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Tags: Eric Schwarz; InXile Entertainment; Techland; Torment: Tides of Numenera
inXile published a new Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter update today, shortly after the launching of the Wasteland 3 Fig campaign. It's more than just an ad for Wasteland 3, though. Inside the update is a comprehensive look at the myriad of user interface and visual polish tweaks Torment will be receiving in the final months of its development, including changes to the conversation UI and combat UI, addition of tutorial popups, prettified character screens and more. As in last month's update, there's also a new Torment trailer produced by Techland. This one introduces the Ninth World and some of its locations. Here's the trailer and the combat UI segment of the update:
But conversation isn't everything. We've also been taking strides in making combat easier to understand and displaying more information about your characters, abilities, and the battlefield's overall state. This was one of the things that wasn't quite at the level we wanted it, and many of our backers agreed judging by some of the comments we received! As a result, we've added far more information to the Crisis HUD.
To start, you might recall we previously talked about anoetic and occultic actions in earlier updates. Now, we've renamed them to your "move" action and "attack" action to make their uses clearer, and given them appropriate icons that display under your current party member (and turn grey when they've been used up each turn). This hasn't altered or simplified any of the previous gameplay or mechanics at all - for instance, abilities can still consume movement in some cases, or no movement in others - but it's much easier to keep track of which actions are which now.
Additionally, our engineers have rebuilt our tooltips when you mouse over an ability. The system we have now is incredibly robust, showing detailed information which also automatically populates and formats itself based on some simple tags the designers can write. Even special statuses and fettles will auto-fill their effects, so that when designers start doing balance changes, they don't have to manually go in and change the text for everything affected. You'll also see how the action cost is also more clearly indicated, tying in with the changes I mentioned above. On the whole, these tooltips are just more readable, more accurate, and a bit prettier looking than what we previously had.
Expanding on our improved tooltips, we have also added a right-click popup window to every ability in the game which allows you to inspect their full details just like in the Infinity Engine RPGs, and each has more flavorful long-form descriptions we've penned for them for you to read.
One more thing we weren't indicating properly in earlier builds of the game was the maximum range of attacks, as well as the radius of any area-of-effect type abilities. Now, we've added visuals for those so you can clearly see exactly where your abilities will land, letting you line them up just right. Below you can see an example – the thin, orange outer ring shows the maximum range, and the smaller orange circle is the area the ability will affect.
According to the update, the Torment beta will receive one final update to give Kickstarter backers an early look at these tweaks. It's got screenshots of them all, so be sure to check it out and complain about the ones you don't like while there's still time.
inXile published a new Torment: Tides of Numenera Kickstarter update today, shortly after the launching of the Wasteland 3 Fig campaign. It's more than just an ad for Wasteland 3, though. Inside the update is a comprehensive look at the myriad of user interface and visual polish tweaks Torment will be receiving in the final months of its development, including changes to the conversation UI and combat UI, addition of tutorial popups, prettified character screens and more. As in last month's update, there's also a new Torment trailer produced by Techland. This one introduces the Ninth World and some of its locations. Here's the trailer and the combat UI segment of the update:
But conversation isn't everything. We've also been taking strides in making combat easier to understand and displaying more information about your characters, abilities, and the battlefield's overall state. This was one of the things that wasn't quite at the level we wanted it, and many of our backers agreed judging by some of the comments we received! As a result, we've added far more information to the Crisis HUD.
To start, you might recall we previously talked about anoetic and occultic actions in earlier updates. Now, we've renamed them to your "move" action and "attack" action to make their uses clearer, and given them appropriate icons that display under your current party member (and turn grey when they've been used up each turn). This hasn't altered or simplified any of the previous gameplay or mechanics at all - for instance, abilities can still consume movement in some cases, or no movement in others - but it's much easier to keep track of which actions are which now.
Additionally, our engineers have rebuilt our tooltips when you mouse over an ability. The system we have now is incredibly robust, showing detailed information which also automatically populates and formats itself based on some simple tags the designers can write. Even special statuses and fettles will auto-fill their effects, so that when designers start doing balance changes, they don't have to manually go in and change the text for everything affected. You'll also see how the action cost is also more clearly indicated, tying in with the changes I mentioned above. On the whole, these tooltips are just more readable, more accurate, and a bit prettier looking than what we previously had.
Expanding on our improved tooltips, we have also added a right-click popup window to every ability in the game which allows you to inspect their full details just like in the Infinity Engine RPGs, and each has more flavorful long-form descriptions we've penned for them for you to read.
One more thing we weren't indicating properly in earlier builds of the game was the maximum range of attacks, as well as the radius of any area-of-effect type abilities. Now, we've added visuals for those so you can clearly see exactly where your abilities will land, letting you line them up just right. Below you can see an example – the thin, orange outer ring shows the maximum range, and the smaller orange circle is the area the ability will affect.
According to the update, the Torment beta will receive one final update to give Kickstarter backers an early look at these tweaks. It's got screenshots of them all, so be sure to check it out and complain about the ones you don't like while there's still time.
