Having problem with running the Pioneer build.

[TimothyHills]

I found an issue with the comms text being displayed in a dark grey colour, after docking and getting the docking fee. So I found the code to change and managed to build Pioneer. Unfortunately, on my system, pioneer-debug.exe does not run smooth and when landing the program temporarily hangs when my ship is at 13 meters whilst doing stuff, presumably. After too long a while the ship is landed and any comms messages have been and gone and I didn't get to see if my code edit worked or not.

So, is the code at line 1020 in Pi.cpp the correct line of code to edit?

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//XXX global ambient colour hack to make explicit the old default ambient colour dependency
// for some models
Pi::renderer->SetAmbientColor(Color(0, 192, 0, 255));

And, how can I get my builds to run smoother so I can start having some fun under the hood?

[FluffyFreak]

Well you'd typically only run a Debug build if you wanted to Debug the code, otherwise I run Release most of the time.

What are you using to compile the game? VS2013 (windows), GCC (linux) or XCode (Mac)?

If you're using the VS2013 solution then just choose "Release" from the dropdown, it runs MUCH faster.
Mostly due to not using MS's ridiculous debug memory manager and checking all of the allocations etc.
If you want a balance of Debug information but some optimisations then try the "PreRelease" build, it's basically "Release" but with debug symbols and a couple of optimisations disabled - faster than Debug but some code you can't debug, slower than Release.

Finally: Unfortunately no that probably isn't the correct piece of code, that's the ambient lighting colour for 3D models, it's probably defunct as well to be honest. I have no idea where the actual text colour comes from right now.
You can try either `\src\ShipCpanel.cpp`:

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// XXX duplicated in WorldView. should probably be a theme variable
static const Color s_hudTextColor(0,255,0,204);

or `\src\GameLog.cpp`:

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const Color &c = Colors::HUD_MESSAGE;

For where they get the colour from, not sure quite which message it is you are talking about so hard to say in more detail.


I like the look of the mods you've been doing in the old-forums on SpaceSimCentral by the way :)

[TimothyHills]

Thanks for the tips FluffyFreak, I shall go play. I'm using VS2013. Didn't want to raise an issue for this, want to sort it myself if I can as C stuff is the deep end for me.

Having fun with the mods, thanks. :-)

[impaktor]

@TimothyHills

Dark, black, or gray text color is a bug/incompability related to your graphics card and drivers. All message text is white in the game, thus I doubt you can change this since it's not a feature of the game but rather something with your graphics. There was an issue on this on github, but I cant find it now.

If you want to work on a log system with history in a separate tab, a half finished version is here for anyone to pick up:
https://github.com/robn/pioneer/tree/new-ui-comms

[TimothyHills]

Graphics incompatibility - I had the grey text with a Radeaon card but Scout Plus and older Pioneer builds wouldn't run so I put my Nvidia graphics card back in and still had the grey text.

I now have white text by adding #include "Color.h" to the file GameLog.cpp. There appears to be a partially implemented Colors namespace that wasn't correctly referenced with the headers in GameLog.cpp. ShipCpanelMultiFuncDisplays.cpp and ShipCpanel.cpp look as if they should use the namespace but don't as their colour values are hard codeded.

Should I learn how to send code back to the main repository with this tiny edit or would someone else, currently coding, like to do the edit?
Should I endeavor to fully implement the Colors namespace and make a project out of it?

But firstly, I am the new boy so could someone please confirm the grey text issue and my fix of it. :-)

[TimothyHills]

@ impaktor

Been a programming hobbyist for a long time but all this C stuff is new to me and the new-ui-comms would be an ideal use of my learning curve so I will have a look and see where it goes. Thanks.

[FluffyFreak]

The tinier the edit the easier the first pull request is :)

Have you already setup a GitHub account and forked the project to make your own copy?

Since you're on Windows I'd use the GitHub shell/desktop integration, it makes things easier to get started with and you can use the command line quickly.

[TimothyHills]

Got GitHub account and have my own copy. Spent the last few weeks keeping it updated by using Git Shell and using TortoiseGit for the helpful file system icons. So everything coming my way is now understood, ish. So I'll start to send it back the other way and see how I do, Pull request you say. :-)

[impaktor]

Of course we can fix it from the info you gave us, thanks btw, but since you seem to have a lot of ideas* for the game, and if you learn how to do a pull request, it will be easier for you to throw them at us, and we will all benefit the more.

*based on your mod at SSC, this is great stuff.

Also, if you have any questions, need help, or just want to say hi, you can checkout our IRC channel.

[FluffyFreak]

Oh cool, well what I normally do is create a branch with to work on, then on the GitHub page for my fork I find my branch from the dropdown and there's a Pull Request button right there.
Makes it nice and simple :) ... I still screw it up sometimes, but that's me being an idiot :D