Pioneer
Pioneer is a free and open source space trading and combat simulator video game inspired by the commercial proprietary Frontier: Elite 2. It is available for Linux, and Microsoft Windows.
Pioneer
- Date
- 2006
- Genre
- space flight simulation game · space trading and combat game
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Documentary summary
Pioneer is a free and open source space trading and combat simulator video game inspired by the commercial proprietary Frontier: Elite 2. It is available for Linux, and Microsoft Windows.
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wikidata · Q17514513
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Title — Pioneer • Latest Release Version — release 20260907 • Repo — https: github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer • Genre — Single player, space trading and combat simulator • Platform — Linux, Microsoft Windows • License — GPL (and more permissive licenses) / CC BY-SA 3.0 • Website — https: pioneerspacesim.net • Illustration — Screenshot • Illustration — Landing on Miranda Colony
Setting
Setting
Pioneer is set at the start of the 33rd century. The player may choose from one of three starting locations: Mars, New Hope or a space station around Barnard's Star.
Gameplay
Gameplay
The game has no set objective, and the player is free to explore the galaxy and accrue money by performing tasks like trading, piracy or combat missions, allowing them to achieve a higher rank, buy better ships and equipment and hire more crew. It has a realistic flight and orbital model based on Newtonian physics and a rudimentary atmospheric model with drag and heat build-up.
Development
Development
Development was started in 2008 by Tom Morton, also known for his work on GLFrontier, as a remake and homage to Frontier: Elite 2. The game is written in C++ and uses OpenGL for graphical rendering. It uses Lua for scripting support. The development migrated in 2011 to a SourceForge.net repository, and some years later to GitHub. The project had at times up to 50 developers.
Reception and impact
Pioneer was selected in March 2013 as "HotPick" by Linux Format. Pioneer was used in a physical spaceship flight simulator project in 2013. In 2014 Pioneer was described by PCGamer as "incredibly slick" and named among the "ten top fan remade classics you can play for free right now". In 2015 a Der Standard article noted the enormous work the fans have achieved with Pioneer as Elite remake and continuation. Pioneer became a quite popular open source freeware title; between 2011 and May 2017, the game was downloaded via SourceForge.net over 260,000 times.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Pioneer 2026-09-07. github.com. 2026-09-07.
- 2.licenses
- 3.licensing.
- 4.authors.txt on github.com "Pioneer's art, music and other assets are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License." (May 2017)
- 5.Craig Pearson. Back To Front(ier): Pioneer. Rock, Paper, Shotgun. 2011-12-06.
- 6.github.com. Game Bytes #2. 28 August 2012.
- 7.Pioneer Official Site.
- 8.Initial commit to the Git repository. GitHub. June 24, 2008.
- 9.Pioneer github page. GitHub. 5 January 2022.
- 10.Pioneer github graphs. GitHub.
- 11.Linux Format 168 March 2013 page 77
- 12.Amazing dad builds son a spaceship simulator by Michelle Starr on cnet.com (April 11, 2013)
- 13.Craig Pearson. Ten top fan-remade classics you can play for free right now. PC Gamer. 2014-01-01.
- 14.Rainer Sigl. Lieblingsspiele 2.0: Die bewundernswerte Kunst der Fan-Remakes. Der Standard. February 1, 2015.
- 15.Download Statistics: All Files6 on sourceforge.net (October 2019)
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 18 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Collectables
20,755 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- PinocchioWork
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- Pioneer LaserActiveTerminology
- Pioneer PlagueWork
- pipassoTerminology
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