Following on from last week's update, Godus artist, Annah takes you through a few of the art elements being worked on during the current development sprint and a few words from Konrad.

Skinning & Modelling

"The Warbands are initially consisting of a small army of archers, so I thought it would be fun to give them a ‘Robin Hood’ style outfit and hat, with a quiver on their backs. "

"Their uniform colours (blue, red etc) denote whether their allegiance is to you or an enemy, and will help identify them in the field."

"However, after some in-game testing, we’ve realised that they needed to be modified slightly. Currently their build is very similar to a follower so it is quite hard to distinguish between each character (especially when you are zoomed far out, which is the popular viewpoint in when in combat.)"



"I’ve been bulking them up a bit, upgrading their costume, creating some female versions (because equal opportunities), and give their hats some more definition, among other things."

"The ‘skinning’ is the process of attaching the model to a rig, which has animations assigned to it. In Godus, we tend to use just a couple of rigs and I have to make sure the model is correctly skinned to these otherwise you can get some very strange character movements in game!"

Creating Warband Banners

"Warband banners appear when you create a warband through your military settlement."

"You move these around the map to navigate your warband. These banners need to show your colour, as well as the colour of the warband (something I’ll touch on in the GUI design below), be able to stack, animate, scale and potentially be carried by a member of the warband. The player banners also need to be easily distinguished from the enemy banners."



"At the moment the simplest way to show this is through a band of colour along the top that denotes your team colour, and the bottom colour displaying the warbands colour. The enemy banners are a different shape, and all one colour. Symbols on the banners may be added at a later date."

Combat UI - A Word from Konrad

Before Annah goes into detail regarding the user interface for combat, Konrad wanted to make sure people realise how much combat has changed and progressed from the Godus Alpha.



"While combat isn't new to Godus, some of our backers have experienced a crude, basic iteration of it in our early Alpha. At that time it really hadn't been the focus for development that it is now. This new combat implementation brought about some interesting changes and problems."

"The Alpha combat did not mesh well with the tone and feel of Godus. We experimented with introducing military settlements into Homeward & Weyword and the result was deemed very unsatisfactory, feeling very much out of place and shoehorned in."

“Over the last few months I’ve been experimenting with different worlds for combat to take place in. It’s changing the feel of what we have but for the better, I think."

Combat UI - Back to Annah!

"We needed a way of being able to select and view the warbands easily, as well as seeing their current status, even if they were not on screen."

"This involved rearranging the GUI a bit to allow for a strip of warband banners along the top. Initially, you will only be able to see the very bottom of a banner, but as soon as you are able to create a warband then it drops down slightly to notify you can do so through your Military Settlement."



"Each banner will display the colour of the warband (which is the same as the field warband banner), the warband rank (in stars along the top), an animated character that will represent whatever the warband is doing at that moment (i.e. running in a particular direction, standing still, or fighting), and the number at the base tells you how many there are in the warband. "

"When a warband's health begins to deteriorate, the banner becomes more and more ragged. When they are close to being wiped out, they'll be virtually ruined. Clicking on a top banner will take you to that warband, highlighted by a ring on the ground and potentially a line from the banner for the war band."



"We’ve moved the card button to the bottom left, so we can install a warning button. This spiky circle will tell you if a settlement, abode or warband is under attack, and clicking on it will take you directly to the problem area."

The GUI is always subject to change throughout implementation and testing as we discover the best ways for combat navigation.

Next Week

The next progress update will focus on the Design elements of this sprint. Konrad will give everyone a unique look into creating the artificial intelligence and level design structure. Here's a reminder of the sprint plan:



Thanks and catch up soon,
22cans team!