So, as I mentioned last week, I have spent this whole week going through and polishing up items that, for lack of a better tram, stuck out terribly.
I started last week with the part health indicators, and this week I continued the trend and removed the last vestiges of the old UI by replacing the Ammo UI. Take a look at these snazzy new icons:
You can see a lot of information is being presented very quickly, perfect for when you are in the heat of a battle. There are new weapon type icons (shown is the howitzer icon), along with the trusty reload / ammo bar. You can also see there is feedback for when you are out of ammo. Also, you can see there is an indicator icon for which weapon is being used as the weapon camera, and there is a weapon group indicator as well.
Also, not pictured, the icons do not disappear anymore when the weapons are destroyed. The weapon groups also do not consolidate (they used to skip groups that had all the weapons destroyed). I made this change because the old system was very confusing when you got hit with a lot of damage and when you look up, your weapon groups look completely different. Also, the icons have feedback for when the corresponding part is destroyed.
But, I didn’t stop there!
Since I was already polishing up the weapons, I went ahead and adjusted the tracer effect on the bullets. The old effect just wasn’t visible enough and it felt very weak. Here is a comparison shot:
I also added actual projectile meshes to all the tracers, so no more invisible sniper and howitzer rounds. Normally, that would be all I could get done in a week, but I was having some fun! So, muzzle flashes!
While only the assault rifle is shown, I added them to the shotguns, and machine guns as well. In fact, I ended up rewriting the entire system that handles muzzle flashes because I wanted to be able to do even more. The cannon weapon is the test weapon for the new muzzle system :
Well, that is all for this week! I will continue to work on the weapons. I like things that go BOOM!