Sea Trading Game- Improved missions, pathfinding speed, trade goods in the background, and better population distributions

This has been a pretty productive week, and once again I'm starting to really make some good progress. My list of things to do is mostly relatively easy, except for the re-balancing which no doubt will be a long term task, and adding new goods. I even put out a test build to my Google Groups test group, although it has plenty of problems.

One of the first things that I did was to allow one to see more missions in the "Broker" screen. This proved to be relatively difficult, but it is now working as expected.

The next major task was to try and improve the frame rates, in particular when doing pathfinding operations. I did quite a few changes, including many updates to my C# A* I released to Github. All in all, I improved the speed by about 5 times, which reduces the lag considerably in the game!

That being done, the next task was to increase the mission level in a logical fashion. While no doubt I will need some improvements, including letting the user know when they have achieved a new level, levels are now in fact being updated behind the scenes. The effect of this will be to gradually increase the size of the cargo of the missions, which ultimately will allow for making more money. I'm still no doubt going to tweak the system somewhat, but it is coming along nicely!

People and goods now will be  moved around spontaneously. This will keep cities fed even if they can't produce food, for instance. It's still a primitive system, but it is coming along nicely.

Lastly, I improved how people are managed. People moving will actually transfer skills when moving from place to place. Also, the number of people in a given location is more realistic.

For the next week, I'm hoping to do a number of small systems on my plate. The most difficult of these changes will be to allow for goods to be manufactured in buildings, for things that require such buildings. Finally, I'm going to start working on a more realistic set of initial conditions, which should come together nicely. If I manage to get all of that done, I'll start adding goods, which you can suggest for possible credit in the game, especially for unique items!