❖ Version History ❖

20th of November, 2020:
My last entry into the Design Journal happened nearly a month prior to this moment. At our previous point of conclusion, I had built the base design scheme for both the map and the flight decks, but I had only made a mock up of 5-6 cards out of a total 51 designs needed for this chunk of the game. In these three weeks that transpired, I did the finishing artwork needed on the complete set of Flight and Map cards. This probably took an estimated 80-100 hours of formatting, drawing, coloring, proofing, and editing. It was an overwhelming amount of work, but when it was finally finished much had been accomplished.

In order to start the massive task at hand, I needed to create a card editor that could be built to customize and design the Flight Cards individually. By doing this, I could simply import the correct photo, title, text, and data into each card, then save it as a copy so that I could reuse the background & frames while keeping a placeholder file for future touch-ups and edits. After building the editor itself, I went through and made a full set of designs for each and every aircraft:

Conclusively, we have a beautiful set of:
– 39 Flight Cards (Complete: Combat, Transport, and Rotorcraft Suits), so we can comfortably check that off of the list for the time being and get back to finishing the map cards as well.

To get the Map Cards designed was a totally different experience. Since there is no repetition of style other than the very outermost frame, most of this design process is simply an enormous pile of drawing. It takes me about eight different days of doing the foundation work and another two more for the final texture & coloring, but the colors are wonderful when they come out in the end.

With yet another thing finishing up for the time being from our checklist, it becomes time to move on to another sector of the design process once more:
play testing and refining the experience of the interactive mechanics.