Westward dev log #21: new HUD and big changes in perspective


The recent work has focused on reworking the HUD a bit. It’s not visible yet in the online demo because not everything is settled and stable yet. You can see a glimpse of it below:

The menu icons have moved from the bottom-right, to now be aligned around the minimap (the smaller circular icons you can see on the screenshot). The settlement name is displayed, and settlement-related information will be displayed in the future.

To the left, the health, gold and inventory capacity are displayed. It was high time that this kind of info was visible without having to go in the menus.

At the moment, the menus themselves are being reworked a bit, but it’s still very exploratory so I’m not sure myself yet of what direction it’s going to take!

Big changes ahead

I’m planning to make significant modifications to the settlement system. I’m essentially considering to drop the notion of centralized settlements with more or less fixed buildings, to something more fluid, organic and player-driven.

The idea to this change first came to me during a discussion with a potential publisher a few months ago. He had essentially misunderstood how the settlements worked, but what he had understood sounded quite interesting. Over the months that idea remained in a corner of my mind, and has finally fully taken root. I have written a full design document of the game around the new settlement notion, and on paper at least it looks promising! I won’t elaborate too much yet, but hopefully by the next dev log it will be much more concrete.

One related consequence will be that I’ll be experimenting with a new visual style for the buildings. They will become smaller and the goal will be to embed them a bit better in the landscape. I quite like some of the current buildings but I feel that a change is needed there as well.

That’s it for this dev log, not much to chew on this time, but it keeps progressing. I’ll see you in the next one with much more concrete content!

If you’d like to support Westward, consider having a look at my donation page. In particular, take a minute to have a look at my Patreon page, where you can find a listing of rewards for various levels of recurring contributions!

Jerome Renaux

I'm an independent game developer, working mainly on browser-based multiplayer online game (HTML5 & Javascript). I love to discuss about all aspects of game development so don't hesitate to get in touch!

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Jerome Renaux

I'm an independent game developer, working mainly on browser-based multiplayer online game (HTML5 & Javascript). I love to discuss about all aspects of game development so don't hesitate to get in touch!