I’m working on a handful of things at the moment. In the short term I’m making a mission system. This includes the general windowing, storage, managing of mission data, as well as a bridge into Python to allow for missions scripts. The Python bridge is going to be the cool part, but as of right this moment I’m still in the UI of it all. Only snag to all this is I don’t know the first thing about writing Python scripts. I’m gonna try my hand at a beginner tutorial that will walk a new user through the different windows and ship controls.

In the longer term I’m dreaming of cleaning up the graphics a lot. The current graphics system was laid down in 2002 and wasn’t cutting edge back then. I’ve purchased the big OpenGL Shader Language book and am slowly working my way through that. I’ve also created a new, high polygon model for the Velotek Egg (currently the header image for this page) and I’m working on figuring out how to create a normal map and get it into the game.

For the even longer term I’d like to work on character management, skills, ship refitting, and at some point I have to bite the bullet and figure out things like masses and forces and what not. Oh yeah, and I need to FINALLY replace that horrible space station that looks like a grey donut with a stick through it. What I wouldn’t give for a 3D modeler.

Anyway, that’s enough of a log for now. I should get back to mission construction.