There we are…week number 42. You would expect that we’d found the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, but nothing of that sort happened. Instead, we continued right where we left off the week before and churned through more UI-related tasks.

Martin

I finally defeated my flu (or whatever it was) last week-end and was able to get back to work again. I finished my work on form handling that I started in week 40 and then went on to add some more elements to our UI. That’s already it though…I’ve been thinking a lot about the population simulation aspects I’ve been working on a while back and can’t wait to get back to this topic once the UI stuff is done.

Michi

One aspect of the game needed special attention during the UI reworks of the last weeks and that are the maps. As you might recall we have a fully 3D universe map and system maps for each star system. Since we are mixing 3D rendering technology with HTML and javascript there are some rough edges that need smoothing to make it all work. This week I spent almost all my time on the universe map and how we can store its internal state so players can open two universe maps showing different aspects of the game at the same time. I’ll probably dive into the system maps next week. In the coming weeks we’ll then add all the functionality like sending ships, transporting goods etc. back into the maps.