Pioneer

[Cody]

Frontier Developments love Pioneer. They love the fact that we care enough about their game to make one of our own. They brought several proposals for cross-licensing of intellectual property to us, so that we'd be able to use Frontier'fictional universe, and possibly even other assets, in Pioneer. The reason why this all fell through was not for lack of willingness on their part, but (ironically) more due to the inflexibility of free software licensing.

They've been absolutely brilliant. There has been no antagonism, no suggestion of legal action, and nobody telling anybody else what to do. It's been civil and productive.

[Selezen]

Give them the option that Pioneer is killed by Frontier Developments for breach of IP. They'll like it then.

Seriously though, a community will never be 100% happy with any decision - all that can be done is what's best for the future of the game and the naysayers will have to like it. Either that or they come play Oolite.

[pagroove]

I must say (after reading the topic on Spacesim Central) that it's a bit vague what exactly happened in those 'talks'. I also must say that if the same happened to Oolite I would be not happy. I understand the emotions that surface in the discussion because with the Elite content gone you rob the game a bit of its 'spirit'. I mean all those years people thought that there would be not Elite anymore so in my opinion the least FD can do is pay some respect for that.

That said. I think that Oolite is in another league. It is emulating the original Elite. I think FD is scared that if they 'screw' the game up people can easily step over to Pioneer as they would find the original ships there. Or am I wrong. What do you think?

[Selezen]

I don't really know what to think. I know that for the last 20 years it's the fans that have kept Elite alive through their fan fiction and remakes, and I hope that FD realise that.

I keep thinking back to the fate of Ian Bell, when some of his ideas were used for Frontier with the whole issue of expansions to Frontier being part of the terms of his involvement, then FFE came out as a separate sequel, starting a lot of bad feeling leading to the whole law suit thing and the legal issues that went along with it.

And, of course, Elite: The New Kind.

All lowlights of the fan base and, thankfully, far outnumbered by the good things that have happened. Frontier never seem to comment much on the good things though.

[Cody]

I know that for the last 20 years it's the fans that have kept Elite alive through their fan fiction and remakes, and I hope that FD realise that.

It's those same dedicated fans that have financed Elite: Dangerous, to a large extent, too.

[pagroove]

I know that for the last 20 years it's the fans that have kept Elite alive through their fan fiction and remakes, and I hope that FD realise that.

It's those same dedicated fans that have financed Elite: Dangerous, to a large extent, too.

Exactly. So on second thought it is a little strange what is happening to Pioneer. I have to concur with some members that the 'core team' of Pioneer is not very open on this subject. So it is difficult to see if this is more their decision or that it is 'encouraged' by FD.

But yeah the fans kept the Elite concept alive AND indeed financed ED. I waited to the last phase of the campaign before I pledged. I was skeptical at first and still am a bit. I fear that FD will be a lot different than we think it will be. It will be truly a new game both in looks and in concept. This is the first time it is in multiplayer an I'm not that convinced that it will be a better game because of that. But I hope I'm proven wrong.

[JazHaz]

I see that there has been three alphas released since the last changelog (Alpha 28) was published on this thread in November.

So here's the changelog for those three versions, starting with the latest Alpha 31:

Changelog

Alpha 31

• 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)

Alpha 30

• 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)

Alpha 29

• New features
• 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)

[Cody]

I see that there has been three alphas released since the last changelog (Alpha 28) was published on this thread in November.

Yeah... I guess Geraldine has been a little busy being a Moderator on the Frontier forum. <chortles>

[Selezen]

Maybe that's how Frontier will quash the unlicensed games - co-opt the developers into their forums as mods and administrators...

[Cody]

Heh... anyone seen Jens lately?

[JD]

So here's the changelog for those three versions, starting with the latest Alpha 31:

Changelog
[*]Converted "big crappy" spacestation to SGModel (#1964, #2017)

Well that has to be progress!

[Geraldine]

I see that there has been three alphas released since the last changelog (Alpha 28) was published on this thread in November.

Yeah... I guess Geraldine has been a little busy being a Moderator on the Frontier forum. <chortles>

Most certainly have been, sorry about that guys. I am also a bit sad to see the Elite content being dropped. How much this has to do with FD, I dont know, but I do understand they (the dev team) want to take Pioneer in a new independent direction. With the change in the model conventions from LMR to SGM they are trying to encourage more model makers to join in with new unique ships ect. Only a few folk mastered LMR and it has been said that new potental model makers were put off by it.

Of course, not everyone is happy with this in the Pioneer community, however a "new" game called Pioneer Genesia that uses both model conventions is also trying to get off the ground, here is a link http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/34 ... t/?p=36835

[Cody]

Of course, not everyone is happy with this in the Pioneer community...

Yeah, I've been following that thread, among others. The clash of style/method and personalities has been brewing for some time - the removal of Elite/Frontier content has just brought it to a head, it seems. A trifle sad, but it happens, and a fork (or two) of Pioneer was probably inevitable.

[Geraldine]

Hi Ooliters
Alpha 33 is just out. Here is the changelist for this month from 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.

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)"

Download links: Homepage http://pioneerspacesim.net/download
ModDB (available shortly) http://www.moddb.com/games/pioneer

[Zireael]

The latest build is 12 Dec and while I'm sad to see FFE inspired content go, I understand why it happened. Still, I prefer Oolite to Pioneer....