Greetings, Captain!
Today, we come to you with an important Developer's Diary, for it will be the last one before the release of Campaign Preview. We're happy to announce that we intend to release the Campaign Preview trailer on the 20th of March, with the release itself coming soon after. As the release of Campaign Preview draws ever closer, we will be laser-focused on completing, testing and polishing the Campaign Preview build, and so this will be our last Developer's Diary until the release day.
With that out of the way, let's show you some bits we've been working on recently!
Current Situation:
Here's our crew management UI; a work in progress that nevertheless have the layout we intend for it. Dragging and dropping crew cards will be easy in Boat Crew, and you will be able to assemble a crew for a boat from the available men quite rapidly. The card system will be featuring quite a bit wherever the player will need to do some sorting, including in, most likely, the squadron system in the future.
The cards are meant to quickly show you all the information you need to know about a character, giving information such as their name, rank, proficiency, and default role as set by you in the crew role assignment screen discussed in the previous diary.
You can also easily dismiss men from the same screen, who will be removed from your team and sent away as soon as you leave the screen. It's also not out of the question to add a button to just dismiss them right away in case you wanted to dismiss more sailors at once than the number of available slots.
Recruitment works similarly, with the recruitment pool replenishing itself periodically.
Last but not least is the Elco 77' class PT boat, which was one of the key players in the Solomon Islands Campaign. It will be our 4th playable Boat given its historical ubiquity.
The astute observer and the naval enthusiast might have noticed that we have slightly modified the boat, adding small step ladders and opening up the turret hubs. This was done to simplify movement around the boat and avoid complications, as well as to make it easier to see gunners entering and leaving the turret hubs.
That's all we have to share for now, and the next time we meet, it will be right after the most important update of Early Access Boat Crew! Until then, you can always drop by our Discord channel or the Steam forums for questions, comments, suggestions and support.
See you on the other side, Captain!
T.T.