This week I worked exclusively on finalizing the UI. I have one more week to go.
- Inventory Panel. The slots were rearranged and stats were removed (stats are now available in the Examine Panel, which can be viewed side-by-side with the Inventory Panel). Actors no longer have a Loot Panel; they use the same Inventory Panel used by the player. Multiple Inventory Panels can now be displayed, allowing items to be moved between the player and another actor. This was possible before, but via two distinct panel types (Inventory and Loot). It took a bit of rework to support multiple panels of the same type because I originally assumed this wasn’t needed.
- Examine Panel. All information the player may want to know about actors and items is now available in the Examine Panel. The information is presented in a scrollable list that adjusts its contents based on the actor or item being examined. I want players to be able to make fully informed decisions and not have to guess values and probabilities.
- Context Menu improvements. The Context Menu now works with inventory items and repositions to stay in screen bounds. Clicking anywhere else on the screen closes the Context Menu.
- Reduced slot sizes. The original size was based on the slot background image size, 42×42. This caused item and ability sprites to scale from 32×32 to 36×36. I reduced the slot size to eliminate the content sprite scaling. This also makes the Inventory and Equipment panels and hotbar more compact.
- Finalized Continue Screen. It didn’t need much work – just a nicer looking scrollbar and button background images. Note the background image is an AI-generated placeholder; it will be replaced.
- Reworked the Panel Manager. The Panel Manager is responsible for managing open panels. Panels in Legend were originally modal. Later on I decided to make certain panel types non-modal. This week I decided to allow multiple instances of some panel types. The quick fixes and workarounds to accommodate these design changes made the code harder to work with. I reworked the Panel Manager code to make it easier to understand and maintain.
- Fix bugs that were introduced by this week’s changes. Annoying.
Next week, I’ll complete the UI work.