New Stars Status

Started in on the bugs from last update...

• Fixed names with spaces (caused planet names in the test bed to shift... which required an update to the orders.tcl)
• Added display of max infrastructure (which is stored in the turn file). This caused me to realize that turn 0 does not have a max infra calculation. I also realized we did not factor in OBRM and JOAT...
• Added display of defenses (including max)
• I moved the "bottom right" frame (which shows planets, fleets, minefields, etc.) over to the left. This makes more room for the starmap. I also changed the display to 800x600, and shrunk the hab bars to make things fit better, and fixed the hab pluses to use a brighter color.
• Fixed message display when you have no messages.
  

New Stars Status

Bug report:

• Planet names file stopped at first space (no multi-word planet names)
• No max calc for planetary mines, factories, and defenses
  
• No mining rate calc
• Missing pop-ups on population, resources, scanner, defenses
• Missing gui cargo transfer (work-around: use waypoint 0 load/unload)
• Missing clear planetary queue button (work-around: manually clear, who ever uses this button?)
• Missing route button (not a big usage, it adds a move order on newly constructed ships, basically automation)
• Missing starbase display panel
• Missing mineral display in bottom right
• Missing message display
• Need menu commands for Research (dialog is done, use F5), Generate (done, F9), Planet/Fleet view (not done, F3), battle plans (not done, F6), Player relations (not done, F7)
• Battle engine improvements
• Report menu
• Scanner pane filters/options
• Starbase and fleet icons in bottom right
• Pop-ups in bottom right
• Should probably disable add to queue from empty/unowned planets... (server will reject the commands... I hope...)
  

New Stars Status

A few more minor improvements, but they're the sorts of things that are important for playability:

• Implemented slot compatibility checks (no engines in weapon slots!)
  
• Implemented slot moving (used to have to discard and re-add)
• Implemented cost and design feature labels in ship designer
• Fixed a crash when the production window is not open, and a new design is created (tried to update the production list with the new design...)
• Improved zoom-in/zoom-out behavior (less shifting of the center point)
  

Here we can see the path highlighting I added last time. It also shows a ship with no engine being rejected. I also made the ship designer window a default size, which should reduce window resizing jitter. You can also see the cost/feature labels below the ship layout.

Stuff I've read lately

"The Faded Sun: Shon'Jir" (C.J. Cherryh) - This is the second book in the Faded Sun universe. I hadn't realized there was a trilogy here. In the first book, "the People" (mri) were reduced from millions to two (and brother and sister at that). The second book focuses on a human sent with the last two mri on a journey to their homeworld. Not the best Cherryh, but pretty good.

New Stars Status

Ok, sorry, been a long while... things are pretty close now, and it is sometimes hard to be motivated to finish :)



I've fixed the clearing of private information from enemy scans. This was a lot more intrusive than I had imagined.

We have to clear the fleet and design names from enemy scans. So what do we put there? I'm leaving it blank (so players can't name their designs "War Pig Scout" and confuse people...). But then, I had to update the client to fill in "War Pig Scout" when it sees a scout with a blank name. Except, where does "War Pig" come from? Seems, we never added a place to store the names of known enemies (players start without knowing the names and ids of other player races).

So, then I had to update the PlayerData structure, and the toXML and parseXML, and the regression files...


In other news, I added a highlight to the path of the currently selected ship (not shown).

I also fixed the next turn generation in the client. Note, it just goes ahead and generates a multi-player turn when any one player hits generate...

Stuff I've read lately

"Old Man's War" (John Scalzi) - This is the first book in the series including "Ghost Brigades". I didn't mind reading them out of order, there is not much overlap. Scalzi has an interesting universe here, it will be interesting to see where he takes it.