I think I'm going to wait until Tuesday after all, rather than trying to rush this out Monday. Not for the HUD, as it turns out, but just general balance. As Keith continually (rightly) points out, I really should play through the entire game at least once.
Granted, I've "finished" plenty of games, haha -- but in all cases, it was my citizens winding up killing my civilization. No outside help needed! The main problem, that I only realized this afternoon, was that I was starting to absolutely drown in trash and disease because of a couple of mis-set variables. Tuning those things has brought the "oh my god I'm going to die constantly" feeling of the start of the game waaaay down, which is where I want it. The risk of death in the first 100 turns should be next to nothing -- of course, you might really be sowing the seeds of your later destruction, and if you are really careless then still you can die then. But it shouldn't be the white-knuckle experience I've been having. That comes... later.
Anyway, today was a lot of working on the worst interface bits that were really frustrating me (not the main HUD stuff, which is just a lack of organization -- that the new HUD addresses), but rather things like the tech popups, etc. And then working on the balance of crime, trash, and pollution, with a bonus of figuring out what was causing diseases to be so incredibly deadly so fast.
In the past I got the other aspects of the game feeling the way I wanted, with the crown costs, SP gains and costs and rates of acquisition, the balance of buildings with how they produce and consume energy, the power costs and attack strengths of buildings, the tech tree and its various costs and progressions, etc. Oh, and the whole supply chain thing for food to meals and that plus housing to a population "cap," along with the way that jobs are handled. The food supply chain may still need some interface work (there are some things there that bug me that you guys can probably help me figure out), but the actual underlying function of it is good I think.
Anyway, I was so focused on all that before that I somehow missed this glaring combination of trash and pollution feeding into my crime problems. It makes me wonder what else I missed, and makes me want to have another day of just playing through the game. There aren't any more interface things bothering me at the moment that need addressing prior to beta, so that puts the focus on pure mechanics now, which is good.
Anywho. Tuesday.
