Building Rome: The user interface of ROME: Total War on iPad

Rome wasn’t built in a day – and for iPad it took a while. Here we describe our journey in a series of five enlightening dev diaries, from our first experiments with touch controls right through to completing the full and glorious experience of ROME: Total War on iPad.

With its extensive User Interface, ROME: Total War gives you ample power to manage your burgeoning empire. We wanted to keep all of the desktop version’s juicy functionality, so set about making it accessible and perfectly visible on a smaller screen.

For a start, we used all available screen space to maximise the amount of information we can show. We were also careful to organise everything intuitively. For example, if you select a Settlement, you’ll be able to control everything about it from a single screen.

We also took the opportunity to pull some lesser-known features into the foreground, such as the ability to move Retinues between Generals. When we discovered that some veterans of ROME: Total War hadn’t even heard of this awesome little feature, we decided to make it much easier to access.

In battle mode, we identified the commands used most regularly, including halting troops, activating a special ability, toggling walk/run, skirmish mode, guard mode, and fire at will. We then spread those commands along the bottom of the screen to make them immediately accessible.

Commands less frequently used, or more likely to be used in the deployment phase, were put into easily expandable sub-menus.

ROME: Total War is now available for iPad on the App Store. Advance to the minisite for videos, screenshots, and tips on building and ruling your empire.