[Mark]

Hey all,

My work on the Engineering UI, specifically Technicians at the moment, continues. That work is not ready to show in action, yet. However as I have been working on the UI I have also had some ideas on how to improve it, not just visually but also as a user experience.

Part of that work was recoloring the UI (as shown in my previous post), making click-able/interactive elements brighter and more pronounced with consistent colors.

I have built on to that by adding a small detail to each button in the UI. I think this detail, a small cut out triangle on the top right of each button, helps to highlight the buttons on the UI. And I hope it looks nice too. 😊

I also updated the power nodes on the power wheel to be consistent with the other interactive elements.

As always your feedback is appreciated.




Thanks for reading!

Mark

[Grey]

I like the triangle's.
How will you see what system is currently active/selected?

Thanks you for the regular updates, most appreciated.

[Blaze]

Grey, you can see which system is currently selected by the thin yellow border around it. Currently it's the one on the upper right, with the technician in it.

Mark, I'm not really sure if the little triangles serve any purpose, other than to signify what the user can click on. They don't look back, that's true.

I like the shield statuses around the wheel.

I also like the change from "perf." to "damage", next to the graph. Makes it much clearer what the performance means. I've been wondering if it's the rate of fire or damage per hit.

P.S. I think it would be interesting to create a gif or video of the engineering wheel's transformation from it's earliest days to the current version (and onwards).

[Mark]

Mark, I'm not really sure if the little triangles serve any purpose, other than to signify what the user can click on.

One of the issues with having a detailed UI which is vector based and using flat shading (no gradients) is expressing which elements are interactive/click-able. The triangle helps to reinforce what elements can be clicked by the player, it's part of the "language" of the design.

I also like the change from "perf." to "damage", next to the graph. Makes it much clearer what the performance means. I've been wondering if it's the rate of fire or damage per hit.

This is how it is meant to be, "Perf." is a generic placeholder until I program the correct language for each system type into the game.

P.S. I think it would be interesting to create a gif or video of the engineering wheel's transformation from it's earliest days to the current version (and onwards).

Yeah I'd love to do this at some stage.

[Blaze]

Thanks for clearing it up!

[Mark]

Thanks for the feedback.

[Laslon]

Looking really great, sorry not been around much, work is keeping me busy.

[Mark]

Hey Laslon,

Ah no bother at all, thanks for checking in.

[goatwarrior]

When can we get our filthy mitts on this game?

[Mark]

Hey goatwarrior,

Welcome to the forum.

This will be a longer and more detailed answer than you probably wanted. 😁

Honestly I do not know, yet, when the game will be released. There is still a lot to do and currently I am the only person working on the game.

The issue is I need funding, to be able to work full time, to hire another developer, and to pay for art assets.

Last year I got the game to a state where I felt I could approach publishers for funding. I could show some gameplay, along with functioning multiplayer, and designs for the completed UIs.

Everyone I contacted responded that the game looked very good, but they all said that they do not see a market for space sims at the moment. To quote my most recent contact, "This does look extremely impressive, but TBH I think we are a bit
oversaturated with space games at the moment."

That leaves me with going to Kickstarter. For that I need to be able to show a "vertical slice" of the game, a whole section of gameplay which shows what the game is about. I have chosen Engineering to be that vertical slice, and I am currently building it towards that end.

The Engineering vertical slice needs to be amazing, including all of the Technician interactions and UI animations, so it will take time.


Thanks. 😊