DevDiaries #86: Arts and hints
LinkHi, friends.
Summer is over and with it our short parting. Let this art with sunflowers, tankmen with a dog and T-34 brighten up the beginning of autumn for all of you. We went to work straight outta stealth mode and prepared a short diary about arts, getting rid of placeholders, game responsiveness, and interface.
To make the metagame more attractive, we began work on the art for battalions. Started quite a while ago, but did not add them to the game until each one was ready. We finished this work by the end of August, so now the metagame interface has significantly fewer placeholders and notably more beauty. In the last post, before we went into the fog of war vacation, we already showed the art of the German subversive and reconnaissance battalion, and today's one is, obviously, the Soviet medium tank battalion. In the future, we will show the rest in good resolution.
LinkThere are much fewer placeholders and question marks in the development tree too. The work has not yet been completed, so the icons from different periods look a bit heterogeneous. And may change one or more times before release.
LinkWe also added a lot of hints on the metagame interface. It probably doesn't sound like an epic and very interesting task to read about. And it’s unlikely to give rise to fantasies about how you and your friends are going to open hints until the early hours of the morning, and interrupting each other excitedly talk about unit levels, or re-reading over and over again, for which you need a “Play” button. Being a rather boring part of the learning process (which is not Disneyland itself), the tips do not cease to be extremely important and necessary. Soldiers: Arena is a hardcore, as we all love, so there are a lot of mechanics, features, groups of units, types of slots and all kinds of characteristics in it, which you doubtfully understand without a peep. Now you will have a reliable assistant in the metagame. Not Clippy though.
LinkMost importantly, tips for units and battalions have started to do their job and can explain to beginners how the T-34-85 differs from the T-34-85M, or rookie rifleman from a veteran. And that means the decision to take it to the deck or not will be more conscious. Of course, you can always just put the most expensive units ... But if you, like us, like to dig into the settings and assemble the most efficient, interesting and surprising battalion, these tips will come in handy. They, as you see, contain a lot of information: basic characteristics, a list of strengths and weaknesses, a description of the unit. Ok, they WILL contain when we finish filling in all the data.
LinkWe are doing our best to make the game as attractive as possible before the release, to remove the maximum number of placeholders and temporary solutions. We would like to make the OBT stage as short and quick as possible to give everyone a chance to play. While we have the opportunity to devote all our efforts to development, rather than support, we intend to use it. Wish you all the best, and feel free to suggest a topic for the next diary.