Monday, December 31, 2012

Gridrion Solitaire #36

This is kind of cool:


That's GS running on Eli's ultrabook in tablet mode. Full touchscreen support automatically. I played a full game last night with the touchscreen and had zero problems. And that's a terrible picture from my phone, because it looked terrific on the tablet--bright and colorful.

Last week, I was working on the playoff bracket. I realized over the weekend that I was missing something obvious--instead of making the playoff bracket a kind of sloppy overlay of the team hub, I could make it very precise by overlaying just the center panel. Here's how it turned out:


I'm not totally sold on the background color of that canvas, but otherwise, I think it's complete. And the more precise use of that panel really appeals to the layout neatnik in me.

I also had one more thought last night. The offseason mini-game has been revamped to be more challenging, but there's one area that's very weak visually, and that's the outcome reveal. Here, have a look:

 
Man, that's bland. I've never liked it, but until yesterday, I couldn't think of anything else to do, really. There's just no personality on this screen compared to when the cards are first dealt, which looks like this:


Theoretically, at least, there's lots of personality there, with song titles and player descriptions all adding some flavor to the card.

At some point, it hit me that the "+" or "-" don't really take up nearly as much space as the artist title, the card description, and the card rating. That's quite a bit of available space. Why not have Fredrik draw images that would clearly show the card outcome (comically, if possible), and just overlay the image onto the available space?

The card name ("run offense"), "new ranking", and "old ranking" will stay on the card, but the "center box" is going to have an image instead of + or - symbols. Well, it's possible there will be semi-transparent arrows over the image, just in case some people don't understand the images, but the image is going to be the main focus.

I'm always trying to jam more of Fredrik's art into the game, because I think so highly of the personality that he infuses into everything he draws. Maybe next week I'll have something new to show you.

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