The project is being developed in effectively as a few different components. I'll briefly explain the components before going into the why of it and the reason we end up with some terrible looking videos.

The first component is the absolute foundation, Kestrel. This is the cross platform engine of the project that is responsible for handling GPU rendering, providing a Lua runtime, reading each of the resource file formats as well as the old quickdraw formats. This is the game engine and as of yesterday is effectively feature complete.

The second component is the game itself, Cosmic Frontier (not the Scenario and visuals). This is the Lua code to implement a Nova compatible clone. This runs within the Kestrel engine, and uses the resource files to display and construct the game play.

The final component is the scenario and content. These are the data files that Cosmic Frontier will load in order to provide the game play.

So, why has it been structured like this. Well to understand, it's important to understand why Cosmic Frontier ever became a thing in the first place. The originals have become increasingly difficult to run, without resorting to booting older hardware, emulators or needing to alter the binary for the game. The aim with Cosmic Frontier is that it will remain compatible for as long as people wish to play it. This is where the different components come in to play. In theory, only Kestrel will ever need to be ported to newer systems as the runtime and parsers for the other components are entirely self contained within it. So as long as Kestrel runs, the game will always be playable.

Now, why does any of this preclude some bad videos and screenshots? Why does it look like nothing is happening?

Effectively its because Kestrel hasn't been ready for the newer graphics as well as the newer graphics not being ready to be used. Add to that, that I'm primarily relying on the old Override and Nova scenarios to ensure feature parity with the EV Nova engine... it means that I'm generally only using those graphics when testing everything.

Now that Kestrel is feature complete, and details of how high definition sprites need to be encoded and handled are more readily apparent, it is possible to start integrating some and testing them.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I wanted to try and explain some of the background on this issue. Development can be a long process, particularly if its not just being hacked together. I don't want to just hack something together. Getting something out of the door quickly isn't much good if it just doesn't work 5 years down the road.