Weekly review #4

Hi folks! This week we reworked our object interaction menu, started the visual redesign of the phone menu and prepared to hire a 3D artist for the game characters. 

Action menu

This week, Nico reworked the look of the action menu, and added new icons and interactions! The current design (pictured in the article) is not final, but it already suits us better than the old one. Don't hesitate to give your opinion and suggestions!

We also thought about how to adapt different actions according to the game modes (adventure, life simulation and roleplay), as the controls are very different (cursor for life simulation mode, TPS in adventure mode), and the immersion is not the same. 

Different options are also possible for the action icons. Colored icons might be easier to identify, but the current monochrome icons have the advantage of being easy to reproduce (for players who will want to add mods and new interactions), and easily adapt to different themes (light and dark, specific themes to compensate for some visual impairments, etc.).

Characters

So far, you've been able to catch a glimpse of some of the game's characters, but their appearance is still far from final! We've had several meetings with Florian, Clélie and Jimmy to discuss the look of the characters, and Florian has started making some sketches (we'll show you them soon!). In the next few weeks, when we have everything well defined, we will hire a 3D graphic designer to help us make the "final" 3D version. This will be the opportunity to update our appearance editor, and add some customization options that are still missing (face morphology, etc.).

As we are still in the pre-incubation period in the Inria Startup Studio, we will go through Inria to hire the freelance who will take care of the character realization. We can't wait to introduce you to our new characters!

Phone menu

As you may have seen in previous devblog articles, the in-game menu is represented by default by the player's phone. This presentation will be fully customizable in the world options, to fit the different themes and universes (a phone would obviously not fit a medieval world for example). This menu will be able to have several appearances, and contain or not some applications, depending on the choices of the person(s) who manage the world.

This week, we started to redesign the phone menu, and Solène started to draw the new icons for a more polished result to more closely fit with the spirit of the game.

Thanks for your support, and see you next week!