Hey all, and welcome to 2016! I normally aim at a somewhat humble tone in these posts, but as part of my New Year’s Resolution I’m throwing humility right out the door! 2016 is going to be an amazing year for UNION – nay, the best year of all time. I don’t want to pump anyone’s expectations too high, but let’s just say I expect the game to become bigger than a certain saviour of all mankind this year.
Actually, I already regret this resolution – it’s just not my style - but evening putting aside the hype, this is going to be a great year for UNION, something which I can see already from the huge amount of work done over the holidays by Mark on the development side of things (Good job Mark! Take a break sometime!) We’re very close to our next big round of internal testing, which is always fun, as we get to actually play the game for a bit and pretend it’s work (spoiler alert, it really is work). The Engineering UI is really taking shape, and is looking a lot like how we visualised it way back when UNION was first being conjured up. Until now a lot of the UIs have, by necessity, favoured function over form, and while this remains true in a lot of places, functional but plain buttons and dials are slowly being replaced by some more slick and informative looking bits and bobs.
The UIs are huge for UNION. The Enterprise was in many ways defined by the interface of the consoles which controlled the ship, almost as much as it was by the iconic dish-and-two-engines external design, and we want UNION to benefit from its own particular feel too. Function is huge, but there’s a big difference between a toaster and a 20GW Laser, even if both have a ‘high’ and ‘low’ setting; we want the UI to reflect this as much as possible.
Anyway, that’s all I’m at liberty to say for now! Watch this space, as we’ll be posting more news soon, as well as a couple of battle reports from testing (So far I’ve yet to beat Mark, but this will be changing soon. It’s kind of been my Kobayashi Maru for a few months now. Suggestions are welcome.) I hope you all had a wonderful holiday, and that 2016 is a blast. Happy gaming!
-Pádraig
