I decided to take an interlude from other stuff like UI improvements so I could do some tuning and reduce some slow code.

In the process I improved the look of the wakes/trails behind the missiles:

Here’s a bigger version

I went through the trouble of scrapping my entire current wake engine and rebuildingit from scratch to use a single object for each wake and an array of coirdinates instead of having the wake manager puke objects out the back of itself like it used to. It was wasteful code and the performance gains when there are tons of trails running ingame show it, even though I’ve got a ton of segments per wake, don’t avoid drawing stuff offscreen etc., which means there’s even more performance to be gained.

They also look really pretty. The wakes are much more smooth and primitives in game maker (how I’m drawing the wakes now) make gradients between points, which gives the wakes a much smoother blending and look. With any luck I can support textures for the wakes as well!

Next up: working on improving visual cues that a part’s received damage/is about to asplode, including some damage effects/decals on the parts and a display ont he visual interface.