So, I've stated that I plan to make the skill panel much more customizable. The question though is - how much?
Some things I've considered are:
1. User's choice of what information is shown, and where, on the panel. Possible things to include are everything on the current one, with both cloner-adjusted percents and lemming counts as an option where relevant (I'll probably drop the absolute percents, and just leave the cloner-adjusted ones). That aside, other common suggestions are the save requirement, the total lemming count, the killed count, etc. Feel free to suggest as many ideas as you like; the goal here is that you can pick and choose which ones (and where) are displayed so it isn't a huge issue if there's a million options.
2. Custom skill ordering, options to display all 16 skills (or at least empty slots where they'd be) regardless of what's used in the level.
3. Buttons for other features, such as restart, save replay, etc.
So - let me know what your ideal skill panel would look like! If you feel like doing a mock-up of it, even better - in this case, keep in mind that the skill panel should be one of the following sizes:
320x40 (Low-Res, Non-Widescreen)
640x80 (Hi-Res, Non-Widescreen)
424x40 (Low-Res, Widescreen)
848x80 (Hi-Res, Widescreen)
Additionally, each element should start at a position where both coordinates are divisible by 8. Essentially, think of it as being made up of 8x8 cells, with each element taking up one or more of these. A single letter or number would take up one cell (other than skill counts, where both digits could presumably fit in a single cell - I haven't worked out exactly how these will work yet, so for now just go with the assumption that they'll remain the same size they currently are, but don't have to be aligned to the 8x8 positioning); other elements (such as buttons) could take up multiple.