Greetings Mortal.
We’re almost at the end of 2022, and it has been such a year! As we come to a close, we’ve got some changes incoming that will change the way the game looks and feels. Hint: they’re linked to mobile.
Change 1: Player's mana wheel location moved to the left - The mana wheel location will change for both the player and opponent as early as next week. Instead of the player’s mana wheel being on the bottom right corner of a player’s screen, it will move to the opposite end; the bottom left corner.
The reasoning: Since most mortals are right-handed, as we prepare for mobile, the right-hand side of the screen is the more valuable, prime real estate on the screen. We needed that space for the player’s hand, so the mana wheel’s location has moved to the left.
Change 2: Player’s card hand location moved to the right - The card hand location for players will move from the bottom center to the bottom right (the old location for a player’s mana wheel).
The reasoning: On mobile, cards need to be bigger to be visible. Adding them on the right gives us the place to scale them up without covering up the god during play.
Change 3: Opponent’s mana wheel and card hand location moved symmetric to player changes - Due to the changes to the player’s mana wheel and card hand location, this change creates visual symmetry on the board for both players. The opponent's mana wheel location will move from its current location, the top left corner, to the top right-hand corner of the screen.
The reasoning: The hope is that mirroring the player’s mana wheel location will also highlight and bring the opponent’s card back into core focus on mobile or desktop.
Change 4: Bug reporter and settings button shift to top left - The last visual and interface update for this rollout will be to the bug reporter in-game and the settings menu. They will both be moved from the current location, the right-hand corner of the game, to the top left corner (the old location of the opponent’s mana wheel).
The reasoning: This is to accommodate the other more critical changes. More importantly, the new location was chosen so the screen can play well with notches and camera punches on mobile phones.
The reason for what may seem like drastic user interface changes—possibly the first major UI/UX changes since the game’s launch. Our goal is to onboard millions of players worldwide with a fun, exciting game that players love and enjoy. Turning this grand vision into reality is what the team is focused on delivering this cycle. The fundamental building block is to update the game visually and interactively such that the medium on which one plays makes no difference to the player’s in-game experience.
For the first time, we’d like to share our vision for a unified gaming experience irrespective of the device you’re playing Gods Unchained on; mobile, tablet, or personal computer. We alluded to this ideal end state in our latest December Dev Update, along with the answer to ‘wen’ mobile. To recap, the aim is to have a closed segment of the community test out the early mobile alpha in quarter 1 of 2023.
In the status update, we also mentioned that the current game user interface and code need to be completely overhauled for mobile to come to fruition. The teams have begun work on combining PC and Mobile, visually and interactively. We are doing this so there is complete parity between mobile and PC. Once finished, all updates, changes, features, and modifications will be available on each platform from Day 1. We believe the platform should make no difference to the GU experience and are working towards it!
We plan to roll out the changes mentioned here by mid-next week. We aim to ship features quickly each week or fortnight, have the community test them out and provide feedback, and make iterations to improve with follow-up releases. Your inputs are critical to developing and making the UI development a success. We will share a more detailed plan and features in the pipeline early next year, but for now, please share your feedback in the feedback channel in Discord once the feature changes are live.
Timeline: Keep an eye out for more communication from the team early next week as we share an exact time and date for these UI updates to roll out.
Action: Share your feedback in (thread name/link), so the team can effectively collect data and perfect the changes to enhance your in-game experience.
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