Oh So Many Visual Improvements

Micro Star Command

I have spent the last 3 weeks working on making the game look much better, primarily by overhauling the UI, galaxy map, and backgrounds.

UI Improvements

While the UI before was completely functional, it didn't really match the theme and looked mostly like the default UI that it was, so I started the process of reworking it by creating HUD concepts over a screenshot of the game in Adobe Illustrator. After about a day's work, I was happy with my design and started cleaning up and splitting the assets so they could be used in engine.

I then started the process of manually redoing the HUD as my new design was far more complex and would require a complex widget hierarchy to support dynamic resizing based on the minimization of various UI elements. However, looking back on it now, I could probably have made the hierarchies simpler.

Before After

The new UI has more information and is much more on theme, and allows for the minimization of many elements. I am a little concerned that it may be slightly harder to read, but I will see if that is the case in the upcoming playtests.

I also updated the rest of the UI which was much easier due to my previous efforts of making a centralized theme controller for things like borders and buttons, which I used to swap out the borders for everything. I then added more transition animations and other small details.

Galaxy Map Improvements

I also completely reworked the galaxy map to actually look like a galaxy, have better icons, and increased sense of progression through distinct map regions. I started by finding a CC0 galaxy image that I then modified to work with the player path and resolutions that I would be using it at. I also laid out the map regions and then worked on getting it all in engine.

Before After

Backgrounds

The game lacked a sense of progression as early fights looked the same as later ones, so I decided to make each of the regions have their own unique procedural backgrounds. They definitely still need some refining but they are a big improvement over just blue.