Another day, another stream. This one was focused primarily on adding and polishing the card UI, after adding the basic underpinnings of the card system yesterday.

I'm quite proud of some of the details in this UI: The card piles will appear to increase and decrease in size as you draw and discard cards, and you can hover over a pile to see how many cards are left.

If you hover over a card in hand, it will raise up to show it is selected. This is similar to card-playing UI in other games i've seen. This UI is also designed to handle arbitrary hand sizes with grace. If there's more than 3 cards in hand you won't be able to see the full face of the card unless it is being hovered over.

You can click on a card to play it, or press the 1-9 keys to play the first 9 cards.

I was hoping to make the card movement a bit more smooth and animated, but by the time all the hand-size shenanigans were sorted, I didn't have enough brainpower left over to wrap my head around the requirements.

I also like that I have the card frames populated from "data" rather than fixed images. Each one is displayed with it's own name, and an image if it is available. My hope is to be able to specify these in a config file, rather than in code.

Next Steps

I'm in two minds about where to go next:

1.  Begin implementing the deeper combat mechanics, including the combat statistics and actions for different cards.
2. Overhaul the UI system to enable better polish, animations and visual tweaks.

Both of these things will have an impact on how the game is received, but I suspect that item 1 is more pressing currently. The card system has enough polish to look "complete", but can always be enhanced later.

Find Out More

You can follow a majority of the game's development by following me on Twitter, subscribing to my twitch stream here, or catching up on my YouTube channel.