Today was a turning point — both in terms of playtesting Stellar Throne for the first time and in figuring out how to better use Claude via prompt engineering.

🌌 What Got Done

• ✅ Fog of War Visuals Implemented: Added a stylized galaxy image to obscure unexplored areas. Grid tiles now exist in three states:

  • Unexplored: shows the galaxy backdrop only

  • Visible: full data on stars, planets, fleets

  • Explored: shows known bodies but with stale information
    This adds a meaningful layer to exploration and information control.

• ✅ Planet Sprite Sheet Progress: Continued work on new sprite sheets for gas giants, garden worlds, and deserts.

• ✅ Fuel System Re-enabled (Then Rejected): Re-tested the fuel mechanic and found it clunky, overly punishing, and not impactful enough on strategic decision-making. Removed again for now — possibly permanently.

• ✅ First Full Playthrough:

  • Exploration phase feels good

  • Later game lacks clarity at zoomed-out scale (icons too small, weak star map feel)

  • Economy is unbalanced: too many resources, ships build too fast

  • Research is too slow (possibly because Research Labs are bugged and not completing)

• ✅ game_screen.zig Refactor: The file had ballooned past the token limit for Claude/GPT. It’s now modularized and more maintainable.

💡 What I Learned

When Claude wasn’t understanding the 3-layer Fog of War system (kept confusing Explored vs Visible), I turned to ChatGPT for help designing a better prompt. That worked instantly. Claude called it a great prompt and immediately executed everything correctly.

Lesson: When I’m stuck with Claude, use ChatGPT as my prompt architect — especially for tricky, layered systems.

🚧 Still Unfinished / Blocked

• 🔍 Construction System Bug: Buildings may not be finishing or may not be added to colony data. May also relate to notification failures for idle colonies.

• 🧠 Memory Leaks: Need to audit allocations and lifetimes.