I’ve received a lot of comments from users patiently awaiting the features they’ve been asking for, and now that the 2018 Atlantic Hurricane Season has officially started it’s the right time to implement the first step towards completing the overhaul.
The old UI was not scalable and allowed no room for the new features requested. It only allowed for 6 buttons and two statistics, but my plan for this project more than doubles the amount of features. The bottom bar is now the main menu, and all associated sub-menus are displayed on the top bar.
My plan for the UI is as follows:
Controls
- Adjust storm likelihood (New, Live!): Allows the user to amplify or entirely disable the automatic random cyclone generator! If your hurricane season is too calm and boring, you can now make it hyperactive! Likewise, if too many storms are spawning, you can modify it to make it chill.
- Spawn storm: Will allow the user to select the desired start point and end point of a manually-generated storm system.
- Change ocean temperature: Will allow the user to change surface water temperature to affect how strong or weak storms will be.
Statistics (Live)
- Total damage (Original, unchanged)
- Highest winds (Original, formerly “Strongest Storm”)
- Lowest pressure (New, coming soon)
- Longest life (New, Live)
- Most damage (New, Live)
I may consider redesigning this further to include more statistics such as the accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) of the storm season and the total number of systems spawned throughout the simulation.
Options (Live)
- Hide cities
- Hide chat
- Erase paths
- View comments
- Change map style (New, Live - listed under controls)
Comment (Original)
- Comment menu
Donate (Original)
- Donate menu
Additionally, the in-game date will appear next to the “Storm Chance” gauge. The starting date will be June 1, the official start of hurricane season.
As as side note, I was considering changing the style to use the 3D world rather than a GUI for the game and using particles to represent the hurricanes. The early designs for this didn’t look good enough, so this is not guaranteed to be part of the update.
(Update): The map style has changed to a realistic map of the atlantic, and the user can set it to a night theme if desirable.