How It’s Done – Data Pads in War Robots
How we created the visuals for Data Pads, revamped content system from War Robots.
By Anton Trofimov, Lead 2D Artist at Pixonic (MY.GAMES).
Data Pads are a revamped content system from War Robots. With it, we try to make obtaining content more engaging and comprehensible
The format didn’t take long to decide. The name "Data Pads" itself suggested that these should be cards – a kind of data carriers. But that wasn’t enough; we needed to figure out how to present them to the player
One of the ideas was literally: "How about they drop from the sky, then there's a teleport beam and FX, and boom – the player gets a reward." The final version didn’t stray far from this description
After many experiments, the sky "boom" transformed into a camera fly-through down a corridor to a room – there, in a virtual teleport, the reward would appear. The Data Pads themselves were carriers of information about the prize
We also wanted to move away from visual updates for each event; the player should remember what the Data Pads look like once and for all, regardless of any updates. These event updates/decorations we called "stickers"
The first event featuring Data Pads was dedicated to beast-knights – the stickers matched accordingly
In subsequent events, we started developing new ideas: idle animations for the Data Pads appeared, and in one of the latest releases, we even hid puzzles for the particularly observant
But we don’t plan to stop there: future improvements and changes to the Data Pads are possible, which we hope players will enjoy