Menu Systems and Graphics Changes

These past few weeks have been devoted to rewriting the menu systems and adjusting graphics to enhance the playing experience. Along with the menu overhaul and the graphics adjustments, we have some exciting graphics improvements in the works that we hope to be able to show across the next few devlogs!

Menu Systems

The menu overhaul was performed to allow for new features that were not possible to implement with the old menu system. These features were intended to be part of the game from the start, but we realized as the development process progressed that our old menu systems weren’t up for the task. Here are some of the features that our new system supports:

• Cancel a connection to a game server. If a connection is taking a while or you decide to do something else, you can exit the connection stage at any time

• Cancel hosting a game server after the hosting has started and before the game launches

• Stop any game and return to the main menu in the middle of play

These improvements are targeted to give the user more control over the application’s actions. On top of the increased feature options, the new structure also offers expanded flexibility for designing GUI components that were previously restricted under the old system.

This overhaul also allows for multiple games to be run simultaneously in parallel threads which opens up some awesome possibilities for more powerful server configurations!

Graphics Changes

The graphics changes that we have been working on include:

• Improving the in-game colors to more closely match the concept art

• Making in-game piece selection more intuitive by displaying a small graphic of the pieces themselves

• Adding an in-game menu for holding common actions like forfeiting and returning to the main menu