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!

Preview of research screen

A friendly reminder, for those who want to buy five sci-fi games in a bundle for $7, which includes Beyond Beyaan, there's only two days left to buy the bundle!

I'm working on the research screen where you set the percentage of research points going into each field, and to view researched technologies.  I've finished adding the UI components, soon I'll hook up the mouse event handling.  There's some bugs/formatting to fix as well (it don't have the correct research cost displayed for example)  But in the meanwhile, I welcome your feedback!

(Note, when researching an item that has the research cost met or exceeded, it will display the percent chance of discovering the item on right of the research invested display)

Font, Color, and Size Vote

First, thanks to XenoBrain for the blank main menu button artwork!  I decided to experiment with font, color, and sizing with this.  I just learned that the 2D engine that I'm using supports font shadowing!  So with this, it's a lot more readable.  However, I'm undecided on the color, which of the three do you like the best?  I'm leaning towards Gold as it's most readable.  If you have any other color combination suggestion (font and shadow colors), let me know!

The MoO 1-esque font that I bought also came bundled with three other fonts.  Basically narrow and wide versions of two different fonts.  I didn't realize this, since the font that I tried only came with one ttf file, and when I purchased it, I set the font data to that font.  But looking at the other fonts, I realized that they're more readable than the one that I was using.  I'm thinking of changing to the wide version of the font I was using (JLSSpaceGothicC), but if you guys prefer the other font, let me know (also, narrow or wide version that you like better).  Changing this will require some re-sizing of some UI controls as the font will extend past them in some places.  I'd like to change once and fix some UI sizes, then forget about fonts until I implement the UI layout code.

Edit: Thanks for your responses!  I've decided on Wide Space Gothic font, and discovered that at size 11, it's about the same length as the narrow one at 12, but is more readable (i.e. the exclamation mark don't look like a bar).  Here's what it looks like: