Warlords Battlecry III Diary #5

The fourth installment to RPGVault’s ongoing Warlords Battlecry III diary is now available, with lead designer Steve Fawkner describing the advances that they’re making to the core systems of the game. An excerpt to follow:

I think of the game’s interface a little like an onion; it has a top layer for casual gamers who do not want to know about horrible nitty-gritty details like the Base Resistance score of an Iron Golem. Peel away this layer though, and there should be all of the most important stats for players to base decisions on. Peel away yet another layer, and all of the really detailed numbers are exposed for the hardcore folk. This peeling away of layers can be solved in many ways – a right-click perhaps, or even holding down the Alt key – whatever works within the context of the game. Battlecry III tends to use right-click.

As I mentioned earlier, the interesting thing about Battlecry III is that we changed every single one of the core systems significantly. For example, in the previous Battlecry games, you had an overwhelming number of different things to look at and choose from when leveling up your hero – it was often too confusing for new players. Now, every single system within the game has been unified into something consistent. It is most noticeable when leveling up – we now have one small screen for your stats and a slightly larger one for your skills. Instead of four completely different screens with wildly different elements in them, we have two smaller screens that are totally consistent in their GUI design.