Rework (G)UI

[Wrzlprnft]

There are a couple of issues with the current user interface

• the font is far from ideal for paragraphs of text
• there is no way to adjust the settings
• attribution/credits are lumped in with instructions
• instructions are a wall of text, incomplete and partially incomprehensible
• there is hardly any information on turret building options
• ring rotation speed needs hotkeys (to complement the turret building via mouse)
• ring rotation buttons are far off the side
• health, money and time/score is far off the side
• highlight mount points still empty
• station and turrets need to be easier to distinguish

[Wrzlprnft]

In order to be able to adress the issues above, i deemed it necessary to separate out the main menu screen layout from the gameplay layout. The main menu is going to keep the current one.

For actual gameplay, i decided to center the station and add bars on both sides of the screen.

• Health, money and score/time are in distinct places and should be able to be read at a glance or naturally during gameplay
• turret rotation speed controls should be easily accessible, with hotkeys to select a ring to rotate the size of the buttons should allow for visual highlighting

Turret mount selection is still accomplished via mouse, but the menu itself swaps with the rotation speed menu:

• space for more turret types
• space for information about turrets
• buttons large enough should help convey what's affordable and what not.
• in this separate build mode, empty turret mount points could be highlighted

Additionally, a pause/escape/pause-menu is going to house the settings as well as the instructions.
The credits are going to move into the main menu.

coincidentally, this control scheme seems to be more friendly to mobile devices too, but the sheer amount of turret moints is always going to be hard on phone-sized screens.

[Wrzlprnft]

In 078a647 the intended structure during gameplay has been implemented with correct aspect-ratio-keeping. Though, that is only the panel structure, not actually any interaction, and the game crashes due to a hardcoded path no longer being correct.

The next step would be to figure out how to switch between the previous main menu screen and the new game layout without breaking the dynamic resizing functionality just introduced.

[Wrzlprnft]

In 078a647 the intended structure during gameplay has been implemented with correct aspect-ratio-keeping.

Unfortunately, the introduced solution seems incompatible with the preexisting start-game animation. The preexisting Godot node which provides the width-control functionality also doesn't allow for the smooth animation i'd like to use to slide the GUI-Panels in from outside the scene. The solution would be to hack/abuse even more of it's existing behaviour, or write a clean and minimal custom container which controls the width of it's components as well as does the animation to switch between scenes.

Edit: and just as i sent that i had an idea, and it works. it isn't pretty, but will do for now.

[Wrzlprnft]

ee36a8b features the new layout, though not yet with the correct proportions.
Which also broke all the hardcoded scripts from the gamejam. cleaning that up and making the GUI functional again is the next step

[Wrzlprnft]

I've come to the conclusion that this is too much empty real estate, for the sake of mobile playability... where one can't really see the turret spots anyway, because it's too small.