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Development & Discussion / [Progress - 18th Feb] Power Wheel UI Connection Improvements

« on: February 18, 2016, 05:40:24 PM »

Hi all,

Over the past few days I've been working on the power wheel connections, being able to hover over them with the mouse cursor to see their power, and using left and right mouse clicks to increase/decrease power (up until now connections could only have their power adjusted by dragging and dropping to and from power nodes, which still works).

And here it is in action:


As with all of our UI work, the connections, and the power wheel, can be modded to a huge degree. Making this possible slows development down somewhat, but I think the cost in time is worth it. I can't see what kind of changes people mod into the UI.

Next up I am moving on to doing the power pre-sets UI, which allow you to create your own power connection pre-sets and switch between them instantly.


Thanks for reading!

47

Development & Discussion / [Progress - 16th Feb] Power Wheel UI Operation and Damage Animations

« on: February 16, 2016, 01:07:55 AM »

Hey all,

Today I worked on the animations for when equipment is operated and damaged.

The equipment's icon flashes yellow when the equipment is operated (used/fired) and it's background flashes red when it takes damage. These are to help keep the Engineer clued into what's happening.

Here's a rough video showing this in action:

Keep in mind that all of these animations are a work in progress, and will probably go through many changes before launch. The important thing right now is functionality.

Next up on my dev list is:

• Selecting existing connections by clicking on their lines, allowing their power to be changed with a keypress or the mouse scrollwheel.

After that I'll be moving onto the UI for saving and loading power configurations (the functionality has already been programmed, I have to build the UI for it).


Thanks for reading!

48

Development & Discussion / [Progress - 14th Feb] Engineering Power Wheel UI Valid Node Animation

« on: February 14, 2016, 09:35:47 PM »

Hi all,

When a player is dragging a new connection (from a reactor node to an equipment node) it wasn't obvious which equipment nodes could be reached by the selected reactor node.

Today I added an animation to make that clear. When you click on a reactor node all of the equipment nodes that it can reach (which aren't already at max power) will flash yellow. When you click on an equipment node any reactors with active connections to that equipment will flash orange.

Here is the new update in operation:


I'm not completely happy with the (flashing) yellow colour, I had to darken it so that the number over it would stay legible. In the UI so far I've used a very light yellow to denote increasing and max power, and orange to represent decreasing and low power.

Next items on my dev list are:

• Animations when equipment is used (the icon pulses blue) and when damage is taken (the background pulses red).
• Selecting existing connections by clicking on their lines, allowing their power to be changed with a keypress or the mouse scrollwheel.

As always feedback is very welcome.

Thanks for reading!

49

Development & Discussion / [Progress - 13th Feb] Power Wheel UI Node Animations

« on: February 13, 2016, 07:56:50 PM »

Hi all,

Every few days, as I have something new to share/show, I'll be posting my development progress here. This will allow those who are interested to follow the dev process more closely, to give feedback and discuss game design.

Right now I am working on animations for the Power Wheel, in order to give feedback to the player.

These will include animations for things like equipment being operated (used/fired) and taking damage, but I have started with something simpler, and that is a small animation on nodes when you change their power levels.


Before when you added or removed power from a connection, only the numbers in the nodes would change, and that is easy to miss. The short white flash on the nodes gives the player that little extra feedback, letting them know that the change was made.

As we spoke about before, mod-ability in UNION is of huge importance to us. That animation above was done using XAML, an XML format not unlike HTML, and here is the code for it:

Code: [Select]

<Storyboard x:Key="NodeRingChangeAnimation">
    <ColorAnimation
        Storyboard.TargetProperty="Stroke.(SolidColorBrush.Color)"
        From="#00000000" To="#FF999999" IsAdditive="True" Duration="0:0:0.15" AutoReverse="True"/>
</Storyboard>


In brief, this animation changes the Stroke (line) colour of the node's ring (the outer circle). It changes the colour of the ring (from invisble to a visible grey), but it is set to "IsAdditive" true, so instead of replacing the node ring's colour it adds to that colour. The AutoReverse setting means that the animation goes into reverse after it plays once, this gives the appearance of the node ring flashing.

It is all enclosed in a Storyboard. Storyboards allow you to mix lots of different animations together into a timeline.

We will have robust documentation available on our UI closer to launch, but it is all based on Microsoft's WPF. You can read more about it here.

Next up on my list of dev items are:

• Changing the power being added/removed while dragging a connection, using the mousewheel or by pressing a number key on the keyboard (thanks to Blaze over on the Terran Stellar Navy forum for the suggestion).
• Highlight valid nodes to connect to when dragging a connection.
• Animations when equipment is used (the icon pulses blue) and when damage is taken (the background pulses red).

Thanks for reading!

50

Development & Discussion / Engineering Power Wheel

« on: February 09, 2016, 09:34:59 PM »

The focus at this very moment is very much on Engineering and specifically the "Power Wheel". The Power Wheel is the UI which the Chief Engineer uses to manage power levels across the ship's equipment.



Our latest video log has a demonstration of it in action (skip right to demonstration by clicking here).

The power wheel is the beating heart of the ship, it literally affects everything. Getting it right is key to making UNION a truely great game.

Some items I'm working on this week:

• Changing the power being added/removed while dragging a connection, using the mousewheel or by pressing a number key on the keyboard (thanks to Blaze over on the Terran Stellar Navy forum for the suggestion).
• Highlight valid nodes to connect to when dragging a connection.
• Animations when equipment is used (the icon pulses blue) and when damage is taken (the background pulses red).

There is already a system for saving and restoring connection configurations. Once I'm happy with the Power Wheel, which should be at the end of this week, I will begin implementing the UI for that.

I'd love to hear your suggestions and questions.

51

Development & Discussion / Video DevLog #1 and the launch of our forums

« on: February 09, 2016, 08:50:04 PM »

View original post.

Hey all,

Outside of going through Steam Greenlight we've been running pretty quiet up to this point. It's time to start building a real community, and to get them (you) involved in shaping the future of UNION.

To that end Padraig and I have recorded the first in a bi-weekly series of video DevLogs. These DevLogs will hopefully give you a deeper insight into what UNION is and where it is going. This week we discuss some of UNION's history and demonstrate the Engineering Power Wheel.

To coincide with this first video DevLog we have just launched our forums. We are keen to build a community which will be involved in shaping UNION, with feedback, suggestions and discussions.

We'd love to hear from you.