the NEW battlescreen!

[jack1974]

I'm now doing the final tweaks to the battle screen:

I gave up using a sort of "first person view" like Planet Stronghold, since this game uses Front/Back Row battle mechanics, so would have been a mess. I am thinking though if to keep this display or change even the party members to be shown like a "card", as the enemies... This would mean shrink the enemies even more of course. The problem is that I'll also need to display various icons around each unit to display the currently active effects...
Also, I decided that the player party limit will be 6 (which is still quite big) while the enemies can even be 8 (I'm a bit unfair, I know mouhahaha).
Any suggestion/feedback is welcome even if I suppose/hope most of you will be on holiday right now

[MarSel]

Looks good to me

[deathknight1728]

This looks good. I think that maybe make your characters have smaller portraits than the enemies. This would be good as you can see who is who and still not click the wrong enemy on accident. I cant tell you how many times i hit the wrong enemy cause my mouse lagged a bit. Besides that, quick question-will it be possible that as a player's choice, you get to choose to use 5 or 4 characters instead of 6. Ive always been a fan of smaller parties.

[jack1974]

Yes 6 is the limit, but you won't be forced to use 6. There will be some battles limited by the story. Also, I'm thinking to have 8 "slots" anyway, so that there's more strategy. The party members can move from slot to slot, so you effectively can change the party formation like if was a battle map

[jack1974]

Lol only a few days later, and is completely different!

this is almost the final layout. I like how I managed to display a LOT of information on the screen. The left part shows up only when you hover the mouse on any enemy/party member's portraits. So you can quickly inspect the status without any clicking. Then if you click, you can open a new window to perform various actions, depending who is the active party member and who you clicked on. For example if you click on an ally you can only perform certain actions like using a potion, switching place or using a buff/heal skill. If you click on an enemy you can attack through various means, physical attacks, skills, spells.
It's a big milestone - I think by next week the battle screen layout will be FINAL!

[SpectralTime]

Yeah, I wasn't a fan of the last layout, and feel this one's a little too simple too, but the window in the upper left-hand corner adds a lot, and this one is much better than the last.

Mind you, I think a big chunk of it's been cut off by the forum, so who knows?

[jack1974]

Hmm not sure the game res is 1024x576px so depending on your computer resolution you might not see the image completely?

[Aleema]

The forum is cutting off the image for me, too. I'm 1280x1024 (not widescreen).
Personally, I think this is a major improvement, and solves lots of problems. It will be a little dull, though, so hopefully have some cool animations and sound bytes!

I wonder, maybe the BG can change based on the BG of where the fight started? It might help make the battles visually different, which is important with layouts like this.

[jack1974]

Ah ok, I'm using widescreen monitor so that's why I don't see it cut
Will surely add battle sounds, and also will try adding some animations, especially for the spells. Just some particles or something. To be honest even Planet Stronghold didn't had "so many" effect and people liked it
I thought about the background change, will need to make some tests - I don't think should be too much bright/relevant because could reduce visibility and distract player from the battle GUI. Maybe just a semi-transparent overlay of backgrounds will be OK, like this one?

[Aleema]

Semi-transparent is absolutely fine! That's what I would prefer, anyway. I think this is a very big improvement, personally. What makes the little char window in the top-left so appealing is that it's a window into reality, since the rest of the information on the screen is just information. I think placing the setting in the BG will make the whole thing look like a window, thus more appealing from battle to battle! But that's my opinion, anyway.