Pathfinder: Kingmaker Developer Diary – A Closer Look at the UI

User interface, character sheets, combat log, and camping. If you’d like a refresher on how Owlcat Games plans to implement these things in their upcoming isometric cRPG Pathfinder: Kingmaker, you should check out the latest retrospective developer dairy over on Steam. Have a look:

Dear Pathfinders!

It’s time for another retrospective update! And this time it’s all about menus, character sheets, book events – all those wonderful things which let you interact with our game world! While many of the articles linked in today’s updates show a work in progress and may look a little different in the release version, they will still give you a good idea about what to expect, and the general idea and thought process behind each of the elements shown.

We did look into our UI briefly when we mentioned our combat log the other day. But there’s still so much more! First of all, there’s our character sheet. Each character’s strengths and weaknesses, skills, spells, all sorts of statistics from alignment to armor class and even a biography can be found here.

Throughout our game you will interact with the world through something we like to call Book Events. That’s where the game quite literally shows you a book, written by your chronicler Linzi, and describes a situation you and your party are facing. Decisions must be made, there are skill checks to be passed and the outcome of these events will influence your progress through the story. You can read all about it in this update, which also goes into the design and creation process of these events, from finding the right appearance for our book to picking the perfect font.

Next up, there’s our camp UI. Exploring the Stolen Lands is hard work and your party will get exhausted sooner or later. So rather than just sorting that out with a click on a sleep button, we wanted things to be a little deeper. Camouflage the camp, so it won’t get attacked by monsters while you sleep. Put a few party members on guard duty. Send someone out to hunt for supplies. If you want to take a closer look at our camp management interface, then this is the update for you.

And then there’s the loot. So, so much loot. You do what adventurers do, murder an entire camp of bandits and next thing you know, you’re buried under a mountain of shortswords and leather armors. And being the environmentally aware ruler that you are, you want to avoid littering and cart all of that good stuff to the nearest vendor. And if you want to know what buying and selling looks like in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, then check out this update.

Speaking of adventuring – if you want to see what our global map looks like as you go about your quest to conquer the Stolen Lands, check out our Creative Director Alexander Mishulin’s video on the subject here.

Finally, if you’d like to know more about the development process of our UI, what inspires us and how we use the reactions and feedback of our testers to make improvements, be sure to take a closer look at this update. And if you’d like to know what our focus-testing sessions look like, you can find video footage inside this article.

Hail to the Kings!
Owlcats