6 MAR 2021:
The "foundation" of the game is nearly done. Screen resolutions now scale properly. I've also improved the Settings screen so that it only shows valid screen resolutions.
Important Game Dev lessons learned this week:
1) When programming, you can often do things in a very concise manner (less code to read), but the downside is that it might be harder to understand what those lines of code are supposed to do. Sometimes your program makes a lot more sense if you code things out in a longer, more explicit form. This is what I ultimately had to do to solve my issues with screen resolutions and objects not scaling properly. Of course you can always condense/consolidate the code again after you're confident that everything works and you understand how it works.
2) "Boring" work can really make your game a lot better. You've probably noticed that the past few weeks there haven't been any updates on enemies or actual gameplay features. But taking this time to allow for different screen resolutions makes the game look more professional and accommodates players with smaller monitors/laptop screens.
What's next?
The main game loop! As a quick test, I'll see if the player ship can properly collide with another object and "die" before prompting the player to quit or try again.
Once that works, the "foundation" will be stable enough that I can confidently start re-importing enemies and game logic.
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your weekend!