Hello!
Although not a super efficient week, I've started picking up pace again. This week I've started expanding the UI to be able to fit new features in. More space for buttons at the top, slider for Resources (since the entire pane was full and I've still got resources to add).
The empty buttons at the top will be for the stock exchange/trade center, local economy/budget, conglomerate/citizen advisory board and the last empty one will likely be used for research.
Two new buildings have made it into the game this week. The Police station (here almost finished):
And also the Carbon Pressurization Plant, that will produce Diamonds that will be used for advanced circuits and jewelry.
I've been continuing optimization work. Since switching to smaller building blocks the same volume of blocks produces 8 shadow casters instead of one. This, along with the increasing number of props like trees and containers, was pushing the number of shadow casters a bit too much (1500+ in a view). To remedy this I made a system that creates a shadows only volume based on the blocks within segments of 5x5x5 sized spaces. Together with a system that merges all similar props into one object per building has meant the number of shadow casters in now generally below 500-600.
The grouping of blocks can be seen here:
There's been some other minor progress too, fixing bugs, mini-optimization and overall polish and work on LODs, but that's pretty much it. 
That's it for this week!
/ Dispersing Minds
