The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

(http://www.thephorse.net/imgs/PioneerPromo1.jpg)

Hello Everyone!

After over a years hard work I have finally come to release Pioneer, a top down shoot-em-up rpg. There is a huge demo version where you can get a good taste for the game.

The game can be downloaded from here: http://www.box.net/shared/pjqb2siuuc (http://www.box.net/shared/pjqb2siuuc)

The official site is here: http://www.thephorse.net/pioneer (http://www.thephorse.net/pioneer)

here are some screenshots:
(http://www.thephorse.net/pioneer/imgs/screen1_small.jpg) (http://www.thephorse.net/pioneer/imgs/screen1.jpg)(http://www.thephorse.net/pioneer/imgs/screen2_small.jpg) (http://www.thephorse.net/pioneer/imgs/screen2.jpg)(http://www.thephorse.net/pioneer/imgs/screen3_small.jpg) (http://www.thephorse.net/pioneer/imgs/screen3.jpg)

Thanks for looking and let me know what you think!

Slightly off topic but...

Wow!  I can actually do a local bank transfer to buy this.  I'd far rather push cash to them than have someone pull cash from my credit card (and I hate giving out my card number).

Seriously, why don't more online stores allow this?!?

Of course the whole point's a bit academic as I'm using Linux at the moment but it looks nice and Solar Windsy. :)

A Linux version isn't out of the realms of possibilities! ;)

It was developed in blitzmax which is cross platform - so perhaps one day...?

Much as I love Linux (and would like to see more games on it) from a development point of view it's a bit tricky.  As soon as money exchanges hands you're doing the support rather than the buyer.  And there will be someone running Gentoo with a bunch of bizarre compiler switches who'll make it your problem to get it to work.  Personally I don't think it's worth the effort - particularly as you're unlikely to get many (any?) sales on a linux platform.

'course if you've got a bunch of free time it might be an interesting exercise to get the demo to run...

Haha, blitzmax.

Dragon: Tell that to LGP (http://linuxgamepublishing.com/)...

Elvish Pillager, something wrong with BlitzMax? :P

I use BlitzMax and the programs I've done in WinXP compiles fine on my intel iMac, so I'm guessing it'll compile under Linux too.  I guess you could put a demo up and potential buyers can try to run that before purchasing.

Of course, to make make BMX compile on my iMac I had to rebuild the models (so I installed the Xcode developer stuff), but that's not something that the app user has to worry about. The only thing I've had to tweak is double buffering (flip), but I think that has more to do with screen type and refresh rates (I moved from CRT to flat screen).



I quite like BMX, it's scalable since it's easy to use while also offering more complex OOP stuff. Great for prototyping and simpler 2D games. It's slow with crazy real time pixel manipulation stuff though.

Thanks for the pointers Arne - getting it mac ready is definitly something I'd like to do, need to buy a mac first though i guess :D

I'm fairly clueless when it comes to linux or mac so it should be an experience when I get to it!

I'm not quite sure how things work on Linux. I think it goes something like this:

Linux Kernel
Distro (Ubuntu, Fedora)
GUI (Gnome / KDE)

I'm not sure if the GUI matters. Distro might.

Yeah Ubuntu and Fedora are the least painful ways to get Linux running and there are masses of tutorials for them.  A mac would the simpler (money not being an issue) and it's based on FreeBSD which is another *nix system (similar to Unix and Linux) so it's a nice step in the dev path.

A bunch of the Remakers use Blitz and have produced some quite spiffy stuff so it's definitely capable (I've never tried it though).

Yeah - well I'm biased obviously but I think blitz is a great language, but to be honest it's neither here nor there really - making a game is far more than just choice of tools - it's taken a heck of a lot of work and dedication to get this far ;)

This is a very nice game!

Sweet! ;D

Hey thanks for the positive comment jaychant!

I have a couple of questions:
1. Is the ship supposed to be really slow, or is that just my computer?
2. Can you boost your ship's acceleration somehow?

