smiley face, and a dwarf in the graphical version is pulled together from dozens of body parts, clothing, equipment and hair possibilities. Whereas a cavy is a cavy, one symbol in either version.
HOW MUCH EFFORT WENT INTO RETHINKING AND DEVELOPING THE UI? TA: It was a huge project! Once we decided to embark on making this version, we knew we wanted to redo everything and make sure the game was going to be as approachable as possible. We went through every screen, pored over community feedback from over the years, and brought on a professional UX person to look at our main screen setup. We made a tutorial and tooltips, just all sorts of things the Classic game had needed but didn’t have.
WHAT WERE THE ART TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES USED? CJ: The tools I use are very simple, just a mouse, laptop, and PyxelEdit (a lightweight graphics editor specialised for pixel art). That’s one of the appeals of pixel art, at least for me. Compared to some other mediums I’ve worked with like oil paints, it’s very straight-forward and pretty portable. I can start making art right away without having to wait for a program to load or washing a million brushes afterwards.
50 | MCV/DEVELOP February 2023
WERE THERE ANY UNEXPECTED DIFFICULTIES DURING THE GAME’S NEW VISUAL DEVELOPMENT? CJ: One of the most challenging aspects for me was figuring out how to represent some of the more abstract UI elements with images instead of letters or words. For example, how do you make an image that conveys “sort these items by distance from the trade depot” or “this workshop task is associated with a work order” when you have roughly 32x32 pixels (sometimes less) to work with? Developing a visual language for such a complex game has been a challenge, and there’s definitely still room for improvement, but I’m happy with how it turned out overall.
HAS THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART / UI INFLUENCED HOW THE GAME ITSELF WILL MOVE FORWARD, IE, ARE THERE FEATURES YOU’VE NOT DONE UP TO THIS POINT BECAUSE OF THE LIMITATIONS OF THE CHARACTER SET? TA: I think we mostly ploughed forward before without regards for the limitations. There are a lot of ambiguous symbols in the Classic version. And we’re still supporting the Classic version, so I don’t think there are any features we’re planning that are strictly graphics only. But the graphics version will continue to disambiguate a lot of situations as we continue.
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