's shadow.

For the record, this is not in response to any kind of warning or threat from Frontier Developments. On the contrary, we had an extremely productive discussion with them, and they love Pioneer and offered to help us in quite a few interesting ways that would have given them very little benefit. Its not my place to go into detail publically, but I do want to take the opportunity to thank them for taking the time to talk to us and trying to find ways to support us.

On to the next chapter for Pioneer

[Selezen]

That sounds really good for Pioneer.

Nice that FD are offering advice.

I wonder if there are similar "negotiations" ahead for Oolite?

[pagroove]

That sounds really good for Pioneer.

Nice that FD are offering advice.

I wonder if there are similar "negotiations" ahead for Oolite?

I don't think so because the Oolite universe is based on the original Oolite. So starts with 1 planet etc and is not a really comparable with Pioneer or with Elite Dangerous for that matter.

[Cody]

That sounds really good for Pioneer.

I'm not too sure that all of the Pioneer faithful agree.