In last week’s update, I stated that sound effects would be the focus this week. I didn’t touch that. Instead, I wound up spending the entire week on visual improvements.
- Replaced ability icons. I was using effects and item sprites from the Oryx 16-Bit Fantasy sprite set as temporary ability icons. The images were loosely applicable at best, and too abstract to infer their purpose. They were plain and in some cases downright ugly. I didn’t want to see them anymore so I bought a giant RPG icon set from the Unity asset store to replace them. The visual style didn’t quite match the rest of the game, but that’s ok; I still plan on replacing them with original artwork eventually. I wasn’t able to use them “out of the box.” They were 32×32 pixels in size, while item/ability slots were 16×16. My solution was a compromise: I’d crop the icons to 24×24 and increase slot sizes from 16×16 to 24×24. I spent more time on this than I expected. It took a while to find the right icon for an ability, and additional time to find the right 24×24 section within the original to crop. It also required resizing slots everywhere they were used (inventory panel, ability panel, inspect panel, hotbar, quick switch slots). Since the slots use a common prefab, I only had to change the prefab rather than each individual slot, but then I needed to change panel sizes and move some UI elements around to accommodate the larger slot sizes.
- Increased the hotbar size. This was necessitated by replacing the ability icons. I’m not thrilled about giving up more screen real estate for the hotbar, but I don’t have an alternative because I believe 24×24 is the minimum resolution for an image to portray an ability.
- Replaced the font. The original font was an 8×8 monospaced font commonly found in early arcade and console games. The main issue with this font was space. It was difficult to read at a small size. I could have increased the resolution for text, but it wouldn’t have looked right to have pixelation at two different resolutions (one for images and one for text). Also, my aesthetic preferences have changed since then. It can be a long road to finding the right font. 80% of my time this week went into searching massive font databases and curated lists, studying screenshots from other games, and trying different fonts out in the game. I could have easily spent the entire week, and many future weeks, on this pursuit. I have a persistent problem with wanting to start with the largest space possible, explore every possibility, and narrow down to the absolute best choice. With something like fonts, there just isn’t a best choice; it’s too subjective. I decided on Merriweather because it’s a serif style but is designed specifically for screen use.
- New status effect: Charmed. Causes an actor to fight for the caster.
- New abilities
- Charm. Temporarily charms an individual actor.
- Mass Charm. Temporarily charms all actors in a 5×5 square.
- Improved stat meter visuals. I wanted to make these look a little less plain.
- Minor improvements
- On the Title Screen, the Continue button now appears above the New Game button, since the former will be used more often than the latter.
- Select cell prompt repositioned so that it doesn’t appear over the player or other UI elements.
- Increased the number of recent log messages displayed from 4 to 8.
- Reduced the size of tooltips.
Next week, I plan on adding a loading screen (the presently inefficient proc gen freezes the game for ~10 seconds per level), enemy status effect icons, and sound effects time if time permits.
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