Pioneer: An open-source recreation of Frontier: Elite 2

Just came across Pioneer - a (not yet finished) open-source recreation of Frontier:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pioneer/
http://spacesimcentral.com/forum/topi ... ntier-elite-2-style-game/

Anyone up to the challenge of porting it? Well, I can always dream

The sourceforge page had a useful comment about glew dependency. Which surely requires some 'bs&t'.

Forget those links I posted, they are about 2 years old. The latest (much much improved) stuff can be found here:
http://pioneerspacesim.net/image
http://pioneerspacesim.net/download

EDIT: Seems that it doesn't *need* OpenGL shaders:
http://pioneerspacesim.net/node/52

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We don't have libtool and GLEW, so a no go for now

I've utilized libtool scripts when (natively) compiling Freeciv SDL. So assuming it's not something entirely different, this doesn't seem to be a problem, unlike glew.

Hmm, and GLEW needs this to build:
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At least it "sounds" not too complicated

GLEW is in blender source tree.

extern/glew

@broadblues

Does that mean it is built already with blender?

edit: GLEW depends on X11...

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No it doesn't glewx depends on X11 , you clearly don't need that for an amiga port, based on MiniGL (or some future gallium for that mater)

It means I did all the work of creating the header files etc. There source is there for build it in another project if need be.

You guys are taking the wrong aproach, starting a porting project by listing unmet deps will never get you anywhere.

@broadblues

Ok, so if we gather your glew header files and the libtool from Thematic someone could take a shot at it...

Took you a while to come across this little pearl indeed ;)

Been playing some earlier alphas a while back, but never got dragged into it. It's still a Frontier-like game, not THE Frontier. No Achenar - no Empire, no Federation. I've been surprised to find out how inability to dock to Li Quing Jao or Mikhail Gorbatschev spoiled the game for me.

I understand it's copyright-stuff related? It's funny as many original Frontier ships have been recreated.
Or they simply didn't want to copy someone :p Completely.
Though seeing how far they went with it, I'd myself go for it fully, if possible.

I say FFE D3D is more fun to play for a Frontier fan, on a PC that is. Although I might give Pioneer another shot now,
the alpha number went up by quite a bit :p

But since FFE can't really be ported (leaving aside the D3D part, I believe there's no source out there?), the idea of porting Pioneer to NG OSes is awesome, so I'm wholeheartedly cheering you on.

As long as there's 3D support at all, I don't think it really need some neat hardware. On low settings running perfect on my laptop with a GMA900, which by some is barely even called a GPU. And still looks fine.
It does have a C2D 1.8GHz though.

@MaW Quote:
I thought that went without saying? Still, it is *scarily* close in most ways.

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Didn't you notice the tag "alpha" when downloading the game? Seems most likely either (1) a bug, or (2) not yet implemented for (some) complex space stations. I doubt it is due to copyright reasons!

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As they seemed to have averaged more than 1 alpha release per month (37 releases in 33 months), I'd guess that it has improved a lot since you last played it... although not necessarily in the areas you would like!

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From first impressions Pioneer seems harder for a newbie to get into due to (unless my memory of Frontier fails me) :
(a) no auto-pilot when you start the game,
(b) no visible trade routes to help you get started,
(c) far less inhabited star systems (that are worth trading with), and far fewer easy trade routes (even thought it may be more realistic),
(d) no circle on the map showing the maximum jump radius.

I've hardly played Pioneer yet (still looking for a decent trade route!), so I may add further things to that list. Still, these mostly seem like playability balance issues that ought to get fixed eventually (especially for a non-alpha release).

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I didn't notice any other 'empires' yet, but I did see mention that they are introducing "factions".

I think you slightly misunderstood my post :p

As for difficulty, it's not really a problem. There is autopilot, lack of circle is not really a problem since there's that red/green line indicating if the system is in range or not. It is indeed hard to find a decent trade route.

Hyperspace jumps, too, seem to consume a bit more time than in Frontier/FFE, so it's hard to decide whether you are able to finish the mission in time or not.

As for what you misunderstood, is me saying it's not THE Frontier. While it has striking resemblance, the game does not take place in Elite's universe. There are no Elite factions(as said, no Core Systems Federation, no Empire [with it's capital in mentioned Achenar system), no Elite itself. I can't dock to Li Quing Jao or Mikhail Gorbatschev since they simply don't exist =P
Only ships are there.

On the other hand, the map seems to be based on real space maps, maybe even utilising real planets (since astronomers have found quite a bit of them so far), but I haven't confirmed that anywhere.

Played a little yesterday again and took a liking to it, but as it's alpha it seemed to crash quite a bit.
And those hellish trade routes :p

@MaW Quote:
Doh, OK

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Which is far too expensive to buy for your first few trips (you start with 100 credits, but it costs something like 1500 credits) = beginner must fly manually = beginner frustrated by continually flying into the planet they want to get to

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Well, I found it a problem, as I'm often clicking on stars that I only then discover I can't actually reach, because there is no rough indication of how far I can go. It's not a show-stopper, but it is annoying when the solution is so simple.

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Pioneer gives the time taken for a hyperspace jump, so I don't see it as any more problematic than Frontier...

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I'm not particularly bothered by that, as long as there is *a* believable universe for me to explore. I guess it would be nice, but they obviously can't for copyright reasons (like you said).

