Hi there, welcome to this development diary about the versatility of Age of Wonders: Planetfall’s interface.
Displays and platforms are more diverse then ever, so we had to add various systems and settings in order to make the game look best in all situations and make it future-proof. Making a UI for a deep strategy game like this, with its many hundreds of interface components is a mammoth task. But making it work on a variety of platforms and displays even more so.
The Interface Scale settings allows the user to set the relative size of the interface on screen. If you are sitting close by a large screen you might want to set it to “smallest”. This way fonts are smaller, list boxes contain more items and more of the map is shown.
The Main Video Options (PC)
When playing on a small laptop screen, or on smaller TV using controller, you’ll want to up the screen interface scale, so text and icons are easier to read.
Large Interface Scale
Small Interface Scale. Note the large number of list box entries available.
You might have notice we hide event texts as default now as it could be overwhelming.
The aspect ratio is also flexible. Like you can stretch the display horizontally for Ultra-Wide Monitors.
Wide Screen Display
Render Scale is a separate control. Some systems have displays with high resolution but not the GPU to push all those pixels at acceptable framerate. By reducing the 3D Render Scale of the game world, the game will run faster on a high-res display and you still have the benefit of the higher DPI on the interface.
Another part of the Interface's versatility is next level of hyperlinking. UI design is all about providing the right amount of relevant information at the right moment: not to much, not to little. So layering info with links and tooltips is key. There are many links to the Imperial Archives that itself also generates handy lists. Like seeing which units a particular mod can be used on.
The Imperial Archives
I’m lucky enough to have a large 4K TV at home and oh my, Planetfall looks fantastic on that thing. I might have to reevaluate my gaming habits as it also plays great using controller the couch, (note PC has controller support too) but the controller interface and the console versions are something for a future dev journal.
How will you be playing Planetfall? Any platforms you’d like to see the game on?
Displays and platforms are more diverse then ever, so we had to add various systems and settings in order to make the game look best in all situations and make it future-proof. Making a UI for a deep strategy game like this, with its many hundreds of interface components is a mammoth task. But making it work on a variety of platforms and displays even more so.
The Interface Scale settings allows the user to set the relative size of the interface on screen. If you are sitting close by a large screen you might want to set it to “smallest”. This way fonts are smaller, list boxes contain more items and more of the map is shown.
The Main Video Options (PC)
When playing on a small laptop screen, or on smaller TV using controller, you’ll want to up the screen interface scale, so text and icons are easier to read.
Large Interface Scale
Small Interface Scale. Note the large number of list box entries available.
You might have notice we hide event texts as default now as it could be overwhelming.
The aspect ratio is also flexible. Like you can stretch the display horizontally for Ultra-Wide Monitors.
Wide Screen Display
Render Scale is a separate control. Some systems have displays with high resolution but not the GPU to push all those pixels at acceptable framerate. By reducing the 3D Render Scale of the game world, the game will run faster on a high-res display and you still have the benefit of the higher DPI on the interface.
Another part of the Interface's versatility is next level of hyperlinking. UI design is all about providing the right amount of relevant information at the right moment: not to much, not to little. So layering info with links and tooltips is key. There are many links to the Imperial Archives that itself also generates handy lists. Like seeing which units a particular mod can be used on.
The Imperial Archives
I’m lucky enough to have a large 4K TV at home and oh my, Planetfall looks fantastic on that thing. I might have to reevaluate my gaming habits as it also plays great using controller the couch, (note PC has controller support too) but the controller interface and the console versions are something for a future dev journal.
How will you be playing Planetfall? Any platforms you’d like to see the game on?
My main concerns are 1) Having the Steam Controller glyphs appear on screen when using that controller instead of the glyphs for keyboard/mouse or XBox controller and 2) Being able to map buttons directly to in-game actions (e.g. similar to XCOM 2).