Weekly development report 2024/10/26

Again, the stable version of the game back to its normal, quiet state. But because there is one thing waiting patiently to be released, in the next 24 hours since this post the new version will be available for download.

In the development version, I started another big task. ;) Changing the programming language used to write the game from Ada to Nim also caused that usage of Tcl isn't required anymore. Nim can be used as a script language too, plus its syntax, similar to Python, is perhaps more familiar for others. And Tcl make the release process a bit complicated, as the game depends on some non-standard packages. Thus, I started work to change library used for the game graphic, from Tk to SDL. This process perhaps again will take "some" time, but at the end there should be some benefits from it. Not only the mentioned above. This time the whole transformation process will look differently. The new code will arrive when the work will be done, so there should be fewer bugs between start and finish the work. But you should expect a nice amount of new issues at the end of the tasks. :) And as always, there was done some work with improvements to the game's UI:

• As mentioned above, the main focus in this week was preparing the code for the new big task. That means some changes in the project's organization. For now all of them perhaps not visible for players.
• Finished work on updating the code related to the game's UI. Now all Tcl code was converted to Nim.
• The trade screen got similar update like the list of known bases screen. The options related to the list of things for trade are now hidden by default, they can be shown with the "More Options" button.
• I've started work on showing the game's logo as an image instead of a text. The new image was added to the game, and now I just need to  replace it in the main menu.
• Another started task: update to the look of the bases' shipyard UI. Here changes will be similar to the trade screen.
• Plus the code got some cleanups as always.