Reflector Monthly Update - May 2020

The Great UI Rewrite

May was focused on the big UI redesign for Alpha 2. The main goals of redesign are:

Everything should be fully usable with only the mouse or only the keybaord
All important information should be visible at a glance without needing to "inspect" anything or take any other actions
Controls and mechanics should be easily discoverable

I've made good progress, especially on the first two points. Here's a gif demonstrating the changes and below that, a detailed list:

GIF

Production buildings emit smoke when they are being worked, indicating how many colonists are working there
Colonists light up the windows when home, indicating how many are currently in the residence
The tile that the cursor is hovered over in the map is highlighted
Right click the map to access a menu of actions available for that tile
In the side bar, display the contents of the highlighted tile
In the side bar, display the actions available for the highlighted tile, along with their keyboard shortcuts
Keyboard controls for changing the highlighted tile (shift + direction moves the highlighted tile)
Keyboard controls for moving the character (arrows, wasd, or vim keys)
Keyboard controls for aiming and firing the laser (ctrl + direction to aim, press again to fire)
Mouse controls in sidebar for aiming and firing the laser
Click the map to cycle between placing a reflector, rotating it, or removing it. Also works by pressing space or enter
Lots of miscellaneous changes and refactoring to support all of the above

The first part of June will be dedicated to the remaining major pieces of the new UI: build controls (in progress), the status panel, the resources panel, and the jobs panel. Beyond that, I have a long list of smaller UI enhancements, but at that point I'll likely start alternating between playtesting/balancing and working on the UI. For alpha 1, testing by both myself and others revealed a lot of UI improvements, so I want to get that started as soon as the new UI is "good enough".