WIP status screen. At the moment only some basic info is shown - I plan to expand this to show (with details) current equipment, available skills, etc, using the currently unused space.
Note the much simpler gem display, rather than that confusing gem gear stuff. Only the classes (and unleash skill) get the name display, the rest just show the color of the gem (which will generally correspond to what class it is).
Rather than having to pre-create all the different variations, the different colorations (and presence or absence of the star, which signifies an unleash skill gem) are generated on-the-fly at render time. Thanks to GPU rendering, this has virtually no performance impact over having them pre-rendered.
The way coloring works (from a user point of view I mean; internally, there's nothing enforcing this) is:
- A class gem will have a white base, and a colored top - eg, the Fighter class gem in this image.
- An unleash skill gem will (base and top) be colored like the class it corresponds to, and have the star - eg, the Swiftslice gem in this image.
- A regular skill gem will (base and top) be colored like the class it corresponds to, but not have the star - no example of this in the above image, but it'd be exactly like the Swiftslice one minus the star.
- A neutral skill gem will be completely white - eg, the unnamed white gem in this image (which if you're curious, is one that boosts HP by 5%, which is also why her HP differs in this shot compared to earlier ones).
That aside, all gauges on the status screen show the stat relative to the stat cap (9999 for HP, 999 for MP, 99 for everything else), rather than relative to the highest in the party. Since the status screen only shows one character at a time, I felt it unnessecary to adjust for highest-in-party here (whereas I felt it made a lot of sense for the main menu screen, or for that matter, for the battle screen).
Despite the lack of the gem gear graphic, the underlying rules still more or less apply. The unleash skill slot, and the four slots under the primary class gem, can only contain a skill that corresponds to the primary class (or is neutral). The two slots under each secondary class slot, can contain a skill that corresponds to that secondary class (but not the other one), the primary class, or are neutral - but they can only be used if the respective secondary class slot has something in it (which must be a class gem of some kind; I will probably add a "neutral" class gem which fills one of these slots simply for the purpose of allowing more primary class (or neutral) gems to be equipped). You cannot equip two of the same gem. You can equip two gems that have the same effect (for example, if both the Fire and Ice skill gem had a side effect of boosting your Magic stat by 5%, you could still equip both of them as they're two different gems), but each specific effect will only be received once (so using the same example, your Magic stat would only increase by 5%, not by 10% or 11.025%). Different but similar effects can still stack - so you could get the combined effect of a gem that gives HP+5% and one that gives HP+10%; just not two that both give HP+5%. (I suspect most cases where gems give identical effects will be variants of each other anyway, such as this example of Fire and Ice).
The whole idea behind these tighter restrictions is that you can no longer head into battle with every skill you've obtained at your disposal - you must think about which ones you want to have for the battle (or area, when preparing for regular encounters) in question. Equipment will remain possible to change in-battle, but gems will only be possible to change outside of battle. With that being said, I plan to make the effects of equipment much less significant; major boosts will come from gems, which mean that in order to gain their benefits, you must sacrifice a skill in its place. And given the lack of any levelling system outside the effects that gems and equipment (and on a temporary basis, status effects) can give you, this can result in some tough decisions - for example, you're preparing Harley for a boss fight; you've decided you absolutely *need* a curative spell, a status heal spell and a revive spell. What's more important for that last slot (we'll just assume he only has access to the four main ones at this point) - boosting his HP by 20%, or also giving him the Haste spell?
EDIT: I have since added displays for current equipment - it shows not only the name of the equipment, but also the traits of it - as well a list of skills, and a list of passive abilities (whether they come from equipment or from gems, or potentially, are inherent to the character - not sure if characters will use the inherent passive abilities feature, it's more intended for enemies, but characters have support for it too just in case).
There's room for up to 10 skills (probably more than a character will ever actually have, given only 9 slots that can actually equip a skill - but there isn't anything that rules out one gem granting more than one skill), and up to 23 passive abilities, to be displayed. Each piece of equipment can have up to four effects, and as the presence of "(empty slot)" under them suggests, I'm at least considering making it possible to some extent to customize the equipment.
Also notice how the weapon effect is described as "Physical Damage+5%". This is part of trying to make ability descriptions more accurate - this is the actual effect of what was described in the original version as "Strength+5%" (it didn't actually affect the Strength stat at all, but increased physical damage directly by 5%). Whereas an ability described as "Strength+5%" (which already also exists) would actually have the effect of raising the Strength stat by 5% of its previous value. The two do not have exactly the same impact on damage, especially taking into account the possibility of skills which do physical damage but aren't affected by the Strength stat (for example, perhaps an attack that does damage equal to 50% of the enemy's HP regardless of user's strength; Strength+5% wouldn't affect this, but Physical Damage+5% would mean it now does damage equal to 52.5% of the enemy's HP).
On a side note, you can also switch quickly between characters rather than having to exit out and go back in, by using Z / X on the keyboard, or the left and right shoulder buttons on a controller. There's no support for doing so with mouse input as of yet (for the record, touch input on mobile devices works identically to mouse input on desktop devices).
I'm not sure off-hand what I'll use the remaining area for. Maybe some of it can go to useless but interesting stats like number of enemies killed. Any suggestions are welcome, though.