Big update this week -- so big, it took two weeks of work!

CONTROLLER SUPPORT: Most of the work went into recoding the game to accept controller and keyboard input in addition to mouse input. This also meant paying off a lot of technical debt as I adjusted how the game focuses on and targets cards. The not-so-reliable floating selector has gone by the wayside and the game is generally a lot smarter about knowing what you want to do next. I'm still chasing down some issues with card animation and grid displays, but most of the bugs have been hammered out.

The basic controls are as follows:

• D-Pad / Arrow Keys: basic movement of focus between buttons and cards
• A Button / Space: Activates buttons and cards
• B Button: Cancels actions or goes to previous screens
• Y Button: Get more information on cards and, eventually, other game features
• X Button: Special actions such as ending your turn.

My goal is to have intuitive controls that just do what you'd expect, but there will be help and remapping functions creeping in eventually.

MORE SOUND: More sound effects are alsocreeping into the game, and I've taught the sound manager to play short fanfares for mission wins and other events. Sound is becoming a critical part of the game experience, and the next big step is to introduce more musical themes to reflect the different moods of missions and encounters.

BETTER VISUAL CUES: Part of the work on focusing and targeting is to make it clear what part of a card or situation you should be paying attention to. Highlights on focused buttons and cards help, and I'm starting to do a lot more with the name blocks are cards to show targeting and other connections between them.

BUGS, BUGS, BUGS: plenty of them to fix, as always, including a couple of "why did I ever think this was working at all?" bugs. My favorite hour spent on this update was the hour spent desperately trying to figure out why the reward cards were making the Exit Mission button not work, only to realize I had turned off a setting while testing and that the reward cards had nothing to do with the button failure at all.

SIGHTED IN THE DISTANCE: So much of the last few weeks have been technical and not content-oriented. One morning a few days ago, however, inspiration hit and I quickly scripted out a bit of Petra's backstory that I had been unsure how to tell. You'll eventually see that as part of the game's opening, but it's started the flow of story again. As the game gets more playable, I'm seeing more possibilities for the cards and the ways those cards can tell the story of the Indomitable and its crew. All this should start paying off this fall.