Development Update - October 18, 2012

[Mycal]

I'm hoping this won't affect the date I have in my head. I've got some advice from some people I respect on the UI design and have currently halted development because of this. In the interest of time, I may not go through with any major changes this time since I'm already so far along on the UI. However, the proposed changes would make things easier in the future..

I hate things like this. I know things would be easier in the long run, but it takes a lot of time to do. Being the perfectionist I am, I usually like to go ahead and do it, but I'm trying my best to keep to a deadline that I have set for myself. Egh, oh well.

Something I still haven't really considered too is the built in editors. It'll be a huge mess to do it with the UI that I currently have. This is another thing that would be greatly helped by the proposed changes. These are times that I wish I had another developer to help out. However, that is something that will have to wait until after the first release where I wouldn't be breaking steverino's wishes.

Oh, and I'm also trying to get a family member to help out with the actual UI. I'm not the best at graphics design so I'm getting an extra opinion or possibly a redesign. Not that this really affects anything, I just wanted to mention it. The main menu interface is going to drastically change from what it used to be, so it needs to be totally redesigned.

I'll post back as soon.

 

[Mycal]

OK, after talking it out and some thinking, I'm going to go with what I have currently. For editors, they will be split off temporarily and be separate windows. Well I say temporarily, but if it works better, then perhaps we'll stick with it. This would allow you to move the editors around so it's not in your way as you move about. Maybe it's a good thing?

Anyway, onwards!

 

[Mycal]

Eh, I lied. I thought this over more and it makes a lot of sense to just do it. After the last post, I got curious and started playing with it, then it was the next day 9:00pm and I had it working fairly well.

Basically what this is it builds the game screens from config files. Since the GUI is created from textures and spritefonts, I've been placing the controls manually and then recompiling each time I made a change. It's a time consuming process and since I'm constantly tweaking the GUI, it's been a big hassle. Now it's quite easy. I just press a button and it reloads the config. Most type of common controls are already implemented (button, textbox, label, checkbox, password box). There are a few more that I should do, but for now I have the necessary ones done. I'll finish up the rest at a later time.

I'm sure you can guess what it is, but this will help in the future for some other planned features.