Getting there...

More work on Ship Design screen.  Almost done with weapon and special selection.  There's some special handling of Missiles that needs to be added (2 vs 5 shots), and some event handling of button clicking, then it's on to displaying and scrapping ships when 6 designs exists:

Equipment Selection

I apologize again for the lack of updates in a while.  My work has been busy with getting our next big patch ready, it has sapped my motivation for coding.  So when I get home, I had no desire to touch coding, but rather, playing Minecraft to relieve stress.

But now, things are winding down, and I'm getting back on track with development.  I've implemented most of the equipment selection functionality and UI.  Right now you can select anything except for weapons and specials.  After weapons and specials are done, I will need to implement design confirmation and UI handling when you already have 6 existing designs, then the ship design feature is done!  Here's a screenshot of the equipment selection in action (cost is the actual cost, factoring in the number of engines required to power it):

Apologies for lack of updates

This past couple of weeks hasn't been a good couple of weeks.  My whole family got sick with various illnesses (mainly cold/sinus infections), and are now finally starting to get back to normal.  Also other things that popped up that took up my time.  Hopefully next week I'll be back on this and finish up the ship design screen!

Just letting you guys know that I'm still alive :)

Helpful Indicators in Ship Design

Whew!  Verifying whether or not an equipment slot can be improved was a bit tricky, but it's now done!  If you recall, in MoO 1, when you fill out a ship, various fields start dimming out to indicate that you can't equip any bigger/better equipment.  I imitated that behavior, which was more work than I'd thought it'd be.  One thing to note, dimming doesn't mean you can't click on it, just that you can only equip smaller equipment.  Here's what it looks like now with the same Scout design as last post:

Ship Design

Unlike my government, I got some work done today.  I've finished the layout and look of the ship design screen.  Cramming all that information and UI components wasn't easy, but it's done for now!  It's open to adjustments in future, but for now I just want a functioning ship design screen.  I need to hook up mouse events and displaying lists of equipment to choose from, as well as few other things that I need to polish up, then it'll be fully functional.  Here's what the scout design looks like, note the info on space/cost usage per power in engine area, which I think is very vital information when considering various equipment to add:

Preview...

This is a preview of the screen that I'm working on.  Guess which one it is :)  Yes, everything related to technologies has been implemented for ship design purposes (power, space, cost, etc, along with miniaturization based on tech level, and you can research new technologies, as well as using the "secondary item" of a technology, like Ion vs Heavy Ion Cannons).  So only things left for technologies are space combat handling, colony improvement functionality, and "advanced tech" that just raises the tech level of that field.  Technologies affecting colonies (more factories, stargates, missile bases, etc) will wait until I do the planet list screen.

I got a question for MoO 1 pros:

Does miniaturization affects a ship's maintenance?  I mean, if I research something that makes something cheaper on a ship, does the ship update its cost which affects its maintenance?  I'm assuming no due to the Scout/Colony Ship cost bug (you design Scout 2 or Colony 2 with the same design as Scout 1 or Colony 1, but it's cheaper because the original was created with tech level set at 0).  Right now, Beyond Beyaan handles maintenance with miniaturization implemented, so maintenance gets lower over time with the same ships, but I can change that to match MoO 1 if this is not the case.  Or do you guys think I should keep the miniaturization updating of maintenance?

Preview of Morions!

The artist said Morions artwork is almost done, and gave me some preview art.  You can see the portrait and one of their ships below.  When Morions are done, that leaves only one more race artwork before I have 10 races, enough for Master of Orion 1 gameplay :)  Things are looking good for a beta this winter!