Weekly devlog #24 - HD user interface

Hey everyone, this week's devlog is about me working on a new HD user interface. I also want to thank the ko-fi supporters for giving me feedback on some of the early designs!

Why the change?
When I started making Crystal Realms, I chose to use pixel art for the UI, because I wanted to have a consistent art style.

But the problem with pixel art is that it is hard to scale up. I can for example not scale up the UI by 10%, because there is no such thing as 1.10 pixels. And this was causing some problems on mobile devices. Another issue is that it is hard for me to scale text up or down. For each text size I basically need a completely different font.

So I decided to bite the bullet, and change the entire ui to be HD instead of pixel art.

The initial design
So last Friday I started learning how to make vector art. I have never done that before, so that was something new to me. But I think I got the hang of it. Then on Saturday I experimented a bit with new UI styles, and I decided to try something completely different:

I prefer this a lot over the old UI. But it seems too close to Pixel Worlds and Growtopia, and it doesn't fit Crystal Realms that much.

Next design
So the next day I designed a new style that is closer to what it was before, and I will be going with this style for now:

That's it for this week's devlog. I am happy with how the new UI turned out, and from the feedback I have gotten, most people seem to prefer this over the old UI. In a few days I will also update the game with some new items.