Hey all! We're getting very close to the closed beta now, so while the team is hard at work finalising assets and stomping bugs, we've had time to improve some of the UI a bit more! There's a bunch of small changes here and there, but what I'd like to bring to your attention this week is both the addition of some new fonts, and a rework of the Floating Text system!
We've gone and picked out some fonts to help spice up the visuals a little bit, as well as improve readability across the HUD. I don't really have a lot I can go into detail with here, but we're feeling pretty good about the choices and think they're really helping to make the menus pop.
We've also reworked Floating Text, which is the text that appears over a unit when something happens to them. This is usually damage numbers, or statuses being applied or removed. Previously, the text would spawn, do a quick fade-in, float upwards and then fade out. This was fine, it was functional, but it could get quite busy and difficult to parse at times.
With the rework, we now have the text appear much faster, and have it hover at a set position above the unit. If multiple instances of floating text are spawned at once on the same unit, then we push previous text further up to make room above the unit, ensuring that the application of multiple statuses is much less confusing. I've captured a short clip of nine instances of floating text appearing at once, and while we're still looking to improve readability when multiple units have floating text in front of another, we feel it's already made a massive improvement.
Now I'm sure you're all waiting patiently for the closed beta to kick off, and while I'm still not able to give you an exact date, I can say this much: We are currently expecting the closed beta to start mid-late August! There's still a lot to finish up, but we're currently aiming for a date within that range, and will let you know immediately if it needs to get pushed back a bit. Thanks for tuning in!