It's been a hot minute ... holidays were cute ;)

I've been reworking the UI for mobile. Which, it turns out to no-one's great surprise, is a really diverse market where aspect ratio takes second place to pocketability. My goal has always been to turn out a 16:9 game ... something that should scale and shape well on most devices. 

Which it largely does, but playing Warmonger on my Pixel 4 was an unwelcome surprise.

So all the UI is getting a re-work ... all the maps too. In fact, the only thing I'm keeping as is are the character sprites because I just spent way too much time on them already. A big shout-out to https://wirehead42.itch.io/ for showing me how to use surfaces in Gamemaker 2 effectively.

The new maps are visually simplified and the UI components are now twice the size and moved into screen-sized menus. My big philosophical push for diegetic design was defeated by wanting a game I could release on mobile. Boo. There's simply not enough physical screen space to create an immersive in-world UI.

That being said, I kind of love it. I can finally show my working instead of trying to streamline everything.

I'm now able to show unit statistics and powers in a really boring, but totally useful way, providing actual data for players to make strategic decisions with ;p

What's left on my todo list? I've got Hero powers, UI upgrades, map reworks, the last 3 endgame levels and two monsters to make (one is the big bad). 

That's it. I'm aiming for a release late this year and right now, I'm feeling it.