Re: Pioneer Alpha 10 promotion :)
Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 4:39 pm
Pioneer is still VERY much in an alpha-state, don't judge it for 'details' like joystick support 
Well, alpha or not, the only way a game can be "judged" (if that's what we are actually doing) is by what is there and how well it works. I try not to be judgemental in a negative way about games, especially open source projects and to focus mostly on what is good about them. It's easy to be a critic, but a more rewarding challenge to be honestly encouraging.
However, even though my comment about joystick support was more of a "not there yet" and one reason why I didn't play Pioneer much even though it was very pretty.. In the interests of fairness, I checked the Pioneer development page and found out joystick support was added the version immediately after the version I tried months ago.
So I downloaded and compiled what is described as "This is the latest and greatest development and is quite unstable." Then I took it out for a night's worth of test flying.
First thing I'll say is that for all that it might be "unstable", it didn't CTD or lock up or even stutter. Ran like a top. Joystick is a little glitchy, but nothing un-flyable and I configured it fairly easy via in-game utilities. It flies well. Smooth, nice flow, feels good.
The scenery is still spectacular, and they've added some to that with more colour and texture diversity and planets with atmosphere having at least some appearance of a cloud layer you pass through and etc. Looks like a lot of work has been done on stations, landing bays and cities. Nice eye candy. Very very nice. Everything worked at least reasonably well, so far as i could tell. What was there.. worked. It looks like a *lot* of development has happened between the version I first ran and the current Alpha12 I ran last night. Stations, docking bay and sequences, cities, they all showed quite a lot of improvement and were looking pretty darned good. The control panel looked much nicer. Some might consider that trivial, but from a player POV, it's one of the things you spend the most time looking at, and it's nice to see that it got some attention during development. Menu layouts, displays, sounds, control panels, dialog.. They're all things that are easy to trivialise because they're relatively simple to dress up and they usually aren't a high priority for developers compared to big things with the game engine and graphics capabilities, but to the player they largely *are* the game. If they aren't reasonably good, a lot of players may never stick around long enough to appreciate the work that went into the physics, the AI, or the gameplay dynamics. The player interface is how they see the game world, and it should look good and be easy to use. Back to the point, there was a nice degree of development there to see and use.
Areas where I won't say Pioneer is "bad", but still has yet to be developed are largely gameplay. While you can go anywhere and it looks really cool and handles quite well, they seem to still have a ways to go on the markets and other things for the player to actually do. It would be very hard to make enough credits with the starter ship for a new player to try new ships or gear in their foreseeable future as a character. It is mentioned in the Pioneer forums that this sort of development is "down the road a ways" yet, and it's not their focus *yet*. The current Alpha has a built in "money cheat" to allow people trying it to actually have some cash to try things and etc. So it's good, for what it is at this point.
Right now, I'd say it's sort of like seeing a set to what may someday be a really great movie. It's well underway so far as construction and you can see hints of what some amazing moments may possibly be like. But the story and the actors aren't there yet, much less the production. That should be understood by anyone taking a peek at it, because yes, it is an *alpha* project right now. I like what I see so far, though. If I didn't, it wouldn't have gotten a night of test-flying.
I don't see it as something to compare in a competitive way with Oolite, though. They're different games and at very different stages of development. Oolite has more fan/player support and more development going on than any open-source spacegame I know of. That results in it being simply one of the best spacegames available at this time. Any game, open-source or not, would have a long way to go before it actually begins to compete with that. Pioneer is showing great promise and may join Oolite in the ranks of "great space games" in years to come, but if Oolite keeps the momentum it has at present, it certainly won't have been standing still.
Besides, this is gaming, not a "Highlander" movie. If there ends up being more than one great space game, that just rocks. It's not a "There can be only one!" kind of situation. LOL
Tough crowd! 
But I am glad to see Pioneer getting some objective and constructive criticism. 
