After reworking the Shop Menu and the Character Selection screens I told myself, “No more big systems for a while…”

So naturally, I’m working on another big system.

This time I am reworking the player HUD (Heads-Up Display, for those unaware) that tells the players what is going on with their ships.

Reworked Player HUD

At a glance, it looks pretty similar to the older version aside from the slanted edge. Indeed, not much more info has been added to the HUD… at least at first glance. While it now has that stylish slant it also has the ability to use animations.

So far, I’ve created an intro animation. This will play at the start of a level, when a new player joins, or when you come from the pause or continue screen.

This, as you might imagine, is super slick when multiple players are in the game. Right now, I’m still working on the other HUD states. For instance, the HUD needs to shrink when unused.

Here’s another feature I’ve added:

The health now changes color as you get damaged. The health even begins to flash as you are near death! This is useful for reading health from your peripheral vision. When you’re busy dodging, it’s tough to take a moment and check your health. Now, you don’t have to.

In fact, this feature was suggested by the community. We are always listening to you guys and really do value your opinions and suggestions. Feel free to drop us a line in the comments below or on our various social media channels (Facebook and Twitter).

Firestarter

While I was working the new HUD, Lane got busy making new parts.

The first part, the Firestarter, turns you into a devastating long-range turret. As long as you fire the gadget, you’ll launch explosive fireballs in whichever direction you choose. The longer you use the Firestarter, the faster it will shoot. This comes with a price, however: while shooting, you’re slowed to a near-standstill.

The design goal of the Firestarter is to turn a player into an objective the team must protect. It dishes out unparalleled damage, but its immobile user can be torn apart in seconds by enemy fire. Before, we’d built parts that allow players to tank. Now, we’re making parts that reward tanking.

Teleporter

The second part is called the Teleporter. It… pretty much does what the name suggests. It lets you warp around the battlefield really fast. Or, if you hold it down for a moment, it lets you power up for bigger warps, letting you pull off some pretty impressive defensive tricks.

The goal here is to provide a fun way to boost movement speed without making characters harder to control. In this phase of design, we’re adding several enemies with zone-control attacks and exploitable weak points. As we continue, movement gets more and more valuable. We also wanted a defensive option that doesn’t require fine control of the analog stick. Lastly, teleportation is just plain fun.

Lots of new things being added to the game! Please leave us a message as we do read, listen and respond!