1) A window that is resizeable at runtime.
Should be doable, will take some reading through the irrlicht documentation...
2) A more traditional interface, such as an unhidable, normal-size menu bar across the top.
It would of course be no trouble to stick the menu to the screen, but I thought that would take up valuable screenspace most of the time, because the bar isn't exactly small. I could make it stickable and unstickable though, so everyone can have his way. I guess I could also optimise it a bit space-wise...
The reason it is on the screens side rather than top or bottom is majorly for the selection boxes to be easily readable. I think I wanted to do drop-out boxes, but they're not supported by irrlicht. Maybe I should check that again.
Hmmm... how about an always visible small bar in the lower right screen corner, right under the drop out menu, with buttons to sticky the side bar, as well as Galaxy Map/Sector map/System Map? Should also solve the problem of no obvious way to move between the screens. Two flies in one hit.
Of course, one significant disadvantage I have is that mouse-over texts for some mysterious reason can cause ctd's inside the orbiter plug-in. There's just no way to solve that without searching for the trouble inside the irrlicht source code, and what a search that would be! It would probably take me days just to find the code for the mouseover-text, and there's of course the very real possibility that the trouble is caused by Orbiter, not by irrlicht...
4) Better feedback would help with the part of the interface relating to pathfinding. Something like a "no path could be found" dialog when a connection between two stars does not exist. As it is I'm having some trouble figuring out whether the pathfinding isn't working properly or whether I'm using the interface wrong. (OTOH, I don't think you've had pathfinding in any public build yet, so I'm probably the only one having that problem so far).
Now you'll be confusing all other readers, because indeed they don't know anything about path-finding. You and I are the only people currently existing that have this experimental version of the standalone, and experimental version is experimental, and finished only to the point of raw usability, since I was putting the project on hold at that time, and the main reason for wrapping it up in a halfway usable state was to thank you for your help, since this was basically the feature you were most interested in. It didn't seem apropriate to put it on hold so shortly before it was more or less working and not letting you have it.
Anyways, for your current version, if there's no path, there was none found, but the long-range algorithm isn't optimised at all yet (it also presents you merely with the first solution found, doesn't try to optimize the route yet). The whole FTL interface is probably going to change a lot in the future, so stay tuned.
Edit: Just now it came to my mind, I could also make an indicator for the drop-out menu on the screen edge, like actually most drop-out menus have. A small tab over there indicating that there's something here that will pop out if you move the mouse over it. Why didn't I think of this before? :facepalm:
