A Look for your Hero | Battlefield Heroes - Free to Play, Cartoon Shooter

James Salt, Lead Designer

Hello Heroes! James Salt here, Lead Designer on Battlefield Heroes. Those of you who regularly read the blog may remember Ben Cousins, the Senior Producer for Heroes, promised this blog would be about 'the importance of playtests and the design and development of the ability system'.

Unfortunately I have to start this blog by calling Mr. Cousins a liar. It's not going to be about that. It's about our Character Customisation system.

So, why did we go and make a Character Customisation system? Well, as I was saying back in the blog 'Character Classes, Cameras and Computers'; we wanted you to own your own Hero. What better way to do that, than to make the game so you can decide exactly how your Hero looks?

Your decisions about how your Hero will appear start with the Create a Hero section on the website. You select a faction, a class, set some default characteristics (like skin tone, hair colour, hair style and facial hair) and finally, name your Hero. Once that's complete you can start the game and get into deciding on your Hero's weapons, abilities and clothing.

I should point out that you are reading this blog on our temporary site. The proper website, along with the Create a Hero function, will launch alongside the game in the Summer.

In the game there are 10 areas you can change on your hero. For those of you who like long lists, here are the customisable parts: Face, head, neck, accessory, body, chest, hands, waist, legs and finally feet.

The 'My Stuff' section in Battlefield Heroes.

We've been hard at work making lots and lots of items for you to choose from. You can make some pretty crazy looking Heroes. Here are the characters you'd find running around in one of our daily playtests:

KorbenDallas, Royal Army -- tallefjant, National Army -- HoBoJo, Royal Army

HarryKlein, National Army -- Silentone, Royal Army -- RJ_MacReady, National Army

E.P., Royal Army -- DaSupaSchnipa, National Army -- baronFason, Royal Army

baronMelon, National Army -- baronPatron, Royal Army

Items will be available for Valor Points, which is a currency you earn by simply playing the game. As well as Battle Funds, which is the name of the currency you can purchase.

I'd like to introduce you to Gustav Tilleby, the Art Director on Battlefield Heroes. Who's going to talk some about his thoughts about creating the items in Heroes:

Gustav Tilleby, Art Director

Hello Heroes. When we started designing the customizable items for Heroes there were a few things to I kept in mind:

1. Consistent Art Style
2. Ability to distinguish between classes
3. Appropriate Availability of Items

With the overall goal to keep consistency in the art direction, a few ground rules about the two factions were established: the Royals are round and loose and the Nationals are angular and strict.

With that out of the way, we started to focus on what would make different classes distinguishable too. As you probably know by now we have three character classes: soldier, commando and gunner. In order to differentiate them we chose to use different jackets, trousers and hats for them.

• The soldier class has waist long jackets, semi long trousers and light helmets.
• The commando class has rolled up sleeves/short-sleeved jackets, long slim trousers and berets.
• The gunner class has long bulky jackets, long bulky trousers and heavy helmets.

In addition to that we have a lot of common items like bags, ammo belts, glasses, camouflage paint, etc. There are also clothing accessories that you unlock by completing missions or leveling up such as trench coats and other cool stuff that any class can use.

baronKanon, National Army

Finally, as we started producing items, we realized playtesters we're getting frustrated at not having complete outfits for their Heroes.

For example, at one time we had a white sailor jacket but we didn't have a pair of white sailor pants, this frustrated a lot of the wannabe sailors that were playtesting the game. To avoid this from happening we started creating sets of items.

A set can be a pilot, a tank commander or, as mentioned above, a sailor -- fully customized with a unique hat, jacket, unique trousers and shoes.

By using sets we've made sure that many of the cool war heroes are available in at least one variation. But, in the end, it's up to you to combine items and customize your Hero anyway you like.

Next time: the importance of playtests and the design and development of the ability system. I'm not lying this time, honest.

Extra Extra! Want to make a neat Heroes Desktop with these characters? Check out the desktop and download the full-size Heroes!