Status Update on the New UI

[Camate]

Greetings everyone!

Apologies for the delay on a status update regarding the UI revamps that were mentioned some time ago. Last night Producer Akihiko Matsui commented on the current status, so I would like to share that message with you all.

Hello,

I would like to inform you of the progress on the new UI for the Windows version. As we briefly touched upon in the past, implementation of the new UI is running behind schedule. The UI work is being dealt with separately from the creation of Seekers of Adoulin, so it’s not the case that the development team is getting caught up with working on the expansion. The reasons for the delay are mainly that in addition to the structural organization and features we had first thought of, there have been a lot of internal requests as well as request from players for new features to be added to make the UI even more user friendly.

In regards to the structural organization, the system was originally designed for a console such as the PS2, so we’ve been optimizing it so that each of the menu programs do not overuse memory. Due to this, we have been going deep into all of the menu features and performing adjustments so that the new UI will work. Currently, we have completed a good amount of the portions that can be realized with the current client, but there is still work left to be done on new menus for Seekers of Adoulin and "Play as a Monster".

In regards to the new features, this is not just about adding new menus with the new UI; this is also related to the fact that we are making feature improvements such as making mouse operation much smoother. The current UI has been optimized for using a controller, so you can think of it as we are spending time to revamp how it looks and the way it operates.

I’m am sure that there are some of you who watched the explanation of the UI structure, but using a portion of the UI (log window, menus, etc.) like an add-on will not work properly, so it’s actually quite difficult to release only the portions that were showed off at VanaFest. (It’s also very possible that the work difficulty would increase to make this happen.)

Unfortunately we will need a bit more time before we can organize all the features, finish all the fundamental feature improvement checks, and show it off on the Test Server. Realistically we are looking at summer at the earliest or fall if we include support in all languages.

With that said, I apologize for making you all wait longer, but we appreciate your understanding as we do our best to create a better and more user-friendly UI.