Hey everyone! Julian here bringing you the latest OgreWare Progress Report. We’ll be doing these on a regular basis to keep you up to date on what they’re working on. Separate from the Troop Spotlights and other series that are currently in the works, the Progress Reports will let you know what OgreWare is actually up to during the current week.
Look familiar? Well, that’s a UI (User Interface) element, from Calling All Heroes, that we call the Troop Container. It’s basically the piece of the interface that houses the Troop’s image, name, stats, etc., as well as the progress bar that lets you know how much gold that particular Troop is currently earning you.
But…well, due to technological limitations as well as some low-quality materials and just general lack of skills, my original lineart for the Troop Container caused some major problems with it fitting into the rest of the interface.
So OgreWare’s main work content recently has been recreating the Troop Container (and various other UI elements) using 3D imaging software. It’s all a bit beyond me, but I have to admit, it’s all coming out pretty damn cool:
The colorization process is now pretty different, and while OgreWare is handling that too, they’re doing a great job – it’s now much easier for them to re-color portions of the UI, so we have variations on the regular Troop Container, such as Out On A Mission (green) and Dead (black).
I expect these recolors will help a lot with how the game “reads,” especially for non-gamers and others who may need a little bit more of an indication of how their Troop is doing.
OgreWare describes this, and a lot of their other processes this week, as “frontloading” the work for CAH – meaning, in short, that they’re doing extra work ahead of time so that later processes will go faster and smoother. This is something I do a lot in my own projects (thumbnail sketches, storyboards, and scripts for comics might be categorized as frontloading work), so it makes sense to me.
Thank you, as always, for your support of OgreWare and what we’re doing here. If you haven’t already, like the page to get updated every time we post over at the OgreWare blog (http://ogreware.net.)!
~Admin Julian