Chat

Well, it isn't as elegant as I would have liked, but I am now able to pass messages between clients as a chat system. Currently the messages appear on the console, rather than on-screen, but that isn't a big deal. Easily taken care of! Also, I only have implemented zone-wide chat. No whispers or kingdom chat at this time.

The downside? I need an actual node path to get the chat manager to instantiate. I may be able to stash() it to keep it from showing up, but it still isn't what I was hoping would work.

I will have to ask a couple questions in the panda forums tomorrow, but I am happy with where it is at for the night.

Oh, btw: Did you notice I mentioned kingdom chat up there? That is going to be the grouping that corresponds to guilds or corps or whatever in other games. You will be able to establish private jump-nodes to other star systems. These will be 2 linked nodes, that cannot go anywhere else. The up side is that if you want to create a private area in the game, you can lock out other jump nodes, and just keep your own grouping of star systems that you and your friends share. Similar to bubbles in TradeWars, which is exactly the type of concept I was looking for here.

I also updated the flight controls so that the ship rotates slightly as you steer, so it doesn't look so fixed in space. As you pitch and yaw, the ship changes the pitch and heading to make the motion more realistic. Someday I will learn how the particle system works and then add side thrusters as well. The only thing I don't like about it right now is that if you release the steering button, it 'jerks' back to center, which can be a bit disorienting. I need to animate the transition back to center, hopefully with a simple lerp() function.

All in all, a good night.