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I have autopilot from the very start o.O At least on the Eagle when I begin on Earth.

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I'm not 100% sure but I believe that the systems which are in hyperjump range have brightened names contrary to the dark-colored names of out-of-range stars.

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Now that's something I miraculously missed (happens :p). Thanks.

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Yup, although I'd expect it'd apply to all parts of the IP, like ship design and names, too. But of course it's only good that at least the ships are there =)

As for universe being "believable", this one is certainly more realistic than Frontier's, as I mentioned earlier.

Cheers =)
Lucas

Edit: and must also add that successfully completing any non-local delivery mission on time in an LR Eagle craft is impossible unless you fit in a class 2 engine..

That about engines goes in line with Frontier's possibility to have a ship without any jump engine (not sure if you could have a net gain from such).

@MaW
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Yes, you are right. I think it wasn't present in the first alpha build I tried, but it is there now thankfully. Makes it sooo much easier.

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Aaah! You are right :) . I had totally missed that. I wondered why some were bright & others not.

Something that I did noticed myself, but it took me a *long* time to, is that grey star names are unpopulated, while blue star names are part of the Earth Federation, and green star names are part of the Confederate of Independent Systems. That really speeded-up looking for a decent trade route.

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Yeah, it does seem that way. You can still do trading between systems (which seems to make very little money when you can't afford Robots/etc - perhaps 25 credit profit per run taking maybe 1 month). While with local delivery missions I was making tons of money (20-25 credits per delivery, often multiple deliveries to the same station, with the trip taking maybe an hour).

I just made something like 900 credits in a couple of days, from just local deliveries. But by then I'd done all the available missions, so I'm going to have to go to another star system (carrying some cargo of course). I should now be able to afford to buy Robots/etc, so hopefully trading becomes a bit more profitable... (then buy a bigger ship, and/or a faster engine, etc, etc.)

If you're flying an Eagle I'd suggest fitting in the class 2 engine and go for interstellar deliveries. You can't take any extra cargo except for fuel with it, but I'm pretty sure you'll be making more money in the same real time, even if noticeably more in-game time.

Anyway I gave up any trade attempts, at least in this nerfed ship.

Just save your game before taking any dangerous-but-well-paid delivery.. it's worth(I think they're paid 1500 to 2000 credits) it but you're kinda done for in the silly Eagle if you bump into two 3-4 times bigger ships waiting for you.. :D

I'm now collecting for the police (Viper) craft, which has a very nice model in here <3. Not sure if it isn't FFE D3D model, though. Still cool.

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Yeah I've noticed that too at some point, but even though there are factions now there doesn't really seem to be any use of it for now.. but haven't played much enough yet.

What I'm missing is the ability to negotiate mission rewards.. :D

Also, be careful about installing any mods after you've already started game. I'm especially thinking of FFE mod that changes some stuff like ship stats back to original Frontiers. You might suddendly wake up having negative amount of free cargo space after loading saved game.. :D

@MaW
Having spent some time analysing trading possibilities, and then trying out the best ones, I can say for *sure* that trading is not really worth it in Pioneer unless you have a huge cargo hold (and the cash to fill it) :

Buying a commodity from a system that has it as a Major Export, and selling it in a system that has it as a Minor Import, gives a profit of about 17-23% (lets say 20% for simplicity). These are very hard to find when you also want to fill your cargo hold on the way back (with a Major Export / Minor Import commodity).

Finding a Major Export / Major Import commodity route is the ultimate goal, but perhaps impossible for expensive goods (like Robots or Precious Metals) - at least I didn't find any yet. The only one I found was for Farm Machinery, which gave a profit of almost 50%... however I have my suspicions this was a fluke (due to random variations in pricing), as extrapolating my experiments had led me to expect only about a 30% profit.

So, for a Major Export / Minor Import route, Robots gives you about $10 profit per ton, and Precious Metals gives you about $35 profit per ton. An Eagle has about 10 tons of cargo space, of which you need 2-4 tons of Hydrogen, meaning you can only carry 6-8 tons of cargo. Let's say 7 tons of cargo for simplicity, and assume Robots one way & Precious Metals the other. That means ($10 + $35) * 7 = $315 profit for one round trip. Not very much!

Clearly you need a Panther Clipper (or similarly obscene cargo carrying capacity) to make any real profit from trading. Either that, or I'll have to look at illegal trading (e.g. weapons, narcotics, slaves, etc), but as I'm kinda roleplaying not sure if I'd ever go for those (too risky, and at least in the case of slaves just unacceptable).


P.S. I found it curious that a few commodities simply NEVER appear as either an import or an export, meaning that they are NEVER going to be profitable: Industrial Machinery & Computers. I wonder if this is a bug?

While Military Fuel appears so rarely as an import (I found one single case!) that trading it is almost impossible (without super duper long range drive) . Again, seems a bit like a bug. (Unless I've overlooked military fuel since it tends to appear at the very bottom of lists, and thus hidden off the bottom of the page without scrolling.)

@Andy
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Did you have fixed version of glxew.h as well ? That one in Blender sources seems untouched (there is even at top some includes related to X11).

I just tryed to build some stuff which want this header, and while glew.h and wglew.h eats ok, glxew.h bring a lot of errors.