Here is the new video I promised last week.
The main improvement is a functional 3D HUD. (At least the bottom part is working. The stuff on the right sight is still just some concept stuff.) It turned out to be quite tricky give the player clear feedback on what is happening to his ship due to the fact that the orientation of the ship is crucial for the efficiency of the ship. I decided to use a small rotating wireframe model of the controlled ship with highlighted positions of the critical modules. In this case the shield modules. Everytime something happens to a shield generator on the ship the corresponding sphere on the wireframe model lights up. The icons on the left side give more detailed feedback. In this case a small progress bar indicating the power level of the corresponding shield generator. To make association of the icon with the shield generator easier a small status light lights up everytime the generator changes its state. I will add optional lines that connect the icon with the wireframe model (as shown in the screenshot from last week) but my current implementation of that feature gets completely messed up when the resolution changes. So I put that one on ice for a while because trying to figure out what was wrong gave me headaches:)
The horizontal bars at the bottom indicate the available power in the power generator. It goes down when the shield generators request power and then refills itself over time.
The small vertical bar next to the wireframe model indicates the hull integrity of the ship. When the hull integrity falls below a certain value modules will take damage. An interface for showing module damage is not implemented but I will probably color parts of the wireframe red when that section is damaged.
When using the HUD I realized that the icons and the small lights could be a bit larger. I will change that at some point but for now I will focus on a working prototype.
There are also a lot of other changes: I added sound effects and improved the atmosphere material. It is still not perfect but I somehow liked the surreal look of the planets.
I also started working on a demo mission that I will use for showing and testing gameplay. It is still a long way but I think I can do it in two to three weeks.
As always feedback would be much appreciated.