Bleak Devlog 2/12/15

Fair amount of work has been done since the last update. In no particular order, here's the big changes

Primary control of the camera has been switched from WASD keys to the Keyboard Arrow Keys. Whilst WASD is more common for control schemes, this switch frees up the QWERTY key line for hotkeys.

Hotkeys you say? Why does Bleak need hotkeys all of a sudden?

Because gone is the old buildings area of the UI, instead now replaced by this smaller, lighter, brighter, more adjective-y Contextual area. Contextual in the sense that it changes depending on what building in the game scene the player last clicked, to take a leaf out of Starcraft's book. The different panels can also be accessed from the QWERTY keys, providing the contextual building has been built at least once.

To help sell the mood in the upcoming private alpha, I've added a tentative musical track, which can be listened to here. Music fans might be able to recognise this as a portion of Holst's Jupiter Movement. For the purposes of BLEAK however, it's been slowed down 50% to turn this recognisable, patriotic tune into something quite redolent and sinister. It captures the mood of the game quite well, and suits as a useful track to convey what I'm looking for in a main track.

The map selection screen got an update, it's now got another side that details what the player's going to expect on the other side of this screen. It's just got the one map, and I don't think there'll be any others for the hand in, so there's an element of fiction to this screen, but it's helping to convey what I want to get across.

And finally, I'm proud to announce that the generic buildings no longer include any temporary greyboxes, although that's not to say that what they do have are the finished assets.

Next devlog: A glimpse into the creative process behind Bleak.