@trevmeister: yes I was thinking of the same thing, too

@DJ: You start out as "Unknown" and your reputation either rises or falls depending on your actions. If you like one specific reputation, you can make sure you stay there by balancing out the good and bad stuff you do. However, some actions produce greater change than others: for example, shooting at a trader would lower your reputation somewhat while killing the trader might lower your reputation class by one or two places.

In other news, I got the main encounter GUI menu in a picture on the calc, so I might get to some actual coding tomorrow. However, I don't think I'll have a lot of time, as my family is going to go to Budapest early in the morning and probably won't come back until mid-late afternoon. Of course, there are always those spare 15 minutes on tram rides...

Hehe, well, Csepel Island isn't exactly going to be one of the places my family will visit. Plus, I am in Solymar, not Budapest, though only 1km away from the city border.

I do not know what Star Ocean 2 is, but I do know that the reputation is a variable that will change according your to your previous actions and will influence your future actions.

My two brothers and I went to visit one of my mother's friend's brother's family today, and I had a nice long conversation with my mother's friend's brother about computer programming. Good thing I brought my calculator with me, as I was not only able to finish the encounter's graphical representation engine of the enemy there, but I also found out my mother's friend's brother used to program computers in z80 assembly and still knows a lot about programming in the language. %)

Anyways, here is some eyecandy on what I programmed today:

From left to right: a Trader Corvette, a Pirate Fighter (Don't worry about the weird lines towards the middle of the screen, it's something I need to fix in a program that I haven't finished yet), and a Police Scout.

Besides what you saw above, I further optimized my programs, as well as added a saved game backup feature as a byproduct of my optimization (I was mainly concerned with the workings of the engine itself this time, not with the actual code).

The space between the two icon indicators will be the battle log (how many lasers hit the target, if the enemy is escaping, etc.). The tiny bar above the icons will be the HP bar, in which a pixel is removed for every 4% HP lost. The blank space at the very bottom of the screen is reserved for a menu pretty similar to the one in the planet info, only this time the little bars will be displayed as separate sprites (in the planet info, the entire bar menu  was one sprite). It is kind of hard to explain, but you'll understand soon enough.

BTW, I had another optimization spree and optimized a ton of space, though lowercase letters are completely missing from all my programs as a result of my lust to optimize. To make this post more useful, here is some info on the stats and items that will be used in Space Trader:

In Space Trader, there are four main stats: Piloting, Gunnery, Navigation, and Engineering. Piloting is responsible for the chances of getting an encounter when it is possible and how hard it is for your enemy to flee the battle. Gunnery is responsible for how easy it is for your lasers to hit your opponent and for how much damage each laser does. Navigation determines how fast traveling is between systems (therefore how many chances there are for encounters) and how easy it is for you to flee a battle. Engineering affects how much damage your enemy does to you and the cost of repairing your ship.
Certain items you buy for your ship will increase your stats. For example, an Auto-Piloting Device will increase your Navigation, while a Gamma Sensor will increase both your Gunnery and Piloting. However, some items will also decrease other skills, like a DuraSteel Frame: though it increases Engineering by quite a bit, it also makes the ship less maneuverable, thereby decreasing Piloting. Not all items increase stats: a targeting system will only affect laser accuracy (not damage), while a moldable exoskeleton will only affect repair costs. Though many items only affect a part or none of one of the skills, some will provide very special benefits instead: for example, the repair drone provides in-battle regeneration while the tractor beam ensures nobody will run away from the Master of Disaster.
I am also in consideration on adding a complicated laser cooldown counter for each laser. If I do, then the following effects will be added for each stat: Piloting will affect how easy it is to destroy an enemy's laser, Gunnery will affect how fast your lasers reload, Navigation will affect how hard it is to destroy one of your lasers, and Engineering will affect how much lasers cost.

I also redid the reputations: Lawful has slipped down between popular and praised, while Harbinger has been replaced with Public Enemy N1 (I need a number symbol for the calculator).

Cool graphics.  

Yea for optimization sprees.  

After some long reconsideration, I have decided to combine Piloting with Navigation and replace Navigation with a new skill, "Merchant". The new skill will determine how much it costs to buy stuff and for how much money you can sell stuff for, as well as how much money is needed to bribe a police officer. At maximum Merchant, you will be able to buy stuff for the exact same amount as you sell them. The existing skills will be revamped as well. They now affect the following:

• Piloting: Affects the chances for you to escape, the chances for your opponent to escape, and the chances for your opponent to miss with his weapons.
• Gunnery: Affects the chances for you to hit with your weapons, the attack speed of your weapons, and the chances for your weapons to bypass enemy shielding.
• Merchant: Affects the prices of goods on planets, the amount of credits needed to bribe a police officer, and the chances of your opponent surrendering instead of fleeing.
• Engineering: Affects how much damage your opponent does, how much damage you do, and the chances for your opponent to bypass your shielding.

