Kingdom screen - showing growth?
Posted: Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:02 amI've been a long time fan of the game (since early alpha) and one of the big features of retail release that I was looking forward to most during the interim of the last alpha and first unity version was the Kingdom.
Started out a new profile today to try some of the new kingdom stuff, as the announcement got me super excited, and then after I get through the tutorial and hearing all about how these poor lost souls end up in the middle of nowhere with nothing but desolation and despair around them, my first view of the kingdom screen has all kinds of spiffy looking buildings on the background. Mega sadface
Obviously the first pass of the kingdom screen was a work in progress, but with the last update, it got me wondering where it's going to end up. I had imagined that we'd be able to see our small, little, tiny, insignificant kingdom start out as a couple small huts in the dirt and end up becoming a fully decorated medieval megacity by the time we'd fully developed everything. Ideally, all buildings would be represented by a piece of selectable art, and not just some text boxes on a static overlay. Starting out you would only have a single small building on an empty plain (OF SKULLS!!!!) and as you progress through the tutorial and storyline the buildings would start showing up as you unlock them and would get more and more visually impressive as you upgraded them. In my wildest dreams, the game would even change a bit of of background on the map screen if you finished a dungeon there to make it seem more like you explored it.
I know that's an awful lot of art and UI time, but I can't even begin to tell you how much more it would add to the kingdom elements for me, which overall still feels rather..lackluster and tacked on given it's relative importance to the players progression through the game.. Is something sort of dynamic kingdom screen still on the list of priorities somewhere that I dont know about since I dont follow the forums, or are we stuck with text boxes on static backgrounds for the final version as well?
Still love the game, and it's still one of my favorites from the last few years, but the kingdom interface just doesn't really seem like much of an improvement over the classic alpha interface, when it could be SO much more than that.
Started out a new profile today to try some of the new kingdom stuff, as the announcement got me super excited, and then after I get through the tutorial and hearing all about how these poor lost souls end up in the middle of nowhere with nothing but desolation and despair around them, my first view of the kingdom screen has all kinds of spiffy looking buildings on the background. Mega sadface
Obviously the first pass of the kingdom screen was a work in progress, but with the last update, it got me wondering where it's going to end up. I had imagined that we'd be able to see our small, little, tiny, insignificant kingdom start out as a couple small huts in the dirt and end up becoming a fully decorated medieval megacity by the time we'd fully developed everything. Ideally, all buildings would be represented by a piece of selectable art, and not just some text boxes on a static overlay. Starting out you would only have a single small building on an empty plain (OF SKULLS!!!!) and as you progress through the tutorial and storyline the buildings would start showing up as you unlock them and would get more and more visually impressive as you upgraded them. In my wildest dreams, the game would even change a bit of of background on the map screen if you finished a dungeon there to make it seem more like you explored it.
I know that's an awful lot of art and UI time, but I can't even begin to tell you how much more it would add to the kingdom elements for me, which overall still feels rather..lackluster and tacked on given it's relative importance to the players progression through the game.. Is something sort of dynamic kingdom screen still on the list of priorities somewhere that I dont know about since I dont follow the forums, or are we stuck with text boxes on static backgrounds for the final version as well?
Still love the game, and it's still one of my favorites from the last few years, but the kingdom interface just doesn't really seem like much of an improvement over the classic alpha interface, when it could be SO much more than that.