Just wondering.

Yes the ship is rather slow to start with. And yes you can definitely make it faster - quite soon into the story too you get "velocity amplification devices" that you can fit to your ship to increase it's top speed.

It's part of the story that you'll have to increase the speed of your ship :)

What about acceleration? Can you boost that? (i.e. it takes less time to get to top speed)

Currently no :o

Although I had always planned to put such an upgrade in and never got round to it. The larger hulls do accelerate faster though so it's worth upgrading to one of those.

I am currently working on an update for this before I start marketing it more, so I'll try to get one in there :)

Just so you know I've uploaded a new version to the same link with the following changed:

 - Text spacing in conversation screens (some people were finding it hard to read)
 - Fixed spelling mistakes in dialogue text
 - Added acceleration module (which you can find once you get to sector 3 hint hint)

The new version should not touch your current save games so you can just install over the old one :)

Aymes really put alot of work into this great game. I highly recommend for everyone to at least try out the demo! You'll be glad you did.

I actually want to buy the full game, it's that fun. Plus, I can finally take advantage of my monitor's 1280x1024 resolution (Or 1600x1024, the largest resolution I can go to). Most games I have to use the low resolution (640x480) just so they play at a desirable speed, I guess because the only games at that resolution are usually 3D games.

jaychant, thats great to hear! :D

Yeah the resolution stuff took a bit of thinking out, obviously using a larger res requires a bit more cpu/gpu power. But also in the case of Pioneer it doesn't need that much extrat plus you can see further so it's a gamplay advantage too!

This could be an excellent freeware game, but something I would buy…hrm, I don't think so. And indie game I would buy must be one spear above the best freeware games, or have something they don't. Pioneer contains too many graphics design clumsiness (and even some bugs, like when being on a planet collecting minerals), interface incoherencies and few misplaced music tracks for me to warrant it top notch.

Also, the dialogue and story is rather un-imerrsive. The game appears, at least in the beginning, too linear, with other characters only guiding you from point A to point B, and you don't feel like you are really interacting with them.

I will admit that I really liked the pace and mechanics of battles, as well as slow travel speed. It's somewhat hypnotic, and the way that dialogue between Blain and Nova was inserted into that trip to the rebel station…really cool.

Came to the part when racing with Velays. Have to go back to upgrade obviously.

Hey thanks for the comments Lachie, differing opinions are always an interesting read!

Ahhh yes the freeware argument. I'll admit I considered it but I couldn't justify it with the amount of money I had spent on the artwork, hosting, etc... Plus I don't feel it's wrong to ask for something in return for over a years hard work on my part :)

I'm actually working on a user interface overhaul right now with my artist. This appears to be the most widespread gripe people have with the game so it's currently my top priority. The reason it didn't get done in the first place is because I ran out of money, people need paying to do things reliably and on time :(

It was designed to be a linear game (I don't think I ever said it was otherwise?), however if it's successfull I have a sequel planned which will be far more "sand box" than this. It's the testing that takes the time in non-linear games and I didn't really want to spend 3 years or more on this project.

Glad you like the trip to the space station, thats one of my favourite parts!

By the way, what are the errors you're getting with the planet lander? I wasn't aware of any? :o

Thanks again for trying it out!

When I landed on the planet alien and asteroid sprites were constantly smeared/pasted or like being spawned from the left edge of the screen. Same for a part of the terrain. Odd. I should have taken a screenshot. Will do it if I find an opportunity.

Well, if you paid your artists then it's understandible you trying to get your investment back. The graphics just didn't seem to be anything super-cool to me. I mean, no animated full screen alien dialogue screens for the starts. Maybe some big cinematics appear in full version. I don't know.

I wish people trusted their own abilities more, especially in projects that really don't require special skills. Static alien face images, space ship sprites, planet sprites (really didn't like that in your game => try FlamingPear's LunaCell plugin for PhotoShop)...hrm, not something I would pay for...Game cinematics, jaw dropping space scenes (like for main menu, etc)....that's another thing.