Items have been reconsidered as well. I have decided to drastically reduce the amount of items available. However, each item will do something special. Each ship class will have a certain amount of item slots: Battlecruisers have 5, Corvettes have 4, Frigates have 3, Fighters have 2, and Scouts have 1. Items also take up cargo space based on how many item spaces they take up (5 cargo per item space). Here is the item list, somewhat finalized:

• Targeting System: Boosts Gunnery. Also enables you to destroy enemies' lasers by chance.
• Navigation System: Boosts Piloting. Also enables you to travel to
  some systems you weren't able to before.
• Repair Drones: Boosts Engineering. Also gives hull regeneration in fights.
• Persuasion Implant: Boosts Merchant. Also enables some enemies to surrender to you (thereby giving you all of the goods they are carrying) instead of fleeing.
• Escape Pod: If you lose a battle, you will end up on a random planet with a scout rather than having to restart the game (or having to restart your career from the last time you quit via the [ON] trick, though I only added that feature in case your calc crashed while you were playing . :rainbowdevil: ).
• Cloaking Device: Severely reduces chances to get an encounter. If you get one, then there still is a chance that you will be go undetected. The chance is based off of your engineering versus your opponent's engineering (your warp signature hiding skill vs your opponent's warp signature detecting skill). Even if you are detected, you are still harder to hit and it is easier for your to flee the battle. This is the most costly device, and it takes up two item spaces instead of one.

I have also added shield generators as a replacement for the number of items removed and to be more sincere to the original Space Trader on the Palm OS. You can only have one shield generator at a time.

• Shield Generator: Gives your ship shielding in battle. Shields always regenerate during battles and completely regenerate at the start of a new battle, but they are expensive and the shields are only equal to 1/4 of your maximum hull strength.
• Reflective Shield Generator: Gives your ship reflective shielding in battle. Reflective Shielding is the exact same as Normal Shielding, only that 50% of laser damage dealt to the shield is also dealt back onto the enemy.
• Military Shield Generator: Gives your ship military shielding in battle. Military Shielding is the exact same as Normal Shielding, only that it is equal to 1/2 of your maximum hull strength rather than 1/4.

Finally, I have added special lasers. Each laser has its ups and downs, and is graded on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 is the worst, 5 is the best) in the following categories: Damage (D), Weapon Speed (WS), and Accuracy (A)

• Beam Laser: The default laser. 2, WS: 2, A: 2
• Military Laser: This laser is an upgrade to the Beam Laser. 3, WS: 3, A: 3
• Pulse Laser: This laser deals damage in fast, low-powered pulses. 1, WS: 4, A: 5
• Uzi Laser: This laser deals damage in powerful and fast random bursts. 4, WS: 5, A: 1
• Warp Laser: This laser deals damage by charging up and then blasting an extremely powerful burst of plasma. D:5, WS: 1, A: 4
• Homing Torpedo: This missile weapon homes in on its target and is the only weapon that will always bypass shielding. However, being a projectile weapon, it cannot amass the power of a laser and every missile needs to be readied before launch. 1, WS: 2, A: 5

Systems have been reconsidered as well, with an added system type. Agricultural systems will have cheaper food, Industrial systems will have a surplus of ore, Hi-Tech systems will usually offer robots at a fair price, and Pharmatical planets will usually have a few gangsters selling stolen drugs at a negotiable price.



If you guys want to try the original Space Trader on the Palm OS, you can get it http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/p.spronck/picoverse/spacetrader/STFrames.html. I think they also just released a version for the Pocket PC, as well as for Windows.
Because Space Trader for the Palm OS was written in C and you can get the source for free at the same site as the game, someone with basic TIGCC knowledge might be able to replicate it exactly for 68k calcs *wink**wink*...

very neat!

I'll be going on a 2-3 day trip in a town with no internet access (Sopron) and I will be bringing my calc with me, so I might have the pirate battle engine done by the time I return. Police might be a little hard, and trader will be the hardest (because you will have the feature to trade stuff with them, which might be useful if you can gain more profit from selling your stuff to him rather than selling it on the system).

Also, if tr1p adds the sound feature to xLib while the game is in progress, I will release two versions of the game: a normal one and a version with sound (maybe even music if I can fit it in. %) )