Making a Series of Menus Look Fun (also: Planet Classes)

Let's face it. Number crunching, data entry, and stat reviews aren't all that entertaining. It doesn't matter if the game they're all for is freaking awesome, it gets boring. I've been thinking about a few ways of making the management of an empire more entertaining even during peacetime.

If I can integrate messages and "forums" into the GUI, it gives the user more incentive to use the program. Also, putting in a chat system, while questionably useful for a small number of users, could occasionally make some entertainment. I intend to play background music, probably without including any files of my own. In other words, the user can integrate his/her own music library.

These features are all long-term planning, probably tough to implement, but they'd be brilliant additions to the game. Less long-term is making the game appear more entertaining.

My current hope is to develop (or find) a series of potential planet textures, as well as moon textures, and show animations of these in the background. When you're looking over your planets, you'll see an approximation of your planet and its moons rotating around. I don't think this will be too hard to implement and at the very least I'll have a static image of the planet in view. I have a friend looking into making them for me, but he doesn't promise anything. I pretended to do some work on it, but I suck with computer graphics. Hopefully I'll find, or have created, a decent set.

That said, if you can't already guess, I got distracted, so the GUI is not in any sort of displayable state.

I can, however, introduce my planet classification system. Avoiding copying a system from Star Trek or similar, I decided to derive my own. So, I give you my system:

1. M[oon] or P[lanet]
2. H[ospitable], I[nhospitable], C[olonizable], E[ngineer]
3. R[ocky] or G[aseous]
4. D[esert], A[rctic], T[emperate], B[arren], F[orest], J[ungle], W[ater], V[olcanic]
5. Size (3 digit number, in 1000s of Kilometers (Megameters?))

In other words, a newly discovered planet will probably have a name something like: PHRT-013 and it may have a moon named MCRB-004. Follow the letters into the list above and you'll realize it's a planet vaguely similar to Earth with a moon much the same. Only thing that really needs explanation is the difference between I, C, and E. I means there's no way to settle it at all. C Means you can settle it via domes or other artificial structures. E means domes will work, but you could get more effect out of it if you terraform (sometimes called Space Engineering).

It's not ridiculously inventive or complex but I think it gets the job done. And that's all for now, tomorrow we'll see some sort of actual code progress. I cross my heart.