As promised some weeks ago I finally got around capturing a video of the totally new user interface that I decided to put into “Phase 2”. As mentioned earlier it’s not only a visual “upgrade”, making the UI more sleek and futuristic but also adds a lot of information to the default view and also brings in lot more usability. As you can see in the video most parts are already done, though there is still some work to be done before I can call it finished. But it’s already coming along nice and will surely add a lot to the final game.
(Note : The video is available in HD, but sadly only at 30fps, seems like youtube caps videos at that framerate)
And amongst other things I removed the nation backdrops. Yes, I did put a lot of work into them (I’d have to guess, but I think several hundred hours) and they look quiet nice (though I was never really satisfied with all of them), so you may think it’s stupid to thrash so much work (along the countless hours of work I thrashed when doing the new UI), but I wouldn’t have removed them if it wouldn’t have added something to the game. And this “something” is a feature I’ve been getting several requests for, called “better global overview”. Due to the old backdrops the globe was fixed to a single position and was also limited in terms of zooming. But by removing those backdrops (and making the game partly look like one of the old betas) you can now not only freely rotate the globe, but also drag it around freely and zoom in and out by a larger factor. This adds a lot of overview as you can now just drag the globe where you want it and zoom in much closer to get a better look at the regions themselves. Take a look at the video and you’ll notice what I’m talking about.
Amongst these bigger changes you’ll also see the** nuke in action in the new video**. Nothing really new as I already had videos of the nuke prototype, but along with the nuke you’ll see something new, namely physical values. Something that I recently changed were the regional values that felt too abstract, so instead of having a factor for e.g. of population you’ll now see real population counts, that should make it easier to relate those values.
So you see it’s progressing. Although at times I feel like I do a lot of work for nothing (like recently when spending my rare free time for fixing stuff that I broke at some point), even small steps add, and hopefully I’ll have this game done at some point or at least a beta release I can build upon (which is actually my current plan).