WC4 Remastered Update Focuses on Gameflow, Menus and User Interface

The WCRespace team is back with a new update on the WC4 Fan Remake. There's a whole new article by Pedro that goes into great detail about the game's user interface. He says it's not the most glamorous subject, and it might be tedious to design and program, but I love these liminal console screens. They're critical glue that helps sell the total experience. An especially big deal this time around is the adjustment to accommodate 16:9 widescreen settings. It takes some finesse to make them look authentic compared to the original 4:3 shape. The fourth and fifth images below are especially stark - they compare the original loading screen with today's update!

Now brute forcing in new UI wouldn’t be impossible but that removes some of the nostalgia. No problem, we’ll just upscale them like we do the rooms… except we optionally support 16:9 by zooming in on the gameflow rooms, and there is no way we could zoom in on the 4:3 terminal screens.

Fortunately FeklyrTarg came to the rescue and extended out the original images for us giving us 16:9 terminals (sorry fellow 21:9 fans, we’re going for consistency and zooming in on the rooms beyond 16:9 isn’t a good look. We will keep supporting you in gameplay however!).

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Ship map is now the default view when you bring up the pause screen. In the original game you had to press ‘M’ which meant having read the manual – something unfortunately difficult to convince modern gamers to do.

We are also ensuring that all menus and rooms can be navigated with a gamepad (and have added hotspot cycling).

And with that, other than the credits, the gameflow UI is complete, even if unpolished. Unfortunately for my soul there’s still the in-game UI to complete :)