Right now I’m working down the points on my todo-list towards the demo release and already got several things done. But one point was usability and look of the GUI for the game and this one took (and still takes) much longer than I initially had planned.

I did a lot of work on the main menu, including an options screen and adding functionality to have every UI element slowly fade in and fade out. So this one is done now. I also created two screens for loosing and winning the game but those need to be filled with some information of which I’m not 100% sure right now, so I’ll get to that later on. Other parts of the GUI also got some additions, so you can now e.g. mimimze a window to it’s titlebar only to make room for other windows without having to close current windows.

Other things I worked on were the addition of proper dialogs for loading and saving games (including the possibility to give the saves custom names) and usability of some of the windows, so that e.g. in the regional detail window important properties will be highlighted with different colors depending on their values.
Next point on the list, which I already partially started working on, is the customization of the regional 3D view. Right now I have visual feedback for high pollution (a waving fog-layer that get’s thicker the higher polluted the region is) and for low energy (lights out), other stuff will follow like different backgrounds depending on where the region is located).

And to finish this update off here are four new screenshots of the current progress :