Game Development So Far
Last week I decided to focus game development on the UI menus and make them top priority. It’s something I’ve put on the backburner since the last big UI update. You would think the UI design is the easy part of development, but for me it’s one of the harder ones. Sure you can throw some panels and buttons together, but a bad UI can have a huge impact on game feel and overall enjoyment. Therefore it’s a part of development that requires a lot of thought and effort.
Being a solo developer I don’t have the luxury of a dedicated UI artists. This means that my work has to follow a trial and error approach, or more technically A B testing. That means produce a few different styles, put it out to the public to decide and go with the favourite. I took this approach with the HUD a few months back and I’m personally really happy with the outcome. However, there have been some negative comments around the look of the UI online. The criticism seems to focus around it looking basic. I believe this is largely due to the fact that other than the HUD there has been no other UI to show. No graphs or menus.
To hopefully help settle the opinion that the UI is basic and also to provide essential features to the gameplay, this week I started building the staff and equipment menus. Equipment in particular is going to be one of the first menus you see when playing the game, therefore that needs to be in place and working correctly. I’ve made some decent progress on the panel design and location and button design. Each little steps helps Gym Empire get closer to looking like a playable experience. There’s still some way to go and I’m starting to get twitchy about achieving the end of the year milestone. But the developments on the UI this week help to put in some foundation that will make developing the rest of the UI easier.
In some of the smaller windows of development I found, I also managed to clean up the start menu. It’s not perfect and requires further development, but for the demo I feel it is clean and functional enough to do the job. I also got round to sorting some of the more minor issues around placing the character in a new style of environment. Nothing major, but each little thing I fix along the way is one less bug to deal with at the end of the demo build.
Other Developments
Following on from the article I wrote about the PlayStation Classic and continuing the “marketing is game dev” theme. I uploaded a video to YouTube to accompany the PlayStation Classic article. For most of the articles I write I am going to try and produce a supporting video. Other than being more content to support the overall SEO of Chronik Spartan. Some people prefer consuming video over text, therefore it’s nice to provide the choice. It’s also satisfying creating and uploading a video from a creators point of view. However, the time and effort to do so is quite large. So I can’t guarantee I will achieve this for every article. Especially as other prioritise take the forefront.
I also managed to squeeze in a small amount of content generation for the site and channel I’m trying to setup for my wife. I’ve been planning to do a review of the new Amazon Echo Input as it was released just today. So I’ve been putting a few things in place to help make getting an article and video uploaded today also.
Other than that, most of my “other” time was spent preparing for baby number 2. There’s just under 4 weeks left now and there is still a lot to do. Including painting the baby’s room. Now that we’re in the 4 week window he could arrive any day. So if I go completely silent for a couple of weeks you’ll know what’s happened J.
Time Management
Keeping the momentum going on the UI updates, the focus this week will be:
- Finalise Staff/Equipment Menus
- Start on information and management panels
Gym Empire is now available to add to your Steam Wishlist.
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