The mighty Degruser

These sprites look awesome! 

haha, I'm mostly around on SC, playing around with some code. but keep up the good work Hot Dog!

Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle, shadows were actually easy to implement.  And here they are! 
Every ship sprite requires a mask.  So I wrote code to take the mask, invert it, and OR it to the screen.  But I might need to adjust the shadows for ground vessels.  In addition, shadows appear in space, quite unrealistic

Nice. ANd ya the issue would be to have to remove the shadow from space, even if it just means it instantly dissapears when going off the ground. I wonder if that would be too slow (or cause inconsistent scrolling speed )

Well, space is really a tileset.  Most tilesets occur completely on terrain, with no "space."  So I would be writing a whole bunch of code to adjust shadows for just one tileset.  While I was more than happy to add shadows once I discovered the ease, I'm afraid I'm too stubborn to take "space" into account when dealing with shadows.

What I might do instead is remake the tileset and make space black with white stars and planets.

Ooh ok, I thought space was part of the main tilemap. I thought it would be a matter of checking for collision detection and when over certain tiles of a certain ID, it would just not display the shadow. Unless I am understanding wrong?

If it were all just one tileset, yes, that's the way it would work.  (SAD will have probably 4-8 tilesets)  In fact, I'll be using the method you described for collision detection of buildings and collidable tiles.

cool I love the shadows and find the way you implemented it in existing code quite astonishing!
In the meantime I have been tinkering ALOT about AI and here is what I've come up with so far. it doesn't give any code or pseudo code nor does it describe the "regular" Ai stuff like checking whether or not a construction site is valid and whether or not the unit can move here or there. It more or less (attempts to) describe(s) the thinking process involved in making the next decision. It just a basic draft so don't expect too much of it!

In the meantime I have been tinkering ALOT about AI and here is what I've come up with so far. it doesn't give any code or pseudo code nor does it describe the "regular" Ai stuff like checking whether or not a construction site is valid and whether or not the unit can move here or there. It more or less (attempts to) describe(s) the thinking process involved in making the next decision. It just a basic draft so don't expect too much of it!

Great minds think alike, don't they?  That's almost exactly the plan of attack I had.  However, if I can make a suggestion, don't let enthusiasm kill your priorities.  The AI is not going to be implemented for a while, and it's very important that you work on the ce.  I estimate if you take it at a relaxing pace--which I recommend--it will take maybe a year.  If you can't access a computer, you should do what I do and write code on paper