User Ergonomics 2026

Cute Feet

 Flaming June was particularly flaming, at least that's what the troglodytes of the MSM would want us to believe. At one point I found my father wearing a Christmas Jumper in the hope of staving off hypothermia ... admittedly that was only a single and abbarent occaision, and it has mostly been "PIGGING HOT".

So, ignoring straining CPU/GPU fans, we have still been productive on the development front.

This has mostly been about a continuation of enlistment with the AI raiding parties, and interfacing information of what the hecking doolalies the NPC are doing, so the player does not feel random embafflement as they just follow the Ai around blindly.

 This has all been part of upgrading the ergonomics, aka user comfort, of having an actual human bean, interfacing with the whole game environment, and not expecting them to be telepathic as to what my actual intentions were when designing the game. This has naturally been more of pain in the bottom than expected, and taken longer than desired due to faffing with GUIs.

There has also been some faffing with testing engine upgrades, due to Sony, that massive billion dollarooney corporation having created the model format the game engine relies on, somewhat ignoring it's own creation over the years, leading to Blender 3D dropping the exporter plugin recently. This has resulted in FBX becoming the dominant format, and a whole lot of engine rewriting to make certain that it actually works as intended.

 So after a month of mostly record breaking sweatiness, interspaced with a small period of freezing bloody cold, we have come to the stage of having to create the final parts of the User Interface, so the squidgy human (at least we hope it's going to be human but you can't tell these days) can actually get the game to work as the designer intended.

Next up, some branding images, and the long processes of a Steam submission, hoping that I have remembered all of the things required to pass said Steam submission process. 

Players Can Interface With The Interface Part Deux

 March comes to an end ... with me starting a blog in the same manner as February, whinging about the weather ...

I had hoped to bravely remove the winter duvet but I got snowed and hailed on earlier and the wind is coming directly from the Artic. The winter duvet is staying in place.

Behold Stats!

What Does What

Other things which can be construed as mildly irritating is the amount of time I have spent making the Game User Interface, actually useable to the game user ...

As ever, whatever part of indiedev appears somewhat straight forwards suddenly become incredibly convoluted and the gamepad useable menu system has been just this. This included making a brand new input system for button selection that uses both vertical and horizontal selection, including uneven rows and columns.

Blast Monsters

 The statistics were not such a problem as setting out the tutorial in a way that the player could easily digest. Highlighting individual HUD elements seemed the best way of doing this and giving a brief explanation of what the player was seeing in game with any key/button related actions to that element, based on the player's currently selected input type. Now there are some stock engine ways of doing this but instead I wrote my own so all button selection goes through a custom input script.

Win Loot

 This useful and problematic in it's own manner, especially with the input system losing focus if you tabbed out or opened the console, but did give immediate response for sudden changes of input. I wrote my own custom key/input remapping system.

 

Get Swag!

So after a monumental kerfufle, the userable user interface is finally useable by people who are not me and do not know what everything does or means.

Next up is actually getting a build uploaded to Steam.

Players Can Interface With The Interface

February comes to an end. February, a month when the weather is so bad that it was shortened, so it would end quicker. The fence blew down, I got soaking wet and snowed on.

Anyhoo, that is enough of Johnny Britisher's favourite past-time of whinging about the weather.

Whilst the actual gameplay of the game has been working fine for years - the actual getting to and from said gameplay has been a bit of an unreadable mess. It has long been a spaghetti of various and conflicting buttons for starting a new game and hidden console commands for loading saved data.

 First screen when starting a game gives the player the opportunity to load a saved game - if there is one. This gives basic information about the saved file such as the player's previously chosen character, level progress and difficulty. It also displays the character portrait and the portrait of the level boss. If either of these cannot be found it defaults to showing the "unknown" portrait, which is a tentacle who's shape resembles a question mark.

  Starting a new game allows the player to first chose difficulty - which still requires some artwork for the settings - and then moves to the character selection screen. In the stock game there will eventually be a choice of 8 cosplays to dress you catgirl up in, each with their own stats and ability displayed. At initial release there will be 4.

This is "Sunrise", she likes walks on the beach, drinking cocktails and large calibre handguns. She is a range-based class with medium maneuverability, low strength (for pushing monsters out the way) and her evasion is a simple speed boost. Bonus points if you can name the movie this character references.

This is "Southern Hospitality" - because I don't want suing by some US drinks corporation. She likes riding through mud, drinking bourbon and blasting gators with a sawn-off. She is slower rate of fire but high damage, mixed range class, with medium maneuverability, medium strength for shoving, and an evasion which allows her to both vanish and run through monsters to escape.

And here is what it all looks like in action on video:

So, that was the shortened and rather soggy month of February 2022, were I made the interfaces for getting the game to actual work to be player friendly. There's still a few things to finish off like extending this to settings and adding statistics button to the Main Menu screen, but things are at least working quite nicely now.