WW1 - No Man's Land Devlog 9

This one is going to be brief, but wanted to share some of the progress i've made on art, one of the things I mentioned last time as on my TODO list.

The Tileset

I mentioned in my last devlog, I wasn't quite happy with the tileset, as it felt too busy. Due to this, I experimented with a more simplified design for the dirt patterns, and this is the result:

Overall, i'm way happier with this one. I think the smaller amount of detail allows the troops and battlefield decorations (like broken trees) to stand out way better. (By the way, did I mention that the trees will not only be there for looks? They too will have a mechanic wherein troops can take cover behind them, and they will also react to battlefield events like shells blowing up next to them). 

My own explosion effects

Also mentioned last time, the explosion effects used up to now have been temp art. I finally got around to making my own. I went with 2 variants, 1 for the larger artillery shells and another smaller one for grenades: 

New UI Art

Also made some huge progress on a lot of the final UI art for the game, varying from the main menu, to the multiplayer room slots, to updating the card art, etc. 

Was trying to think of a way to present in-game dialogs like drawn card info, battle results, etc., to the player in such a way that it fits with the theme of the game. With that goal in mind, I came up with using an opening war-letter envelope, from which things like drawn card dialogs, or battle results, will then slide out of:

The drawn card UI, along with various other in-game dialog boxes and drop down menus will make use of UI similar to what the room slot UI shown above is using: weathered paper that has space for text to be displayed on it, or images (for the cards), etc:

German Troops

Perhaps the biggest thing I am about to do: the frames for the german troops. I already got the design for this troop, so now it's just a matter of extending it into all the frames needed to get it animated, which is probably going to be a tedious process. Here is a quick pic though of what the first idle frame looks like:

Final notes

For my next steps, going to keep hammering on the German troop frames, since having the 2 factions will be crucial for the playable version. As usual, thanks for checking this out!