Adventures in Map Zooming, Part 5: QoL (Patreon)

Back to map zooming again?!

Well for a while I had skipped away do the engine work I had in mind to support UI upscaling, and having proven that would be possible, I then still needed to get back to finishing the zoom feature, which wouldn't be very playable without the QoL features. Although I finished those and did eventually also stream the map zoom features and share them across a number of hours in a real run, the relevant article series wouldn't be complete with a nice written design overview and demo GIFs, so here we go.

But first...

UI Phase 4

So this last week I was supposed to stream Phase 3 of the UI, which is pretty much done (!) and was even planning to put out a prerelease build right after the stream so you all could try it yourselves, but clearly that didn't happen since I discovered at the last second I couldn't actually log into Twitch... That will hopefully be resolved soon (it's been 5 days and I haven't heard back from them xD).

In the meantime, I put that build by the wayside and have already forged ahead with Phase 4! This is the more extreme version with hidden top-side consoles and a correspondingly larger map view.

For example here's a 1080p screenshot taken after entering Materials:

The log messages instead temporarily show over the map (as in POLYBOT-7, which is where the code came from :P), and you can adjust how many are shown and for how long.

The extended log mode will give you two active columns, and the combat log view does the same with the second column. Or it will when I'm done with it all--there is a lot of different automated log message stuff going on in this UI layout and I'm still working on making it all possible (the basics are done, but we need the best quality!).

But to be honest, if it's good enough this could be the default instead of the other middle one. Big map view is good map view. And the above screenshot isn't even zoomed in xD (which you can still do, of course). I expect to finish this layout this month, and an a public Beta 13 release can come at any point after that when all the related other things are done (including playtesting it, and this could maybe use a bit more playtest time than usual, given its unique nature).

I hope to get Phase 3 to you this coming week, just as soon as I can stream it first as a bit of a demo and to make sure it doesn't explode under pressure :)

Map Zooming QoL

Back to that article, let's check out all these zoom-related features that make it actually playable! You can preview it below, or check out the original on the blog (password "yestoquality"), since it's like all GIFs :P