Sounds like a texture file or even a whole bit of the planet is missing, the game smears because it doesn't have anything else to put there.

Lachie - wow, certainly not heard of that planet lander issue - did you try the openGL mode instead? What gfx card are you using and are your drivers totally up to date?

I don't know of many shareware games where there are cinematics? (I can think of one but it's certainly not common?) I can also confirm there are sadly no cinematics in the full version!.

My own abilities created the GUI btw, and I think there's an old thread on here somewhere with an old screenie of my spaceship attempts for the game - you'll soon see why I needed to get help!

The only thing I would say is that this is a niche budget game, not a generic £30 commercial title where you might expect that kind of funding to go into it. I don't feel that the lack of cinematics or animated character screens makes it any less a great game, but if thats how you feel you might be missing out on quite a few other great games out there?

Pioneer obviously isn't for you, but I appreciate the opinions. If people didn't tell me these things I would never try to aim higher! Thanks again!

I didn't mean any disrespect with my comments. And the second one was mainly motivated by the fact you paid for those graphics. I was merely speaking from my own perspective. If I would resort to buying graphics, it would have to be something way better than my maximum.

I ran the game once in OpenGL mode, but I seem to have problems with either graphics card overheating or my power unit, as it completed turned off my PC after some 20 minutes of playing. Same thing happened to me with BioShock, but it stopped when I switched to 800*600 resolution and did some switches with virtual memory usage. But this newly experience with your game makes me think I have a serious problem with overheating or my power unit. I suspect overheating more because I played BioShock while the temperatures in my room were quite lower. Anyway, this is rather annoying as I'm making an OpenGL game too. So, no, I used a non-OpenGL mode. I have GeForce 8600 GTS, 512 MB RAM.

Ah no, I understand I do! And believe me, your comments only want me to improve the quality for the next game I create :) Not sure about cinematics, but I'd love to get animated alien screens in next time, hopefully my budget will be larger too!

Yeah that GFX card should have no trouble (I know someone has gone through the whole game with a 6600), on the surface it sounds like an overheating prob, but I'm really no expert!

I signed up here to POST about this game, seeing as I'm a long-time SC2 nut (first played it when I was about 15 I think... my local Blockbuster JUST HAPPENED to have the SC1 and 2 CD collection in store... on a Sunday.  A day of fate...) ... I'm just off to BUY this game now.  It's the closest thing to a spiritual sequel for Star Control 2 I've come across.  It's a rather different sort of game play - asteroids is the major influence - but the story is straight out of the SC2 school of sci-fi.

So I'm not surprised the author has posted here.  Sir, I suggest posting this at http://www.rockpapershotgun.com as well - they appreciate these indie games a lot!

The MOD-doskpop-styled music is getting me all teary-eyed for my SC2-loving youth too  ;D

Whee thanks for the support chischis!

I've written to the RPS guys, but I don't think they've mentioned it yet? I know they're busy people though - perhaps a nudge in a week or so :D

Glad you like the music! Please let me know how you get on with the game!

An hour in, still enjoying it.  The planet sequences get me scratching my chin: it's a challenge but I'm not finding it as fun as the space sections, nor the lander sections in SC2.  Perhaps, with an upgraded lander, they become a little easier to handle.  My main issue is that they are sloooooow going.

Paid.  Just waiting for my registration key now...

chischis, you should have had your reg information by now? might be worth checking the spam folder if it's not already in your inbox - let me know if it's not though!

Have you got the mining laser? that makes the planet landing a lot more fun! (You can buy it from gblik)

I sent an email, should be on its way...

Still nothing, Aymes.  I have checked my spam folder...

Chischis, sent you a separate email about this now :)

Should be all sorted one way or another!

Definitely sorted now, thanks Aymes!

Having trouble finding Gblik again though... (I'm up to the racing dogs)

Ahh, don't worry, you'll see him again soon ;)