Since I’m kind of stuck progress-wise until I figure out what to do about the draw calls in my game, I decided I’d do a post on some of the updated graphics in BattleGrid. Looking over the images I’ve posted in some previous posts, I realized that things have changed a lot since I posted those images.
New Tile Graphics
Tiles have gotten two big updates – first, I reduced the number of planes used for a single tile from three (base, owner highlight, and an extra highlight) to one, which cuts the number of polygons on a single map by two-thirds. Always a good thing.
Second, I found a really cool (and more importantly, free) circuit board drawing that I put on the tiles. I love the way it looks, and it makes the grid a little less barren.
The “contested” tiles also got a graphics update. They’re now “cracked” tiles. I like them, but they’re likely to see some updates before the final version:
They look best on defense maps where it looks like the gateways have “infested” the map. Speaking of which…
New Gateway Texture
The original gateway texture hasn’t been shown before, but it was using a noise-generation function to animate the portal. It looked neat, but killed performance, so I scrapped it. I use a flat texture and a particle system now, which looks pretty good:
If the gateway looks a bit like the obsidian portals to the Nether from Minecraft, that’s good because it’s exactly what I intended. If they don’t… Well, that works, too.
New Buttons & Windows/Dialogs
I’ve said before I hate the gradient backgrounds on most of my buttons. The idea I’ve been thinking about for a while now is using scan line backgrounds, sort of like a holographic display. I finally created some, and I’ve updated practically the entire UI to use them.
The new “holographic” buttons come in two styles – the main menu buttons:
And the window/dialog style:
The dialogs themselves are supposed to look a bit like a holographic display. They’re lacking in depth, though, but with my new UI framework, I should be able to eventually do something about that.
The new UI uses a package called “NGUI”, which is actually pretty cool. I’ll write a separate post about NGUI soon, since it has totally changed how I think about the UI.
New Factory Model
The last time I mentioned factories, I said the factory was likely to see another model update, and they have. The new model looks a lot like the original:
However, this one is animated, so when it’s building the “wings” fold down and spin:
It looks pretty cool in action. I also added a “platform” under the factory to make it a bit easier to tell that the factory covers 9 tiles. The platform isn’t in these images because I took them before I added it. Maybe next time.