Progress Report (08/06/2010)

Here's a quick progress report of what I've done since we last met:

• I wrote some scripts to generate an executable JAR file for the program.  It works except for one thing:  images that come from the engine don't load properly, but other images do.  I think I know how to fix it but haven't tried yet.
• I upgraded the engine so we can use custom mouse cursors now.  I made a mouse cursor shaped like the laser gun to test it out.  Works great, and is super easy to customize.
• I created a utility in the engine that generates, maintains, and animates star fields with twinkling stars, appropriate for night skies or space scenes.  It's beautiful, but it needs some tweaking.
• I did a lot more testing and uncovered a few issues to address.  Sometimes the server fails to register the player name, and on some computers, the program freezes when it tries to load the main menu.
• To help test and troubleshoot these things, I started designing a simple log file system.  Haven't coded it yet though.