Wow these updates are coming fast and furious now! Tim “Raskolnikov” Lang has the latest diary talking about the changes to the Character Panel, which for those of us who have popped onto Bullroarer have noticed is quite different.
This panel certainly had become a bit cluttered as it became the default option for where to put new items in the User Interface. Tim and Amlug went off to try and re-work this with the following goals:
- Make it simpler for new folks, but still have all the goodies for the seasoned veterans
- Update the tooltips
- Break out cosmetics into its own section
- remove tabs to make it less overwhelming
Now this didn’t all make it into the F2P changes, but they are coming with Echoes of the Dead. It is pretty cool to get a walkthrough of the process and hear that they do hear we don’t always like the store smacking us across the face. Check out a couple of the early concepts:
What we’re seeing on Bullroarer is ALMOST the “final” version:
But they also wanted to add in some of the one-stop shop ability of the panel and so the next revision will have a row of buttons at the bottom like you see below:
After the explanation of the progression he then wraps up with the explanation of the new character panel as well as the cosmetic page. Both of which are very functional and don’t have store icons littered everywhere. Personally I didn’t mind the old panel, but I can see where they’re coming from and I’m sure I’ll get used to the new one soon enough. Check out the article and make sure to add comments to the discussion if you have them!