NeverYear Games, Semester 2, Week 6

This week we came to the realization that there were far too many levels for single player. While the galaxy map may have looked really nice, we would not be able to make over 50 missions to the quality standard we would like to have. Also, getting all 50+ missions playtested would have been a nightmare, so we're not going to. Instead, there are 4 missions per faction, an introductory mission, 2 upgrade-unlocking missions, and the home planet. This will allow us to make levels at a much higher level of quality, and have them all be unique.

Updated galaxy map

We also had a long discussion about what to do with our UI, and came up with a solution. We took a few of our ideas and picked and chose the best parts from each to make up our newest idea. 

Keeping in mind how people hold tablets, we decided that the most of the non-interactable UI elements should be at the top of the screen so they're not blocked by hands, and that the buttons that players would press often would be on the planets. This marriage of multiple UI concepts produced something that we're all fond of, and should meet the expectations of our testers according to the feedback we've received.

Thank you and goodbye,
-John Cotto