Closing Out the Vault

It took several days but we finally finished the design for all 50 magical items!  The results came out very nice:

Each item now has a unique icon, visible here in the magic shop and in a player's vault.  There are still many more icons to create, including Heroes (22), Badges (50), Troops (48), and Classes (7).  For now, though, we are moving on to Travel, which will allow players to traverse the continents by land, sea, and magic.  Here is the concept we used for the Kickstarter campaign:​

The idea was to have a scrollable map where players will tap to travel to each city or continent.  There are 3 continents in Conquest! and each one has different cities.  Additionally, the number of cities is variable by continent.  The game server lays out the cities on a 10x10 grid when a new age begins.  This is used to determine travel costs between cities.  The mobile client will take those coordinates and plot them on the map.  I have already modified the "MAP" command to send these coordinates.  When a player enters the travel screen the client will fetch this information from the server and render the map.  At least, that is the current design plan.
I believe this will have some unique challenges in Unity (as each new scene does).  One thing I am concerned about is the server never had the concept of a graphical map; therefore, the coordinates for each city were just 2 random numbers.  However, it might look strange if a port city is in the middle of a continent.  I will have to adjust the algorithm to put port (and coastal) cities on the edges.
I also completed prototypes for the Log, Private Messages, Journal, and Population screens.  The first three use the same scene underneath, as the information they display is very similar.  Once we get some of these other major items out of the way, we can circle back around and make these look better.

Follow the journey on Facebook or Twitter.  Until next time, I hope to see you in the game.