PIONEERS

[eigen]

Bad news! There seems to be an issue for (some?) Ati users. One user reported a BSOD on launching the game and another one gave me screenshots with some odd texture rendering bugs. The BSOD leaves me stumped since I don't think it's my fault. I did however come across a similar issue with another SFML game, Air Forte, reported here.






The thing is it's the same darn font used for all elements in there but the list one craps out. Plus the corners are white though they're supposed to be some small details. I first considered it'd might be some NPOT texture thing going on but wasn't that issed solved after, I dunno, Voodoo 1? The font error makes me think could there be an issue with the order in which stuff is rendered. A bad texture of some sorts messes up a consecutive draw call or whatever?

The font file is 512x8, but there are plenty of textures that are something like 40x20 and whatnot. Could that really crap out like that in 2012?

But I'll investigate this further with some small demos and annoying the victims but it's for the greater good. I really hoped these kinds of kinks had been worked out of SFML by now ...  ... it's my game that gets the blame ...

[Laurent]

The font bug is a driver issue, which is solved with Catalyst beta drivers 12.11, if I remember correctly.

[eigen]

Btw, this is custom font rendering with simply picking a correct texture rect from the texture and drawing that. Rinse and repeat for all letters. Also in the second screenshot above the "Spring, 1500" in the top-left corner is supposed to be a Pioneers logo, an image which is 86x13. That's not drawn at all whereas other NPOT textures are, like the face.

[Laurent]

The bug happens for sprites as well, it's not only text.

[eigen]

Thanks! I'll ask them to update the video drivers and let you know how it goes.

[model76]

Hello again good sir.

I just tried the new build 4, and unfortunately, it crashed.

It happened after I clicked "go explore" after crashing into an island. I hadn't done anything, except moving the camera around with ASDW, and clicking around on the screen because I had forgotten how to play the game. The last click was on the ship, and that is when the crashed happened.

I am using Windows 7, and an nVidia graphics card.
Visual Studio 2010, Firefox, LibreOffice Writer, and Thunderbird were running at the time.
Also, I was running the game in full screen mode.

[eigen]

Thanks for letting me know. Some other people have reported the issuse as well but I thought I had sorted it out. Clearly not. You downloaded it from the link provided here in the forum, right?

So, you clicked "go explore", the screen transitioned into the other game mode where you could still move around and you then clicked on the ship? Oh joy, I just love bugs I can't reproduce ... 

[model76]

You downloaded it from the link provided here in the forum, right?

That is correct.

So, you clicked "go explore", the screen transitioned into the other game mode where you could still move around and you then clicked on the ship? Oh joy, I just love bugs I can't reproduce ... 

Pretty much.
If I can make time, I will try to play around with it later. Maybe there is some sort of method to the madness.

[eigen]

Long time no write, which means it's time for some dates that are up. A few days ago I released a new build, fifth one already. Oh, how time flies. The last one was quite buggy with many crashes here and there. All those issues should be resolved now. It also adds bit of new content and overall polish. There's now a new intro to get the storyball rolling. I've also added a simple tutorial mode to introduce the very basic gameplay features. Terrain now has height, there are new graphics assets, some new music and a bunch of behind-the-scenes tech improvements. For example, the quests are now implemented in Lua, which will mean eventually enthusiasts will be able to create their own quests. But enough with the blabbering. It's time to put on an adventurer's hat and go explore some frickin' world.


Download for Windows
Download for OS X









If you don't get a chance to try the build, at least watch the latest video and see what you're missing




SFML has been working great, only a slight issue to report. Sometimes, all of the sudden during active gameplay, the game gets a FocusLost event which I use to disable the game logic and only do the rendering and throttle down the CPU usage. It should not be fired because the window is most definitely focused. It even fires in full-screen mode. I don't get it much myself, but some players have reported sudden slowdowns which means the game has gone into the "unfocused" mode. Haven't been able to reliably reproduce it so I can't really report the bug with meaningful information yet. Other than that, SFML seems to be working pretty reliably.

[Nexus]

Very nice! I have played it for some time now, and I like the art style. It's very interesting what can be done with only 4 different colors!

The game is cool, even if it takes a while to get into it. I didn't understand how to disembark with unloading the cargo -- the backpack was empty, although I loaded everything in the harbor. I saw a bug: When I floated through the canals of the eastern island and clicked to the water near the coast (pretty far away), the brig traversed the land to another canal. How does the fog of war work? Old parts of the island I have already discovered disappear. And everything disappears when switching characters. Furthermore, I were not able to scroll again to the west of the island, where I arrived.

