Weekly Roundup 171 - Keyboard-Only UI Pass (Patreon)

Hi everyone!,

I've worked on something interesting this week for the Bindmancer and while it won't look glamorous it is a good addition! Let's get into it:

1: What's New?

So all of this week was spent on making every UI button, slider, and screen 100% keyboard-only friendly.

As of the current addition this isn't the case and all UI screens demand use of the mouse to navigate which is clumbersome for a game where the main buttons are 4 directions and the Spacebar key.

And making UI keyboard-only friendly is actually a lot more work then just letting buttons be pressed by the mouse. For every UI screen you have to set-up a "Navigation" flow so each button can be navigated between each other.

And I had to learn how to activate the default button position for each UI screen that appears as well as how to show buttons that where currently selected but also not interactable.

When the build is updated this change will apply to the Title Screen, the level select screen and in-game itself.

The mouse can still be used, but now players who wish to play the game with one hand. ( ;D ) 

It's hard to appreciate the difference without feeling it in gameplay, but the lack of mouse moving around in these gifs shows you the work:

2: What's Next?

There's a little bit more work to do on the keyboard-only pass. But after that it's back onto polish.

I'm considering releasing a build of the game next Friday. We'll see how stability goes, and while it wont have new content, it will have more fixes and love put into it.

Cheers!

- Caroo