And this week was… 1 completed item. So officially behind schedule now (by more than expected- though another item will be completed tonight or tomorrow). Getting back on schedule is going to be crazy difficult, but I have plans to try to manage it. Realistically, 2 items per week would have been a more doable schedule.

This week, outside of getting things functional, saw a lot of interface design time optimization. At first there was going be a dedicated “you won the battle!” screen detailing experience, gold, items, etc. Eventually gold/experience/levels gained got reduced to a relatively quick animation getting played on top of the player- reducing necessary player clicks by one.

There was also initially going to be two item gain screens- one to pick which item you want from the total pool available to the party, and then another where you picked what you wanted to do with it (sell/equip/take) as well as which specific item when given a “choose one from”. This was reduced to a single table screen with the item information and each action mapped to a button, reducing a worst case 3 clicks down to 1 click. This kind of minor quality of life stuff gets glossed over a lot, but in a game that’s trying to streamline the required play time as much as possible it’s absolutely critical (plus it’s just plain nicer to play with regardless).