The UI is one of the first things I started to work on before Super Combat Squadron even had a name.

The original development title we used internally was simply "Swat Game" despite the fact that the game did not feature Swat teams in any capacity. Even now the folder I keep my development assets in is called "Swat".

The earliest screenshot I can show you. At this point in time, there was no game, there was no code, Super Combat Squadron was nothing but an idea. The idea of hotkeys didn't exist yet, neither did a minimap. The hud was concepted out over top of a screenshot from AW.

In the bottom right you can see a small button for 'Move, Attack, Hold, and Patrol' commands, but this element would be dropped in later versions.

The next version after that. It looks the same over all, but here we've added the idea of a Minimap, the panel readout of information on the unit you are selecting has been expanded to represent the effects of the terrain on its stats, and already the MAHP button is gone, replaced by the Build menu. (now given a B hotkey)

No code existed still as of yet.

Above is the first major milestone in Super Combat Squadron development. AW background was thrown out. The idea of having 'Commanders' was finally given representation, and their ability to have abilities, shown by the atomic bomb with the Q hotkey. I tossed together a quick temp sprite based off of the Fire Emblem sprite heads and for the first time we conceived of having a much larger screen-space as things had started to become very cluttered.

Things moved rapidly at this point. The sprite art was deemed too small and thrown out in favor of the large sprites we'd eventually adopt. Nell from AW was used as a placeholder to judge the size of character sprites, and ideas such as a Day/Night cycle clock were experimented with at the top, and how many powers a CO would have, similar to a hero you would see in a MOBA game like League or Dota.

The Minimap has grown enormously but now we're struggling to find places for all the information that needs to be read out to the player at any given moment.

Starting to look familiar now isn't it? The Temp CO is moved to the right side, the information read-out stays relatively unchanged from this point onward however the Minimap square proves to be too small for practical purposes.

'Experience' points are tested out for the CO. as well as you saw in the previous design. No solid place for these has yet been figured out, and the name plate under the hero is still temp.

And now we've finally reached today. In concept art, we have our own nice font for things but that is as of yet not implemented in-engine. The CO is missing an experience bar, and a plaque with their name on it. The Minimap has grown ever larger. The Build button still exists in the bottom left but as of now it serves no purpose, building is done by clicking on the structure itself.

It's almost due for another strong evaluation again. We want to target both PC and Mobile markets so its important to consider things like 'When you only have a single finger to click, you cant do things like hotkeys, control groups, precise hitboxes for selecting things, or all sorts of fancy controls that the PC can.

Thing's that are unsatisfactory about the current HUD for me:

• The CO's name has no place anywhere, and perhaps the CO image is too large as it is now?
• They aren't shown here but I would like to have a bar along the bottom middle showing off the various CO abilities (yet unimplemented) and in the same location will likely be where CO. experience will be shown. 
• Just as important as your own CO is the CO's of your enemies and allies. Popular MOBA place thumbnails of them in places like along the top bar or lined up on the left, which are both places to consider.
• In every HUD version but the current, the number and types of units you have fielded show on the left, a feature I'd like to see implemented again, but the code is just not quite there yet. It In the same place should be read-outs on how many flags and building structures you posses as well. 

What do you think? The GUI is far from complete or perfect, and every version tweaks it slightly. Perhaps the Minimap will move to the bottom left corner and the info readout will become lengthwise again? Only the future will tell.

General Revamp

As I work on newer and newer commanders, the early ones start to look worse in comparison to the improved style of the later ones, so today I spent a great deal of today simply touching up all the commanders, fixing jagged edges I missed initially, changing parts I was unsatisfied with, and general polish.

As of yet they're still far from the final complete ready for launch final versions, but with each pass they get closer to that eventual state. These four will likely be the only commanders you see for a while as there are lots of other areas that need artwork, and four is a nice round number to do testing with once we've gotten to the point we can implement the distinct gameplay difference commanders bring.

Update #2

Plugging away at the game. Code-wise we've implemented many quality of life features such as arrows keys to pan camera and click+dragging the camera on the minimap.

The AI has gotten smarter as well, rather than bee-lining towards the enemy HQ, it now spreads out intelligently to capture points across the map.

Artwise I've made a handful of alpha explosions, working on some new CO's, and new units as always.

Progress Report.

Hey everyone, brief update on how we're coming along.

I'm happy to introduce the first 99% done Commanding Officer, who is as of yet still unnamed but not un-arted.

As you can see, she went through multiple iterations to get to the stage she's at now, but over all I'm satisfied with the look and feel, the earlier ones were too stiff and amateur (but they were done relatively quickly at the time). I may make the earning team colored in the future as well, as at the smallest size it can be difficult to tell what team color she is.

I also have animations to show off. As usual, all designs are in flux as we develop the game to see what does or doesn't work:

Left side: idle/walking animations
Right side: shooting animations.
Not all units can shoot or have shooting animations as of yet, but in the future some of those will gain some.

All units are done with a very simple 3 frame cycle. Two frames for an idling animation, sped up when moving to give the illusion of walking. The firing animation cycles between the first and third frame, and no other art is necessary. I considered early on giving units animations for facing all four (or eight) possible directions of motion, but ultimately as the only artist it would be too great of an investment and compromised with this solution.

The engine itself is coming along nicely. It's playable but not yet solid enough to be called a game, despite its many game-like elements. In the coming weeks we plan on pushing out an alpha with all the core mechanics like unit building, base capturing, resource generation, and good pathing, but we're still some ways away from that.