Wow! Things are coming along very nicely now! Last night, I was inspired in the rework of our interface. A few months back, when we were listing things to improve, Dan and I noted some ways to improve clicking while using items and special abilities in combat. Along those lines, Dan came up with a simplification of buttons and using the shape of item icons to indicate where they are used. Anyhow - last night, I was browsing around an art store (which I do love to do) and came upon a book on how to make Celtic Knots. That stuck in my head last night as I was integrating in the new minimalist button configuration. It all came together wonderfully and looks great!

Now I'm off to work on the combat system again. You might remember we're rewriting the engine using Popcap's Framework. Truly cool and upon reflection, we can see it was the "right thing to do". But that meant working through the codebase again - now leading me up to combat.

The map is wonderful - graphically stronger and the entire game is much tighter when you play. Snappier if you know what I mean. Of course, the real acid test is when we have several levels built and you can play from start to finish - and that's not too far away now. The largest areas of work are combat (going to start on that today), inventory (up next or in combination with combat) and the particle system (which I have to now do without the benefit of 3D specific system calls - but not to worry!). The Framework hasn't failed me yet and I trust it'll see us to completion at 60 FPS+ in play.