What a busy two months it has been. We have been making good progress!
During the last two months Heru continued implementing the user interface (UI) for hovering and issuing commands to ships. The fleet relationship UI, and ship color changes (to help indicate their relationship to the player) are now complete and fully debugged. Planets now have different gathering rates for each resource, and those rates display nicely when a planet is scouted. All the resources are now working as designed, although there are some minor edge cases yet to be implemented.
All of the core starmap functions are in place. You can choose any ship in your fleet (except the battleship) to scout a system, and you see the progress of the scout ship as it travels. You have to be careful which ship you send, though… sometimes scouts are lost, never to return. Whether or not you scout a destination, you can plot a course and jump when ready. Right now the jump transition is seamless (no loading), but it will need considerable work before we are happy with it.
Heru improved the code we use for supporting different languages in the game, and fixed some bugs there. That should be the last work we need to do on that system. The combat system continues to improve, but it will need much more work. Missiles fly, lasers lase, shields shield, ships take damage, get disabled, and can be destroyed. We will be putting considerable polish into this part of the game before release.
Heru also put a lot of effort into fixing quite a number of bugs, and ironing out some systems that weren’t working as designed (or weren’t fully implemented). This is some of the most challenging programming, as you have to pick up and work with systems that weren’t created by you. It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate how well he’s been able to come up to speed with the codebase!
Brian worked on refining the UI, adding text to the game, and creating/fixing/adjusting/adding existing 3D assets. But most of his time has been spent testing and reporting bugs or missing functionality, and working with Heru on a daily basis to clarify and give direction.
Thank you everyone for your patience and words of support. It was really terrific and energizing to read all the supportive comments and emails from you!
Brian Jamison
Portland, Oregon