How to start

Welcome to Pioneer

You have found a game called Pioneer? Great!
Pioneer is a space adventure game, and the best is: it is completely free!
Windows, Linux and Mac OS X builds are made regularly so you can also have the newest updates if you can't compile the game.
Of course you can also pull the latest source from Git and compile it yourself. We'd love for you to take Pioneer for a spin, but you should be aware that this game is not finished, thus may crash and exhibit other weirdness occasionally.

Installing

If you want to play the game you can download it on the pioneer download site.
Microsoft Windows

If you use Microsoft Windows, just download the file from the "Windows" section.
Then the file can be unzipped with the free archiver 7zip.
Simply execute "pioneer.exe" to start the game. That's it!

Mac OS X

If you use Mac OS X you have to download the file from the "Mac OS X" section.
Download the .dmg Apple Disk Image and install it.

Linux

If you use Linux and you want to use the binaries, just download them from the "Linux" section.
To find out if you need the linux-32 or the linux-64 version, open your commandline and enter
uname -m
If the output is "x86_64", take the linux-64 version, else take the linux-32 version.
If you are not sure what to take, take the linux-32 version.

Source

You can also compile the game from source code.
The code can be downloaded from here:
https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/archive/master.zip
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For a guide how to compile the source code on Linux, take a look here: 
http://pioneerwiki.com/wiki/Compiling

Playing Pioneer

After successfully installing Pioneer and starting it you should see the start screen.
On the left hand side of the screen you can see a spinning ship model, and on the right hand side there are a few buttons:

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• Continue Game
  • Load and continue from your latest saved game if you have one.
• Start at Mars
  • Take off from Cydonia on the planet Mars.
• Start at New Hope
  • Take off from New Hope, an ice planet in the system Epsilon Erdiani.
• Start at Barnard's Star
  • Undock from an orbital platform in Barnard's Star System.
• Load Game
  • If you have saved a game you can load your game here.
• Options
  • Configure Pioneer to best suit your hardware and wishes.
• Quit
  • Exit Pioneer.

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Tutorials

There is a series of tutorials that is work in progress at the moment. We are sorry for the inconvenience and try to update all tutorials as soon as possible.
Click here to read the Basic Flying tutorials.