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[Fayrik]

Whoa, this is fantastic. Definitely glad I started watching this thread.
Had a few problems with it. Took me a little while before I got heads or tails of what I was meant to be doing, by which time I was vastly outnumbered. Heh.
But I organised ten or so ships to go and attack the hordes of the other side. Two things happened at this point. Five of the ships (presumably died and) got stuck in place, with the "selected" cursors over them, I couldn't select or deselect them, nor would they move. Basically, I think their sprites didn't get deleted when they should have done.
And the other little problem was, when the ships got stuck, I couldn't scroll around the map anymore. Which meant no more reinforcements.

It's already quite fun to play. I can only assume the final product is going to be even better.

[Draco18s]

It was a quick hack to have "stuff to shoot at."  It wasn't meant to be winnable (the enemy has 40 units in its queue, compared to the 10 or 12 you can get quickly), I just wanted to get targetting and damage dealing "in."

Selection:
Haven't seen sprites crash like that (unselectable, but visible).  I have noticed that they'll stay referenced in the selection array though.  Will have to work on that.

Map scrolling:
Hmm.  Interesting.  The two should be independent of each other, unless the game was throwing runtime errors that you didn't get a notification for.

[Fayrik]

Ah, seems I was a bit hasty before.
It looks like the ships hadn't died, but had actually been frozen in place when they entered combat.
I tried again, and this time my first six froze in place and as the rest moved around they then froze in place as they entered combat. After the first one died (Surprising, since the shots seem to freeze in place when the ships do), they unfroze for a few moments, becoming deselected and moving away from the combat, where they promptly re-froze. Perhaps it's just something to do with your loop problems you where having in that release?

[Draco18s]

Na, the infinite loops freeze the whole program.  I did have one unit "lock up" on me, but I can't figure out why.  As soon as I re-selected it, it responded again.

There isn't any kind of "chase combat target" code in, so what should happen is that they move to where you tell them to go and take pot shots at their target from there.

In other news: I have two resource collectors up and running (can't buy them yet, I just force-spawned a second one).  Only had one minor error (both of them told the asteroid to poof itself, and the second time it tried the rock threw a null reference error...its sprite was no longer on the stage and thus couldn't be removed!).  I even accounted for the difference in resource size: metal and minerals are just kinda gobbled up by whoever gets them first (harvested in 10ths), but crystals are "reserved" in a sense (harvested in 1/200ths) so if two collectors hit the same rock at the same time, only one of them will harvest the 1 crystal.

Resource notes:
1) I put too many "rare minerals" into my rocks than you can use.  5000 metal gets eaten up fast...as fast as 100 minerals (the harvest ratio is about 5:2).

2) Crystals are freaking rare.  I know I only want about 1-4 per rock, but because they're so rare, it takes a while to build up the military.  Going to need some primer rocks near the player motherships that are almost pure crystal.

3) Capacity of the resource collectors needs to go up by at least 50%.  Right now they can carry 250 iron, 250 minerals, or 12.5 crystals (or any combination thereof).

[Armok]

scrolling is very annoying and slow.

[Draco18s]

scrolling is very annoying and slow.

And right now, purely functional, rather than elegant.  Deal with it.  As soon as I get around to building the minimap it won't be so bad.

[Armok]

if that is so then why did you make it a fancy smooth near-the-borders thing?

[Draco18s]

if that is so then why did you make it a fancy smooth near-the-borders thing?

Because I don't like it twitching when I move from the view area to the GUI to use the buttons and back.

[Draco18s]

And we have wreckage!

I hope its distinguishable enough from units.  But they're not selectable or anything (they're functionally asteroids).

Harvesters didn't "wreck" properly when I tested them out (they were headed towards the wreckage to collect the resources, died, and somehow the dead-sprite has all the selection stuff, despite using the same function for the military units).

Also solved.  They didn't have a resource cost, so no wreck was being created!  But their display object was still sticking around.

Wrecks are also not disappearing when harvested.  Hmm.  Likely a result of the hack I had to use to get them to show up in the first place (something was preventing them from being visible). Fixed.  Was inadvertently creating a new Bitmap (no parent) that I didn't need.

[SalmonGod]

Posting to watch

[Fayrik]

Whoa, this is quite an improvement!
Thought my screen had locked in place again a few times, but it's kept un-locking for me, so it's all good.

I did notice a slight problem that if you select the harvies then tell them to do something, you can't then tell them to return to work. It's avoidable, but if you do it, it means you're kinda stuck without additional resources.

Also, it would be cool if you could use the keyboard a bit more. (Perhaps using the arrow keys to scroll?)
And, it would be just epic if you could incorporate right-clicking to deselect your current selections.

[Draco18s]

I did notice a slight problem that if you select the harvies then tell them to do something, you can't then tell them to return to work. It's avoidable, but if you do it, it means you're kinda stuck without additional resources.

You can.  Put them on Free Roaming Defense (FRD).  Select the harvesters, click FRD, click the view screen.

Also, it would be cool if you could use the keyboard a bit more. (Perhaps using the arrow keys to scroll?)
And, it would be just epic if you could incorporate right-clicking to deselect your current selections.

Arrow keys to scroll has been a recent thought.  I'll probably do it this week, along with the minimap.

Existing keyboard controls:
M = set Move (generally not needed, same as clicking the "move button")
END = Stop
Ctrl or F = set FRD (same as clicking the "FRD" button)
Delete = Scrap (currently does nothing)
B = Open Build Menu
C = Open Construction Menu
D or R = Open Design Menu
Space = Clear selection

[Fayrik]

Oh, that's what FRD does.
Those shortcuts are exactly what I was thinking of.  You might have to give us some documentation along with these updates!

Oh, and you're going to need a "U PHAIL" screen soon, too. I managed to loose both my harvesters when they tried to gather up ship remains. Needless to say I wasn't in a very good position when I sent my last remaining ships to defend them.

Edit: (Used all the maps resources. Ran out of crystals with 11k Metal and 409 Minerals. I dunno what I'm supposed to do with these stacks and stacks of materials now)

[Draco18s]

Edit: (Used all the maps resources. Ran out of crystals with 11k Metal and 409 Minerals. I dunno what I'm supposed to do with these stacks and stacks of materials now)

Yeah, the crystal count isn't that high yet.  I'll be upping it in the future, don't worry!

Going to have to, once the AI has harvesters and starts issuing commands.

[Korbac]

Ooh, here's another thought! Harvesters can have stats too! Speed, Resource Capacity, Gathering Rate, Armour, and HP.