JULY UPDATE
Last time I wrote that I planned to work on the 2D sample game: I lied.
The new goal is to complete and polish the editor as much as we can until it feels great and “shipable”. We are making great progress and I’m quite happy to see new bits of UI getting nicer and cleaner everyday.
WHAT WE DID:
As always, I corrected bugs (in the snakes, in the animated textures…). I still have a few minor one to fix, and 2 or 3 big one which causes me headaches…
The in-game tutorials are completely revamped, and they look great :)
We can introduce you to “Professor Bulo” who will teach you the basics of shmup creation! The tutorials are using the editor and the game engine and so are interactive and fun to watch.
We still have to script some more chapters.
At the moment, the focus is really on UI. The most important goal is usability… Making sure that things are easy to use, to pick, to see… Added new and missing icons, moved things pixel by pixel, adding colors to some elements to tell the user “this is a menu about the level” or “this is a menu about the game”. It’s not about look but really about helping users find and understand things better and use the SHMUP Creator in a more intuitive way. It’s about design and usability, and it’s very interesting and very very hard to do :)
We have a lot of work to do on the weapons and bullets editors: the current UI is not reflecting the way the weapons system works to the users. I’m sure we can do better and, with some changes only (renaming things, moving some parts of the UI elsewhere), make things easier to understand.
I’d really like to complete the whole editor polish at the end of August. It would be an important milestone: the tool will be “complete”, and we’ll be able to focus on the last part of the adventure: completing the 2D sample game, completing the documentation and so on.
See you next time!
S.
