Slowly, slowly…

I’m finally trying to get back into the dev-seat, again. So without belabouring the point… onward with the post!

I made a small tweak to the HUD scanner, so now contacts are scaled based on their overall ‘presence’ in the scene. This works really well to give you an at-a-glance idea of how far away an object is relative to you – or how big it is. I also fade them when they get too far away, so now the scanner isn’t dominated so much by all the contacts and you can see by eye which one’s are most relevant. It’s a work in progress, for sure – but I’m happier with it’s current state.

I’ve also returned to the Trello Development Board’s ‘Doing’ list 🙂 and began working on navigating the galaxy again. Diving back into the code after so long has shown me how long it’s really been since I touched the game code – I’ve forgotten the intricacies of quite a lot! Returning to the Autopilot and Course systems – I’m not sure if they are subtly powerful, or overly complex… I was aiming for ‘powerful’ when I wrote them, so I have to trust my past-developer-self!

However, I can now pop up the galactic map, pick a star and the Autopilot will plot the best g-drive course from my current location, taking the drive’s performance characteristics into account and weaving a course from star to star and on to the final destination, even rendering the course in the map. Sweet.

And no, the map doesn’t look pretty enough for a screenshot – yet 😉 Besides, it’s better to see in a movie than a still. As for the Autopilot flight along the course – I have some kinks to work out with the scene transitions – but nothing serious.

Next I want to be able to alter the Autopilot’s choices based on drive system, available energy requirements, and also avoiding black-listed (dangerous) star systems / preferring white-listed (safe) ones. I also want to add/remove waypoints into the course itself. Basically, you can ‘program’ the Autopilot as you choose – or just let it get on with it. Once that basic ability is in, it can be used in the system, and planetary maps as well. It’s occurred to me that I need a Local space map too – so you could navigate through asteroid fields, industrial factories and the like – this would also benefit from course editing. Then I’ll have the core of an RTS style system… huzzah!