Figured it’s time for a new screenshot. Sure, it’s not that exciting from an aesthetic point of view, but it shows the beginnings of the market screen. I’m spending quite a bit of time on the listbox and the scrollbar. If there’s one thing that makes most games of this sort annoying to play, it’s the really difficult to navigate UI. Each list item can be configured with text and various graphics at this point, and can be of whatever size is desired.

One more screenshot today, this time with a probably temporary sensor screen that shows you where the planets are (at least – direction and distance).

Here’s a new screenshot that shows some changes from yesterday which include ship movement and an additional background overlay.

So I’m pretty excited. After this projects fits and starts over the last couple years, I finally have a screenshot with a spaceship and a planet in it. Now, you might say “so you’re drawing a couple sprites, big deal”. But it’s more than that. There’s a universe, and the planet in the shot is only one in the star system among many star systems in the universe, and the ship AND the player are actually there in that star system. The facility to jump from system to system exists so, if there were input controls, and UI to support selecting your next system, you could move about the universe. Those things are next. First, the input controls so you can move about the local star system, then some quicky UI to jump from system to system.