Part 1, Lessons learned. Around three years ago I was just getting my feet wet in the world of 3D modeling; we were working our buts off building the new 3D engine that became Galactic Civilization II, and I hoping to get in on making the ships. However as the newest artist on the team, I was mostly playing catch-up, I spent the bulk of my time on the UI, and stole a little time here and there to learn basic box modeling and texturing.   The team was only 6 of us, 2 Co...

Designing the Galactic Civilizations 2 User Interface, Part 4: Beta 2. Major Screen Changes.   I have not been keeping up with The UI design journals, mostly because I have been very busy doing screens, and because I have been doing some major changes - not all of them will be apparent to the testers - and some will not be even be implemented in Beta 2. But there has been allot of cool stuff done over the last few months. I will try and sum up some of the UI highlights. ...

Designing the Galactic Civilizations 2 User Interface, Part 3: Getting ready for the Beta.      This week we made a few new screens and some major tweaks to several of the existing ones. One of the coolest new features in GalCiv 2 is going to be ship design. At first we were going to have ship building and ship designing done in one screen. After a little play testing it became obvious that we were going to have to break them in two separate screens.  ...

Designing the Galactic Civilizat Designing the Galactic Civilizations 2 User Interface. Part 2: The Great Mini Map Controversy of Ought Five.       It seams odd to me that we are nearing our first beta for Galactic Civilizations 2 and I am only now on Part 2 of designing the interface. This is for a few reasons. I have been buried under the task itself, as well as 16 hundred other little projects that I keep trying to find time to ...

Designing the Galactic Civilizat Designing the Galactic Civilizations 2 User Interface. Part 1:   I have been wanting to do a weekly blog on the progress of the Galactic Civilizations 2 user interface. Unfortunately I seem to have missed the first 12 weeks of it, so I will have to go back and cover some of the milestones of its design as time allows. One thing that is going to make things nice in Galactic Civilizations 2 is that the game...