Posted April 22, 2022 by Commodore Shawn
The big new feature this week is the map screen. The game now tracks specific points of interest (just stations for now) that you've discovered, and shows them on the map globe. You can also place a manual waypoint on the globe for long distance navigation. This removes the previous system of having hardcoded waypoints that you could always see. Right now only the 5 Hudson stations are pre-populated, but when you discover the pirate or outlaw stations they will be added to the list and remembered.
Sonar contacts are also shown on the map globe as well.
I'm currently working on a new dialogue system. I used Clyde for the open world test map. It worked well there, but I just don't see it being able to scale up for a larger, more open ended game. So I'm making my own. This will pave the way for populating stations in the campaign with NPCs, and starting to add story elements (including the tutorial quest mentioned previously).