After getting Station Generator on the Humble Store I’ve been working on the next update, namely UI. This has been a bigger task than I had initially thought it would be. Getting a new basic design took a little time but I’ve had a few decent ideas which will greatly improve both the functionality of the generator and the usability.
Early version of the new slider
I spent a bit of time working on one of the most used UI features, the slider. I use the sliders in nearly every aspect of the UI so it was very important to get it right and that took some time to refine to some thing I was really happy with!
Near final assets
But I did finally reach something I was really happy with and started work creating a prefab so that it could be relatively easily added to the scene and that went relatively smoothly. But to bump up the UI game I decided to let the user be able to see just how many rooms of each type they could use so I coded a balancing system, shifting away from the old primary/secondary paradigm users will be able to decide which rooms they want an exact number of and which ones they just want weighted and not worry about exact numbers. I also wanted them to be able to enter data whichever way they want so users can now shift the slider manually, or click on the arrows either side of the handle to move the slider up or down by one unit, or they can click on the number and manually enter a value themselves. Which is all working beautifully.
Balancing and data entry in action
That balancing code relies entirely on the available number of rooms a user has to choose from. And that’s what I’m working on right now. In the current/old system the rooms where created and displayed and textures rendered all at the same time using the one piece of code. For the new system to work, I’m going to need to break the code down into three sections, map creation, map rendering and map saving.
The new paradigm will allow for much easier saving of map data which will be a huge help down the road when I’m implementing a formal save system. Thankfully it doesn’t require a complete rewrite of my code, but breaking it down into three discrete sections poses it’s own problems. I don’t think I’ll have too hard of a time overcoming them but it does mean more time in development to make sure I get it right. It also means scoping down a bit on what I was hoping to include in this update but Station Generator will be all the better for it, and it doesn’t mean the missing functions won’t make release, just that they won’t be in this release.
It’s felt great to get back into the coding side of game dev and I’m enjoying the challenges it’s giving me. I’m really looking forward to releasing the next update!
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