P0-P-172: Part 53: Gui’s, Damage, etc

I have added the “operations” menu to the shuttle console. The purpose of this is to display the status of all of the systems on the shuttle.

Clicking on one subsystem will display more information in a secondary screen.

The control system will be affected in the event of severe damage, the ship will be very difficult to control, and (when near a planet) it will crash to the ground regardless of the players actions.

However, I have balanced this quite well. The player can make a relatively safe emergency landing if the try hard enough, if they don’t, the shuttle will crash badly. I have had a lot of fun trying this, and I can land successfully in most cases, but when I deliberately didn’t try to control the landing, the shuttle ended up crashing at high speed and rolling several times, coming to rest on it’s roof.

I am also starting to see the beginning of the “procedural content” that is at the heart of this project. While testing a completely unrelated feature (I was making sure the shuttle could take off and land properly from the main hanger) I was hit by the enemy guided missile that I created earlier in the week. I had forgotten it was there, and hadn’t disabled it, and I had to abandon the test and try to land the shuttle, since I couldn’t make it back to the station with the damage that I had sustained.

This shows great promise for the future, if the game can surprise me even at this very early stage.