Devlog 7:

Bugfixes & Optimization

• Runaway Ground Stations: Fixed a coordinate glitch where surface bases hyper-teleported on rocket ignition. By anchoring rendering logic to the planet’s camera-matrix screen origin (ox/oy), the stations are now permanently welded to the crust asset and scale fluidly with mouse zoom.
• Slipping Mesh Endpoints: Cleaned up a copy-paste index mix-up inside the connection mesh where laser endpoints slid into deep space during camera pans or mouse wheel adjustments. Forcing rendering loops to draw from camera-transformed pixel positions (s1x/y, s2x/y) stabilized the mesh layout.
• Nested Loop Stack: Discovered a bug where the satellite sprite renderer sat inside the nested indexing loop block, painting sprites exponentially. Separating the graphics pass from index loops restored my 60 FPS baseline.
• Inter-Satellite Zoom Gate: Fixed an indentation parsing error where the inter-satellite mesh loop escaped map-view guard gates. Tab-aligning the loop array inside the master if self.zoom < 0.15: logic ensures all laser vectors, downlinks, and orbital tracks disappear simultaneously when zooming in to pilot my ship.

Core Updates ACTIVE

• Planetary Line-of-Sight Occlusion: Communication laser arrays can no longer beam straight through the solid core of the world. I debugged a critical direction vector sign typo on my relative position offsets (dx, dy) and implemented a Ray-to-Circle Vector Intersection pass. The exact frame an orbiting node drops behind the curve of my true 2,000.0 radius crust line, the laser cuts off instantly into the planet’s radio shadow.
• Randomised 5-Station Hubs: Initialised a tracker (sbasenum = 5) inside my constructor to generate 5 distinctive surface radar complexes (Stations A-E) deploying around the globe via a random.randint(62, 76) degree variance setup. As satellites fly overhead, electric-blue and magenta lasers shoot up out of the red beacons, tracking them across horizons in real-time.
• State-Managed Collisions & HUD Report: Slamming into the planet or another satellite now trips a global self.explosion_active state. The simulation freezes and an expanding thermal fireball shockwave animates at the coordinates of the wreck. After 1.0 second, a dark semi-transparent HUD panel opens to display custom diagnostics. Hitting things prints Outcome: Crash! alongside impact velocity. A mouse click releases the state and returns you to the VAB.
• Apoapsis and Periapsis Nodes: Mapped out my ellipse constants using analytical orbital mechanics geometry. Two clean circular indicator flags labeled AP and PE now render directly onto my green path line. They scale fluidly with camera views, showing maximum and minimum orbital height readouts live.
• Global Telemetry & UI Notification Banners: Bound my ellipse heights into class instance variables (self.ap_alt, self.pe_alt) so the interface dashboard can display responsive telemetry. I also added a defensive coding rule where hitting Spacebar to deploy a satellite only works if self.pe_alt > 100. If trapped in a sub-orbital crash path, a red message flashes: Can't Deploy Satellite. Try increasing your periapsis, counting down for 3.0 seconds via on_update before disappearing.

Future Milestones

In Devlog 8, I will start building out a structured Contract & Agency Mission Board. Instead of gaining automated payouts for just reaching space, players will receive targeted mission briefs from separate space agencies with explicit operational criteria.

Furthermore, I will introduce a Technology Tree Prerequisite Matrix. More complex aerospace contracts will remain completely hidden until you spend research points to unlock the appropriate tiers of technology, providing an authentic simulation of an evolving space programme.

See you in the Next Devlog!