Frequently Asked Questions

About the Game

What is Pioneer?

Pioneer is a freeform single player space adventure in the spirit of Frontier: Elite II.

Is this a game or a simulation?

Frontier was a game, but with a newtonian flight model and a slightly more scientific flavour to the universe than usually in space games. Pioneer will follow this same path.

Can I play online?

There will be no multiplayer. This does not rule out the possibility of minor network features, but multiplayer as it is commonly known is not compatible with the core mechanics of Pioneer.

Can I colonize planets, build space stations or conquer the universe?

No, these are out of the game scope. While the game universe might not stay static for the duration of a game, the player can not generally influence major events.

Can I walk around space stations and planets?

No, you cannot exit your ship. The ship is always your avatar.

Is the universe pre-defined or randomly generated?

There are millions of stars in the galaxy. A few hundred on them are based on real-world astronomic catalogues. some of the planets (obvious ones being in the Sol system) are pre-defined, but most things are procedurally generated. This means that a planet does not exist until you actually visit it, but it will be generated the same way for every player.

Can I hire crew for my ship?

Yes. As of alpha 31, you can hire crew.

Are savegames compatible between releases?

While the game is still in alpha, this cannot be guaranteed. The situation will stabilize in a few years.

Are savegames compatible between Mods?

Again as with savegames between alpha versions, compatability between mods can not be guaranteed. It all depends on what mods you have installed.

Where is star system X from Frontier? Can I buy ship Y?

Pioneer is not an exact clone of Frontier. You will have to figure out new trade routes!

Gameplay

How do I take screenshots?

Ctrl+Printscreen saves .png files in the same directory where the game .ini and savegames are. You can cycle through full HUD/HUD without labels and cursor/No HUD and cockpit using TAB as described in [1].

How do I find star X in the star map

Type in the name in the search field in the lower right corner of the star map. If you know the system is within a few ly from your position, then have your current location selected when you do the search, since it only does a "local" seach in space. If the search fails, go to the sector where the star is supposed to be, either by typing the coordinates into the search field, or by using arrows, mark a nearby star in that system, and do another search.

I have a Taxi mission to system X, but which starport?

For Taxi missions any starport will do, as long as you dock before the deadline.

Starsystem names are not unique

This is not a bug, space is big, and just here on Tellus it is quite common with cities and villages sharing the same name, sometimes quite close.

I end up "a big number" AU away from the star when I hyper jump to a system

This happens in binary star systems. You can select the star you want to jump to from the System View.

Technical FAQ

Where is the configuration file, saved games, screenshots?

Windows: My Documents\Pioneer
OS X: /Users/your_username/Library/Application Support/Pioneer
Linux: /home/your_username/.pioneer

The game hangs when I turn on the Enable Cockpit (EXPERIMENTAL) option

It's because it's an experimental feature right now, infrastructure mostly. You need a cockpit model for to be able to use it.

You can find one heavily WIP one posted on the Community Forums. Note that it's a highly experimental feature right no, so please treat it accordingly.

I'm getting "OpenGL Version 3.1 is not supported. Pioneer cannot run on your graphics card." error on startup

Your graphics card should support at least OpenGL 3.1 to run Pioneer mode. Pioneer requires your graphics card to support Shaders. If your hardware is not hopelessly old, it could be just that the drivers supplied with your operating system are out of date.

I'm getting graphical issues

Such as wrong textures, ships missing from the view, text display glitches. Updating the display drivers usually solve these problems.

These usually occur on older graphics adapters, or because of outdated GPU drivers. Not too old NVidia and ATI cards are usually enough to play the game, but integrated GPUs are usually not enough.

I'm getting graphical issues, such as snow-like sky and transparent terrain

This is probably caused by the eclipse shader which isn't supported by some open source graphic drivers. You could install the propritary drivers, if available, or disable the eclipse effect by adding DisableEclipse=1 to your pioneer configuration file (config.ini).

I'm getting text rendering artefacts

Some system monitoring HUD utilities, like MSI Afterburner can cause distorted text rendering. Try switching the HUD utility off.

The game freezes at the intro screen

If you cannot start the game at all, edit the configuration file and change value DisableShaders to 1.

The game crashes after the loading screen. I'm using ATI free drivers on GNU/Linux.

If you are getting a GL_INVALID_ENUM in console, could be because some ships uses textures in a format that, because of patents, is not included in the main mesa package. Search for libtxc-dxtn or libtxc_dxtn in your distribution and install it.

My joystick is "drifting"

The game has a deadzone setting, but it is only accessible through the configuration file. Open config.ini and raise the JoystickDeadzone value.

I'm getting poor performance

The heaviest part of the game is planetary terrain generation. Turn down the "Detail distance" and "Fractal detail" settings, they have the most impact for performance. Reducing screen resolution is also recommended, this can be done in the Settings Menu, or manualy to a custom values by editing your personal configuration file, on linux: ~/.pioneer/config.ini. On Windows: Documents/pioneer/config.ini Look for ScrHeight and ScrWidth entries.

I've enabled anti-aliasing in the config file, but it does not work

Make sure the AA settings are not overridden by your graphics card settings, on NVidia AA should be set to "application controlled" mode.

Previous versions of Pioneer (pre 2014-11-19) used to work, but current doesn't start

As of 2014-11-19 Pioneer has switched to OpenGL 3.2. If your hardware (of drivers) don't support it you can try the last OpenGL2.x version of Pioneer: Win, GNU/Linux 64 bit, GNU/Linux 32 bit, Mac OSX. For details see dev-blogpost. Starting from 2014-12-08 Pioneer only requires OpenGL 3.1. (An emergency hack is to pioneer with "LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 pioneer")

Full screen mode is incorrectly scaled

If you are on Windows, try:

Sounds like windows 7 desktop-scaling issues.
Try adding some compatability modes to the Pioneer.exe.
Right click it and Choose properties -> Compatability -> Tick
Disable desktop scaling, and Disable desktop composition.

FAQ

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