I was at GDC, met with an exec to show McDROID and the first minute of showing the game, mostly UI, the guy couldn't hide a reaction of "what is this shit". That woke me up.
I remembered what a big disgrace the UI in McDROID was. Not matching with the visual style of the game, it made the first minute of interaction feel and look cheap.And because McDROID plays so well with gamepad and we are authorized to develop on a certain console it had to be improved.
So we switched to NGUI yanked code dependency and re-wired the game with the new sprite based UI. That took way longer than anticipated because McDROID actually has a lot of cool UI systems that are so elegant I had forgotten about them (blowing the game's horn loud and clear here !).Also I wanted cool robotic animation and some nice glowy effects. Switching from direct UI to state based UI without a state machine is sport.
I think we have something very special, it looks very 90s but modernized, hopefully it's as simple and clear looking as the old UI, but with extra AAA oompf
IMHO it really looks great and adds to the game overal feeling.
I tend to overlook the details (such as menu) and focus on playing itself but i know that for many people the GUI is very important.
BTW, the Developper failed to mention ;) a new game feature- McDROID customization-> you can use some points to increase speed/power/armor of your droid. For me this is the best part of this update :D (and it shows that the Dev listens to his players - kudos for this :D)
If anyone is interested- as far as i know the new demo already contains the updated menu- so download, check it out and comment! :D
Yes thanks for doing my work, Pys, I forgot what is probably the biggest upgrade in term of game play :)