Hey everyone. It's been a bit since the first preview of the interface overhaul coming to Blasted Fortress, so we wanted to check back in and show a few more of the ways this update will manifest itself.
Again, we've bubbled in the important bits. This is how the interface will look during a siege (pending any tweaking before the patch arrives). On the top, you'll see we've moved the spell casting buttons. The timer is now graphical, and appears as a pie chart that slowly turns red. There's also an orb on the left of the spell buttons... more on that in just a second.
The power charge bar has long been a hassle. You're aiming the cannon, but at the same time you want to see how much you're charging your shot. You can't look at both at once... until now. We've placed a golden ring around the cursor that fills now to show your current charge level. This means you can watch what the power of your shot will be at the exact same time your eyes are on where it is you're trying to shoot. It also does a great job of making the UI more minimal.
Lastly in this shot, we see the bottom bar of cannonballs. Again for minimalism, if you don't have an ammo type unlocked it will simply not appear. Hey, wait... what's that one on the far right? I'm sure it's nothing...
The Juju Focus where you upgrade your passive abilities and buy spells has been altered both in form and function.
As you saw in the first shot, there was an empty glass orb. Here we see one that is partially filled. This is because spell uses are no longer purchased per spell; in 1.16 you will directly use Talismans to fill a mana pool and can cast any of the three spells using 1 point of mana. What's more, each spell is now on its own cooldown, so you can cast more spells, more often.
Because the siege timer is almost like your health bar for combat, we thought it would only be natural to surround either side of the spell bar with your mana and time (totally NOT a nod to Diablo...).
One last minor thing you may notice is that the second screenshot takes place at night, and that the foreground of the world now correctly darkens at night. It's the little things...
What's next? Well, we expect the Interface Update (Blasted Fortress version 1.16 to be exact) to arrive before the week ends. There are still things that need doing, but we're well past the halfway mark.
And no, we're not telling you yet what the new ammo is. See you later this week! ;)