Dev Notes #1

Hey guys! I’m Gwang-sam Kim, and I’m the lead producer for the Xbox version of Black Desert. We’re currently working hard on making sure that Black Desert exceeds everyone’s expectations. Many people have asked for an update, and we are humbled that so many of you are excited about the game.

There are many things we would like to discuss, but today we’d like to take a look at what the biggest issue has been for us creating Black Desert for the Xbox One.

Controls

There are so many things to do in Black Desert, that creating a control system that encompasses everything we needed in the game has been difficult. Sure, we could have just ported the controls from PC to Xbox, but that would be like teaching an alien with 30 arms and 20 legs how to ride a bicycle. Would it work? Probably. Would it be efficient? Not at all.

Warriors, for example, need multiple attack buttons, dashes, jumps, camera control, inventory management and then access to the hotbar for potions and more complicated skill combinations. Then maybe you need to pull up the quest menu, or quickly check the map or your worker empire. That’s a lot of different inputs for a controller.

There are many shortcuts we considered that would have made it easier for us.

1. Reduce the number of skills.

2. Change how chain attacks work and use forced combos.

3. Add auto-targeting and remove the camera control.

Each of these choices removes something from the very spirit of Black Desert, so we had to find a more creative solution to our issues. The ring menu has allowed us to pack so many different options and functions into the D-Pad that it really freed up a lot of space. For normal skill combinations, although we can’t disclose too much at this point, we have 2 strong contenders for the final product, codenamed Type 2-9 and Type 4-5. We’ll be bringing more information about it closer to the release date.

We also wanted to address a couple of other questions in this Dev Update:

How customizable will the controls be?

One of our mantras with Black Desert is customization. That extends to the controls, so at this point in time, you will be able to customize your controls.

What are you currently working on?

As we mentioned, we’re still working on the controls, but we are also working on updating the UI. Heres a quick look at the current progress of our work.

Note: Please remember that the images are from our test version, and may not be representative of the final version.

Inventory:

Dialogue: