Pioneer 2022-02-03

From Release notes from pioneer: link to original post

The Pioneer developers have been busy since the 2021-07 summer release, and have made several major improvements to the game! Perhaps the most notably, the "oldUI" interface system has been completely removed from the codebase, replaced with a massively improved label rendering system for the Sector Map and the old System Overview screen being completely rewritten into the new System Atlas screen.

Similarly, the station Bulletin Board and Ship Equipment displays have been redesigned to show more pertinent information to the user and pave the way for future usability features.

This release features a major gameplay improvement: commodity stocking at stations has seen a refactor to remove an artificial profit-cap, which provides players with an increased economic incentive for flying larger bulk-cargo ships and finding a profitable commodity route tailored to their ship. We've also added a first iteration of dynamic stock depletion; in its current state it serves as an incentive for bulk traders to rotate between different stations when they have purchased all available stock of a commodity. This will be expanded upon in further releases!

On the graphical side of things, an internal refactor of Pioneer's rendering subsystem has slightly improved performance in drawcall-heavy scenes and opened the doors for developers to implement more complicated graphical effects. Following on from the last release, another ship has received a complete graphical overhaul, this time the Xylophis light shuttlecraft! It's available as a starting ship in the Barnard's Star scenario, and can be a quite economical package courier in the early stages of the game.

As always, a list of noteworthy changes and bugfixes is collected here; the full list is available in the Changelog.txt file distributed with the game.

Major Changes

• New galaxy skybox, improved star brightness and density (#5124)
• Redesign the BBS layout, show pertinent mission info (#5312)
• New slot-based ship equipment display (#5315)
• Completely new System Atlas mode for System Map (#5239)
• Add System Overview Widget to System Map view (#5327)
• Xylophis overhaul, new model (#5323)
• Name generation expanded, and make first + last name match (#5223)
• Rebalance goods restocking & goods availability, allowing bulk trading (#5291)
• Draw sector map labels with ImGui. (#5247)
• Rewrite internal renderer API, improve performance with many draw calls (#5156)

Minor Changes

• Default language is based on the user's environment language code (#5326)
• Unify default UI theming, ensure UI scaling snaps to pixel values (#5315)
• Change CommsWindow opacity, adjust Quit message window (#5303)
• No scrollbar on short comms log, show newest message first (#5256)
• Double-clicking the pause button opens options menu (#5279)

Bugfixes / tweaks

• FuelClub: Refuel internal fuel tank only once a day (#5311)
• Fix mechanic character not being persistent (#5306)
• Fix clicks falling through buttons in Sector Map (#5324)
• Make fuel scooping slightly easier and safer (#5281)
• Fix sharp edges on hypercloud halo (#5288)
• Fix NPC ship trajectory calculations crashing into planets (#5250)
• Fix DebugRPG menu crashing when current game is ended (#5292)
• Fix gun tag on Skipjack caused issues after save/load (#5269)
• Fix sold out Illegal commodity price not at x2 over black market (#5277)
• Fix crash from selling to sold out advert when amount=0 (#5262)
• Re-added cargo mission tonnage dialogue option (#5228)
• Fix FlightLog buttons being offscreen (#5224)
• Fix ESC key not closing the settings window (#5224)
• Fixed DSMiner ship vertex normal issues (#5229)
• Fix crash in ModelViewer when switching to FPS navigation (#5224)