Mid-Month Update - Interfaced (Patreon)

Evening all, it's time for a mid-month update! And the current state of things is that I'm feeling pretty decent about the game's current GUI. It's not perfect, or finished - I'd still like to replace some text with icons and such, for example - but I am just aiming for an initial alpha release here, not a finished state. My primary work the past few weeks has been on the main window - a lot of functionality's been set up to generate and display portraits to go along with scenes, as well as attach CGs when available, as you can see in the work-safed example. The other buttons seen on the main window are currently all disabled, as things are opened up linearly during the introduction, but it should give a rough idea of the options that will eventually be available.

I've also added crew portraits, stats and trait listings to various windows to better inform decisions. I will be looking at adding in a codex that will include a dictionary of trait effects, which is somewhere in the next chunk of tasks. As you can also see, we now have ship design art! The ship shown is the Tier 1 introduction ship, I've also received artwork for the Tier 2 designs which will be purchasable in a later stage of the game. As for the rest of the month, my first priority will be finishing off the remaining writing tasks. Once we hit the next State of the Game I should have a better idea of the remaining to-do list, but I am expecting the initial release to be sometime in August.

One final note I wanted to mention tonight is that I've recently subscribed to the beta program for MidJourney, one of those AI art programs you may have been hearing about lately. It's still a little experimental as to how exactly I'll be using it - I can say that it won't be taking the place of primary artwork, however it may be useful for supplemental art or artist reference material. As one test, I've used it to create a battlefield background for the space combat screen, as you can see attached. I won't flood this post with example artwork I've made, but I'll probably be posting some in the Discord for those who want to take a look.

So, I'll see you all again in a few weeks with the next update, til then, thanks again for your support!