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 ---- 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:
- Continue Game
- Load and continue from your latest saved game if you have one.
- Start at Earth
- Take off from Los Angeles on the planet Earth.
- 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.
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.