After a couple months of work we have finished our next (and one of our larger overall projects): Interface & Infrastructure. This update is now out to play and contains three large major elements, Cog buildings, GUI, and our Settings Revamp. Each part required a lot of work and sometimes interconnected hence these things being put into one large update and giving the game a much more polished feeling while playing.
The Settings Revamp
This is something that we have set out to do for a while, before the update we had a long list of options that were not labeled by category of what they did, many users even mistaking that the game did not have WASD support due to how hard it was to find. In this update we have introduced four stickerbook tabs to the Options page being game, audio, visual, and control. We aimed to give the user more control over relevant options, you can now control the volume of specific audio options, things like Music, Audio, SFX, Environment, etc. Some options we have moved out of the options page and into a more fitting “Inventory” page.
The Inventory Page
The inventory page features Badges, Name Tags, Fishing Rods, Fishing Lures, and Codes. The badge page no longer exists and has been merged into the Inventory page, and other options like Name Tags, Fishing Rods, and Fishing Lines (formerly named Fishing Lures), Codes have been merged into the Inventory page as well, firstly to make more room for the options page but clarity in where to find things since these various options do not make sense to be found in the Options page.
GUI Overhaul
What started as a revamp to make the Friends List GUI more proper, as the search functionality formerly was separate from the friends list GUI evolved into a massive overhaul of the games primary GUI. One of the primary goals of this GUI was to bring up the GUI made before 2003 to the standards of the other GUI in the game made much later around 2010+. All of the main GUI, such as Speedchat icons, friends list, cattlelog (now with various states depending on if you have a delivery, new cattlelog, or both), and stickerbook have been revamped, excluding laff meters for a date. Not only the Primary GUI has been redone but also some other miscellaneous GUI such as the Dialog Boxes when you get a cattlelog notification or complete a battle, and the stickerbook page buttons. This project is not complete, and has more work to be done (That chat log GUI has to be redone at some point!)
Cog Buildings
As part of our goal to raise the bar of quality for the game we have decided to revamp the Cog buildings, as some of the previous decisions made for cog buildings were questionable (Cog boss heads, Cog body parts on the ground, and other random props placed around the area).
The first floor is the traditional boiler room containing 3D boiler props, messy wires, and a hum in the background. The second floor you walk in and you can hear the sounds of hundreds of Cogs in the background working, those in the cubicles now reflecting real Cogs rather than generic Cogs. On the third floor you encounter the boss Cog, with a new introduction and winning cutscenes alongside the revamped Boss room.
We are working hard to push out high quality updates to the community, feel free to stop by our discord and stay-up-toon-date on our progress, or give us feedback. We need all the help we can get to continue making the game great, so if you would like you can join the team [here](https://staging.opdessertstorm.com/team/apply).
