The goal is for iteration 11 to be available at end of this month (March). In keeping with this goal I’m trying to focus on general polish and readiness in addition to mostly minor additions… Sometimes polish gets boring so adding something in keeps me motivated, but I have to try to keep it to the less intensive elements so that I’m good to go by the deadline.

One of “less intensive elements” is the new HUD markings in ship mode, I’ve added a little HUD marker to show whether a ship is a friend or foe. Before this the only way to tell would be to target the ship or to switch to tactical mode (since tactical mode has objects colored with faction colors). This is a really cool thing because you get the sense of what’s around you, and will be especially important since the player will be able to capture/build a vast array of ships so simply looking at the hull configuration doesn’t always indicate whether it is a friendly or not.

Some minor tweaks and fixes: made the aim assist of projectile weapons more accurate, my code had an inconsistency which depending on the position of the weapon to the ship would throw aim off. The funny thing is that this inconsistency became apparent only when we changed the ship and weapon parameters, making everything faster, which also boosts projectile range as well (since distance = speed * time).

The other thing that I’m working on is tutorials. I’ve tweaked the old tutorials, for example showing how to use the afterburners and turrets. Also I’ve added a gravity drive tutorial which means I had to add a “go to object” objective.