Development Diary

## Contact

* Follow us on Twitter!
* outdated development blog, we stick to Twitter for updates these days
* email us at surrealcoder@gmail.com

## August 2016

A lot of delays in development updates while refactoring major parts of the game. In current build:

* Player Movement! this is HUGE. Originally there were no plans for animated player movement and instead was going to be all text/terminal based. Check out our twitter posts for videos of walking around a mocked up space station!
* Public transportation - added this back in. As you walk around the space station, you can now interact with the ticket terminal to travel to another stellar system.
* Goods and Stock Markets - working to add these features back in. The major rewrite changed the way in which panels are loaded and require some tweaking.

## March 2015

* finishing up some website coordination with this wiki
* reload resources, added new classification: rare-paranormal
* code refactor for stock market terminal
* navigation of the QUOTRON terminal established in the main class file
* ASCII art finalized for QUOTRON start screen
* server methods setup for basic stock market actions
* selection of broker setup, but only for testing, lacks acceptance and broker info screen
* cron design for market downtime

## Jan/Feb 2015

* created the data model for the stock market
* populated the stock market companies
* created the initial tickers for 5 years of market activity
* finished the panel for trading stocks
* finished the framework for handling keyboard shortcuts in the stock interface

designed the following concepts:

* general goods trade
* gambling
* player run banks
* player run brokerage houses
* in-game email
* currency markets
* black market trade

## Dec 2014

* completed raw material data model and application to populate initial test set

## October-November 2014

* built controls to let players travel via public transportation
* included controls that allow players to use a galaxy atlas to see the systems in the galaxy
* completed the game clock code. The game officially started on 1/1/1967. I hope the full release happens, in game time, on July 16, 1969.

## September 2014

* began populating the databases with raw materials

## August 2014

* set the attributes for raw materials
* set the classifications for raw materials
* created the application for generating the randomized materials
* applied the new game panel system to the main controls
* added new security to the game server API
* received permission to use the trademarks for "digital electronics corporation" in the game.

## July 2014

* redesigned the layout of the game screen
* removed the last of the "Star Trek" style screens
* set a color palette for all ROM panels
* designed all ROM panels to be fictional PDP panels largely based on KL-10 and PDP 8-12.

## June 2014

* took a break
* bought new computer
* created the task list for planet population
* set direction of the starting game
* began naming the initial set of planets

## May 2014

* connecting new game panels to game engine
* connecting variables for use in player terminal
* rewriting the travel engine for the new engine sequence written in April

## April 2014

* created 4 primary panels for controlling the power grid, stellar engines and the mini-bridge control panel.
* dropped all LCARS (Star Trek) inspired artwork from previous panels
* changed stellar engine start sequence
* made the "normal" ship speed faster
* increased size of solar system from 500k units to 4mil units
* set average time to cross a solar system to 40 minutes

## March 2014

* completed icons for website and in-game branding for Monk James
* finalized the storyline presented in pieces on the blog
* created a bare bone website

## February 2014

* finalize the basic storyline, hippies take over the earth
* decided to use Monk James in the storyline
* proved many concepts in code for space travel
* established critical path for alpha build