Small Features

After big pushes in development are completed (such as the AI dll prep that had been consuming me) I like to settle down and work on small features before starting on something big again.

This time I decided to touch up some simple UI stuff, as well as add a small feature to make motion more apparent.

First came the UI. I originally had a huge ugly progress bar that took up the center of the screen for scene loads. To replace this I made a stackable, unobtrusive progress bar system which allows progress bars to stack up on top of each other at the bottom of the screen. They're pretty in their simplicity and tiny-ness. Because they sit at the bottom they can be used to show loading in threaded subroutines without interrupting play. The fact that they stack means more than one process can display its progress at the same time.

I also touched up the graphics for the flight HUD, making the attitude indicator and warning lights much sleeker.

In order to make the player's ship's motion more apparent, I introduced a system which renders what is supposed to be specks of dust streaking past. This shows your overall direction of motion in a nifty way.

Above is a screenshot of the new flight HUD graphics. You can also see some of the streaks in the picture. They are very faint because I wanted to show the direction of travel without making it blatant.