I’ve been searching for a clever solution to an issue I’ve had with factories since I introduced the “5 active units per factory” limit: how do I show the player how many units are active?
The straightforward solution is to display some sort of bar above the factory, like a 5-segment progress bar that fills up depending on how many units are active. I didn’t really want to do this, though. Mostly because my experiments in getting UI elements to line up with 3D objects have been unsuccessful.
One of my other ideas was some sort of antenna on the factory that sent out little pulses to the units periodically. I liked the idea, but it doesn’t solve the problem – there’s still no indication of how many units are active unless a player waits for the next pulse and counts the pulses. I liked the idea, though, so it’s been sitting in the back of my head a while.
Then today, a neat idea struck me that I thought I’d try out. Enter the new factory:
The new factory is a bit more compact than the old, but for good reason. It needs some room for the new drones that hover around it:
A new drone is spawned for each unit the factory builds, so you can easily see how many units are active by counting the number of drones. And every few seconds, the drones send out one of those “pulses” I mentioned:
The pulses seek out the unit the drone is attached to. These pulses look fantastic (a screenshot doesn’t do them justice) and add a little new animation to the game.
The factories are likely to get another change later since I’m not totally satisfied with the new look, and the pulses, while looking pretty cool in-game, are still a little drab, so I’ll have to dress them up a bit.