Developer Diary: Introducing the Item Wheel

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our second theHunter: Call of the Wild developer diary.

This time, we’re joined by Ami Tsurugi, UI Designer, and Magnus Eckers, UI Developer. Today, we’ll talk about the new Item Wheel feature that’s being introduced for free alongside our upcoming reserve Revontuli Coast.

Since this is a feature that has been highly requested by our community for a long time, we hope this blog post will provide some interesting insights.

Why an Item Wheel?

There are currently a couple of different ways to switch items in theHunter: Call of the Wild, but each method has its downsides. For example, selecting items with the D-pad or the mouse middle button is time-consuming, as you have to scroll through each item one by one. The hotkeys are also available if you are a keyboard and mouse user, but there’s still a problem where you have to remember which items are assigned to which keys. Another major issue is that there is currently no way to quickly swap ammo.

We were aware that we had been receiving a lot of feedback from the community on these issues, so we set out to solve them by introducing a new radial menu:

Button Mapping and Functionality

The most basic functionality of the Item Wheel is of course to switch items. If you open the wheel by pressing and holding the mouse middle button/D-pad up button, you will see the radial menu with assigned items. Move the mouse/tilt the right stick and highlight an item you wish to select. Releasing the held key will close the wheel and the highlighted item will be selected. Most of the keys can also be remapped in the settings menu.

If you are an owner of a hunting dog in theHunter: Call of the Wild, you may be familiar with the dog command wheel which also takes the form of a radial menu. While keeping the look and feel of the command wheel, we have made changes to its controls to enable faster item selection. Instead of hovering over the slot containing the item you wish to select, the direction of the mouse movements will highlight slots. Closing the wheel will select the currently highlighted item.

Showcasing the new item wheel UI views in the in-game inventory.

Assigning equipment to the slots can be done in the inventory as usual. There is now a wheel view added to the inventory screen, and you can switch between the two depending on your needs.

Switching Ammo and Sights

In the Item Wheel, you can also switch ammo and sights by pressing Q/LB for ammo and E/RB for sights while highlighting a weapon. The stats panel displayed on the right side of the wheel could also be useful to quickly find the suitable ammo for the animal you are trying to hunt. Now, if you suddenly encounter a class 9 animal when ammo for class 1 is attached to your weapon, you can just hit the key and quickly swap to the right ammo and have a successful hunt!

That’s all for today’s diary. We look forward to you all trying out this new feature and hope you like it. Please stay tuned as we continue to work on quality of life improvements. If you would like to give us feedback or suggestions, reach out to us via theHunter: Call of the Wild feedback channel on the official Discord server!