Development Sneak Peek: New UI!

Hey all, hope May has started well for you!!

I mentioned this on Tumblr yesterday, but I've been working on a new UI for AToC for the past week!! It's got the Settings API that allows users to edit fonts, font size and switch between light mode and dark mode. It also has a responsive mobile layout so you can comfortably play the game in portrait mode now.

There are still some parts I'm not entirely happy with. Foremost is that some of the images aren't sized ideally on mobile vertically, such as the LI portraits, and the Arsurian map and calendar. They look a bit tiny when viewed in portrait mode, but if you rotate your phone to landscape you'll be able to see them better.

There's also somewhat of a thing with dark mode since several of my images (such as the story act banners, D's letter, the symbol in R's route, the Arsurian calendar) use black fonts. I edited the images so that in dark mode you'll see them outlined with a light glow to make them visible, but again, it's not ideal. They're not very readable haha, but I figure that's what the text descriptions are for!

Also, in some mobile browsers, the pop-ups for the settings options don't seem to work - or maybe it's specific to Android/my phone. Like, they'll briefly pop open and then immediately close again before you can select anything.

I managed to get it working on Firefox, but as always, itch.io is very finicky, so if the pop-ups don't work for you, try opening the game in a different browser!!

You can test out the new UI here. Small note: I customized it in a duplicate file of the main game in order to fiddle around without breaking the main game, so Twine registers it as a "different" game, which means your saves won't work on it, unfortunately.

Let me know what you think!! If you have specific feedback/suggestions to improve the UI, you can submit them anonymously here. I'd love to know if the new dark mode and font options make the game more readable, especially on mobile!!

I can't make any promises on implementing suggestion though, since I'm not a programmer or a graphic designer. So anything more complicated than "can you edit this color/add a font/make this thing bigger" will be beyond me lol.

Thanks in advance, I hope you like the new UI 💖