Hello again, Survivors!
UI guy back again! I've been secretly smuggling out the latest screenshots of the build we're working on (as always, it's still under construction! It's unfinished!). I thought I'd share with you what it took to get to these screenshots. Remore is undergoing a significant overhaul, effectively a rebirth. But you know that famous line.
[h2“Who would be born must first destroy a world.” – Demian by Hermann Hesse
So, we decided to start by destroying the existing interface.
We didn't do it out of boredom, of course. The purpose of a User Interface is to communicate Information. If the UI has difficulty conveying information, or if the information that needs to be conveyed changes, then the User Interface needs to change. And coincidentally, both of those things happened. The things that we introduced in the last Dev Notes (links 1, 2, and 3 of the mapping baseline), just siege and ambush, were completely new concepts, right?
There were a few things here and there that needed to be tweaked, but we wanted to get the foundations in place first. There were roughly three pain points, which we decided to call the “Three-burden Problem,” which was about solving minor inconveniences before building something big.
Problems with Skill Shortcuts
Shortcuts are meant to make actions faster and easier once the player has a good grasp of the game. At any given time (unless the player changes their key settings), “R” should be reloading a magazine, and “Space Bar” should be fulfilling their desire to fly for a second or so. If the reload button is different every time, and you have to check and press it to see which one it is, that's not really a shortcut, is it? ...Yet that's actually how shortcuts worked in Remore.
Weapon skills were followed by character skills, so the shortcuts for the character skills would fluctuate depending on how many weapon skills you had. The “Shove” skill was a free spirit that could be a “4” or a “5” depending on its mood, so players would have to visually check how many shortcuts they had active before using the skill.
We also wanted to separate weapon skills from character skills, so we placed passive skills between the two, which worked well. But it also pushed the active skills away from the shortcut numbers. Imagine if, later in the game, your character learned more passive skills, and... well... where's “Shove?” 8...? 9...? Not good at all. The main numbers are taken up by passive skills that you'll never use!
Problems with the Resource Gauges
Remore has HP, AP, WP and TP as Resources. Importantly, all four are in one place.
New players were often confused by the fact that there were four resources that looked similar. It's information overload, and you'd think that since they're the same resource, they'd all be in the same place, but in fact, they all have slightly different uses.
For example, when you're eating in a hideout, you only need to look at your HP. Your WP aren’t important, so they shouldn't be visible. What about when you're engaging an enemy? It all seems important, but it's actually "WP, TP > AP, HP". If I can kill the Knawer in front of me with my current WP and TP, it doesn't matter how much HP or AP I have, right? It's only when I can't kill them that I decide who gets hit, so I needed to differentiate between them even though they look similar.
Problems using Skills
This section may be a bit dull to some, as it's all about minor behavioral patterns of players, so if you're not interested, feel free to skip it and look at the pictures below. But if you're interested in this kind of analysis, please read on!
What is the process you go through to kill a Knawer? I wish I could give you an answer, but since I’m writing this as a Wallfacer, I'll have to do my best to explain. Normally, the process would go something like this: (I hope I got it right!)
The nature of the game requires you to use your abilities efficiently within a limited number of actions, so unlike games where you can just slap a skill on cooldown, there's a long process of thinking about whether or not to use it.
To use an analogy, when you put something on the counter at the grocery store, you're pretty sure you want to buy it, but in Remore, you often scan the barcode, look at the price, and put it back down if you don't like it. Let's call it "scoping the goods" but what’s this got to do with skills?
Well, isn’t it a bit hasty to hide skill information when I'm still trying to decide if I want to use it or not, when I’m “scoping the goods” so to speak. Also, there are situations where I have to move the tooltip that covers the center of the screen to pick the right skill for the enemy's placement, which isn't convenient.
Solving the Three-burden Problem
So, let's go back to the beginning and take a look at the screenshot I smuggled out. As you go through the Three-burden Problem with me, I'm sure you'll notice some new stuff!
Problem #1, Skill Shortcuts
"What, nothing's changed?" you might ask. That's because it's hard to tell from the screenshots, so here's what's changed. All equipment skills are now in the “Q” and “E” spaces, while other skills are organized into numeric keys for easier keyboard shortcuts, and we've rearranged passive skills so that they're in the back.
Problem #2, The Resource Gauges
I kept only WP and TP gauges at the top and put HP-related resources below the skills, so that they were somewhat close together and distinct. When using skills, you only need to look at the top line.
Problem #3, Using Skills
The Skill Tooltip no longer hovers over the mouse position, but instead sweeps off to the right. This ties in with the gamepad-friendly UI, which is a welcome change and also means that the center UI doesn't disappear when you press a skill. You'll be more comfortable with “scoping the goods” now.
So, we've solved all the “Three-burden Problems,” the universe of Remore is saved, and we're still working on finding other inconveniences and turning them into an optimal gaming experience. Of course, we're about ramping up for a big update, and we can't wait to show you what the interface will look like when we do. Big things are coming...!
Thank you for making it through another Dev Note. Much love, everyone!
(PS, here are some of the UI layout sketches I made (that didn't make the cut) because I just couldn't let go).
Thank you,
REMORE