Can we navigate somehow on the sea? It's difficult to steer towards a destination, the sailing mechanism is rather annoying

[eigen]

Thank you for your reply.

Moving stuff in the harbour only puts the items onto the ship, not into any particular backback. When exploring you can take as much or as little items as you need, depending on how far you will trek from the ship. It doesn't make sense to assign items automatically.

Yeah, I think the patfinder does not skip undiscovered tiles under some circumstances. I'll look into it.

Each explorer has his own state of the map discovery. Previously this was all shared but I didn't like it. Over time they simply forget and areas are blacked out again. I have my reasons for that, I can elaborate if you wish. The rate of that depends on how high the Intellect attribute is. The mapping feature isn't built yet so it's rather easy to get lost. But that's why the markers/flags are for. Once the cartography side of things is implemented, you'll have the map to help you find your way.

Indeed, the sailing mechanism may take some time to get used to and when the wind just isn't favorable it can be a pain. But I feel it's an important part of it and not too difficult once you get used to it. In reality, many expeditions were either cancelled or postponed because the wind conditions just weren't right. You should be happy the wind in the game doesn't have strength which could mean the wind dies just as you're in the middle of the ocean

[BaneTrapper]

I didn't understand how to disembark with unloading the cargo -- the backpack was empty, although I loaded everything in the harbor.

How does the fog of war work? Old parts of the island I have already discovered disappear. And everything disappears when switching characters. Furthermore, I were not able to scroll again to the west of the island, where I arrived.

Can we navigate somehow on the sea? It's difficult to steer towards a destination, the sailing mechanism is rather annoying

( Shop <-> Town stash ) ( Town stash <-> Ship ) ( Ship <-> Crew )

Each unit has its own (Oh, i explored this), also press (M) for map while on island.
There is no way to share ( Island information / Explored parts ) around the members or anything like that, what unit explored, that he know.
Also unit forgets old parts of the terrain during course of turns.

That is the skill part. W towards ( Head wind ) or ( Tail wind ) then release ( W ) to not lose speed rapidly and steer towards destination and pray for good wind direction.
I personally like this, it adds more depth to sailing instead of just sitting there for 5-15 min holding ( W ) and waiting a island to pop out, instead fight the wind direction all the time!!!

[eigen]

http://www.pioneersgame.com

It's been a long time since I last posted in this thread but I just wanted to let you know everything is still coming along, if a bit slowly. But that's life. Anyway, a new shiny build is out which packs quite a few new features and great many tweaks. The release of the latest build was mainly motivated by IndieCade East 2015 where Chris Dwyer from Junklatch showed the game among others. That one week before that was a crazy crunch mode pulling 14-hour days to get stuff working again. I completely broke the game after the last build when I started rewriting bits in Lua so I had to pull all the loose ends together.

Here are some screenshots to hint towards what's new:

You can get the latest alpha from itch.io. You may download it for free but I would greatly appreciate it if you would include a little support. I think this is the last build to be completely free, so starting with next releases there would be a small minimum price. I feel the game has developed far enough over these 3 years to warrant this.

Download here

I hope you enjoy this!


I upgraded to SFML 2.2 a few weeks ago and it's been working fine, most of the time. There is an issue with  C++ libraries when using Code::Blocks and GCC. It runs fine on Windows 7 but I needed to include the DLLs to make it work on Windows 8. I saw a thread on the subject around here somewhere but I wanted to let you know it's in fact quite a serious issue. Other than that I think it's been working well. Props to the developers

I'm yet to try out the new iOS and Android support but I'm looking forward to getting something up and running some time.

[eXpl0it3r]

It runs fine on Windows 7 but I needed to include the DLLs to make it work on Windows 8. I saw a thread on the subject around here somewhere but I wanted to let you know it's in fact quite a serious issue.

Can you be a bit more specifr and/or link the mentioned thread? I've been using SFML 2.2 on Windows 8.1 without any issues.

[eigen]

I think it was this: http://en.sfml-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=17084.0 It may also be an issue on my part of course because in http://www.sfml-dev.org/tutorials/2.0/start-cb.php it says..

...which of the libgcc_s_sjlj-1.dll or libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll files is present in your MinGW/bin...

I have both of these files present.