Week Seven Report

I started with adding the order's list to the info panel. I still need to add the functionality that allows the player to asc/desc/remove an order from that panel, so I'll take care of that probably next week after the right-click functionality is in place. You can't really sort/remove orders if you can't add them in the first place.

The square icons that represented a planetary system on the map was starting to look old, so I replaced them with a shrunken version of the media image that comes from the server.

Then I went to implementing the rollover panel that shows the children of a system, such as planets and ships. These too have their media image shrunken, and since the planets are animated, it gives it a nice effect. When a player rolls over a system, it also dims the names of the other surrounding systems to aid readability.

After that, if a player right-clicks one of the children objects, a pop-panel with the orders for that specific object will display. I have to match the style with rest of the ui, and the functionality still needs to be put into place. I also have to remember that $("map-canvas") does nothing, and it must be $("#map-canvas").

One thing I hate about css is you can sink 5 hours into getting something to display correctly (ie the rightclick menu) when the problem is a single attribute in the css. And then once you get the thing to finally display correctly, it will not work in terms of usability. And then it does in a different way. So maddening.

Next week, I'll be adding the functionality to the rightclick order's menu.

In terms of schedule, it looks like I'm definitely ahead of schedule. I seem to keep doing things out of order as they come up:

May 31th: Upgrade to TP04 Standard

June 7th: Upgrade to TP04 Standard
June 14th: Implement Multiple Queues
June 21st: Dynamic Object Type Support
June 28th: Dynamic Media Support

July 5th: Messages to BattleLog + Redesign
July 12th: Rollover Object Information Panel
July 19th: Display Trajectory of Objects
July 26th: Move Orders to Info Panel. Subsequent menus implement

August 2nd: Right-click Menu for Orders
August 9th : Build Commands Issuable through Right-Click
August 16th : Bug Hunting

However, I'll be implementing the desgin panel that was not originally in my proposal. So here's the new tentative schedule.

July 19th: Orders issuable from the right-click order's menu / Order position changeable from the info panel.
July 26th: Display design information in design panel.

August 2nd: Issue Design changes from design panel.
August 9th: Fix browser compatibility issues
August 16th: Fix browser compatibility issues