In this progress report: visual improvements on the village houses and fences; animating the pause menu; a more modern save/load page.

At the time of the last progress report I said we've updated the village scene with some visuals. We thought we were done and then of course, we found some more things to improve. The first thing that came to mind is that the buildings look too similar.

Take a look:

Since this bit of update was my task, here's a bit of detail about my process (and of course, the result).

After a bit of ethnological research (thank you Google) I found that there are in fact many different shapes, colours and techniques when it comes to thatched roofs, doors, windows and decorations even if you are looking at one specific style of architecture. I know, it shouldn't have come as a surprise, really... Anyway, after looking at countless pictures of classic old, villagers' houses I sat down and thought about the backstory of the building I was working on.

From left to right...
The tavern is a relatively old establishment. They keep the building clean but you can see a bit of wear and tear, e.g. on the sign above the entrance.
The blacksmith opened his shop recently, so he's got a fancy new sign. He bought the building from someone. Business is going great, so he could afford to fix the roof, etc. He's got a pretty iron fence, showing off his talent.
Next, the gingerbread salesman. His house is very old. He's doing ok and his fence and gate are working just fine, he couldn't be bothered to refurbish.
The bootmaker's is the newest business in town. I mean village... His house is in tip-top shape, freshly painted and all.
Next door lies an average villager. Not too fancy, not too bad either, they are doing alright.
The last house on the lane is the Master and his Wife's house. They are sort of rich, so they have a fancy big house with the fancy door and arches and whatnot.

The last bit of improvement we added was the embroidery pattern on the ground. Here's the result.

Fun fact: The signs you will see in the game are actually written in Hungarian, using Old Hungarian script

The previous save/load panel looked really simple, just a filename and an 'X' to delete the file. Now, on top of having a better looking UI, we are also grabbing a screenshot for each save, and we will display your progress (in %) and the date your savegame file was created.

If you are following us on Twitter or Facebook, you might have already seen this, but here's how our menu crawls in when you hit pause in the game.

We think it's pretty cool.

In the next progress report we will hopefully bedazzle you with some cute character animations. Stay tuned.