The Iron Oath Update #43
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This month's Kickstarter update for Curious Panda's gritty turn-based RPG The Iron Oath shows off the game's updated UI, breaks down all the recent changes, and shares one of the tunes from the game's soundtrack. So, before anything else, here's The Iron Oath's Godsvale track:
And here are the update's text parts:
Hey everyone! This past month we've been working on designing and implementing the finalized UI/HUD for the game and it's coming along nicely. Most everything we had in place has been entirely revamped with a new style, though we've kept the same positioning for the majority of elements. You can see a comparison below:
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Here's a breakdown of all the changes:
Party
The allied party UI has changed in style to make use of character portraits in the future (the current blown up sprite portraits are just placeholder until then). We've gone with a Baldur's Gate style health fill to represent the damage taken for each character (the more red, the closer they are to death!), and two simplified bars to show the values for the Focus and Spirit pools respectively. The rotating particles represent whose turn it currently is, while the alternate frame border shows which character you're currently hovering/targeting.
The enemy party UI has changed similarly, though it is smaller in scale so we can fit large groups of enemies onto the screen. Like before, targeting an enemy will display some info on their defense, and your chance of hitting them with the selected ability.
Target Information
The details of your current target remains mostly the same, but will now show the level of the target and some additional info on their status, such as whether they are channeling an ability and when they'll be done, or when their next turn is. (not all of this is implemented yet, the below is just a mock).
Turn Order
The turn order has received some of the bigger changes, and is now more informative and interactive. When you select a target, they will also be now highlighted in the turn order so the player can more clearly tell them apart from similar enemies, in addition to seeing at a glance how close that target's next turn is.
We've added a divider to separate combat rounds, and an indicator to show how many characters are left to act in the round behind what is currently visible(this will only show if there is not enough room to display everyone). Additionally we've color coded friends from foes (blue and red), added health bars to the turn order, and also icons to indicate whether it is a new turn for that character (a star), or whether they are finishing a channeled ability(a clock).
Hotbar & Ability Tooltips
We've removed the health globe from the hotbar(we felt it was redundant), encompassed everything in a new fancy frame and re-positioned it back to the center of the screen. Red and blue markers beneath each ability now indicate whether that ability is classified as Offensive(red) or Supportive(blue). The white border indicates which ability you are hovering, while the flashing animation indicates that the ability is currently selected and ready to target someone.
Our ability tooltips have also been updated to be more concise and offer important information at a glance. Beneath the name and ability type, Focus Cost, Ability Range and Cast Time are represented with unique icons. To the right, a quick animation shows viable usages for the selected ability. Beneath the main description displays any augments the ability has from that character's ability skill tree.
We hope you like the new look and features! We'll have more UI screens to be shared in the next couple updates.
We'd like to leave you with a new full track by our composer, Alex Roe. This one is specifically an exploration track for the region of Godsvale. He's composed well over an hours worth of music thus far and we're excited to share this one with you(and more in the future!). Be sure to check out his youtube channel if you'd like to hear more of his work from The Iron Oath and other past projects!
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!
A friendly reminder that you can wishlist The Iron Oath on Steam now! Though all backers will be receiving a copy regardless, wishlisting the game still helps us out with visibility and we'd very much appreciate the further support :)
