Hoarder Alpha - Week 3 update news

Whatever I was doing, the GUI still looked like a teenager made it in the school's computer laboratory during brakes.

The NGUI is a very powerful tool and the results are shown here :

I'm very satisfied with the GUI now. It looks crisp and professional. Not to add that it is impervious to resolution and aspect changes, much better draw calls rate etc.
It is not yet finished..still have some scenes to work on, but overall this is the right step.

Full change log :

- A big part of the GUI is now moved to NGUI. It looks much more polished and looks crisp no matter the resolution.

- Locked towns cannot be selected for battle.
I think this adds to the overall feeling of improvement that the player should have. As more victories accumulate, more settlements are unlocked in the map view.

- Tooltips for towns indicating the probable difficulty of the battle and what type of enemies will be present.
This was a requested feature. It is easier to prepare for a battle if you have some general idea on what to expect.

- The rest of the human units are implemented to a total of 7 types of enemies.
The units are :
Militia - low survivability unit which is used in great numbers to delay advancing armies.
Archer - good in conjunction with the militia to keep focused fire over the enemy. Also they have low health and damage.
Swordman - the foundation of the human army. Versatile fighter which is relatively cheap and easy to train but has good speed and medium attack and health.
Cleric - Somewhat similar to the Swordman, but it moves slower, making it very efficient as defense unit rather than attack.
Crossbowman - Veteran archers are promoted to crossbowmen. Damage is high, but mobility and health are still medium at best.
Steam Golem - Huge mechanical construct which throws boulders at enemies. It's health and damage are good but the mobility is low. It is used to aid armies that are pushing forward on the battlefield, instead of quick attacks.
High Priestess - Years spent in practicing magic blessings and holy smites, made these women a force on the battlefield. Magic shields protect them from damage, while they smite enemies with holy light.

- New settlement models added to the World Map.
Inspired from Total Wars series, these models should bring an upgrade to the map view, making the player delve deeper in the worlds lore and design.

- New Dark Tower model. It is fully modular and its looks changes as it is improved.
This is a very important piece of art in the game. The player spends a lot of time looking at it and thinking how to improve it further. I think it is nicely done and modularity adds a bit to the feeling of achievement / improvement.

Bug fixing and optimizations :
- Improved code that handles the minion camp around the Dark Tower in Tower View.
- Fixed Ranged AI targeting and projectiles a bit.
- Fixed variable initialization for some of the variables that were saved each game session .
- Fixed a bug where artifacts were not looted.
- Fixed a bug where multiple buildings were built in one click if there was enough gold.

That's about it for this week.
If you like the game, please don't forget to track it.
As always you can test it here:
Web Player (120 Mb version)