Development update: Character Creation

The redesign of the character creation wizard is done. Here are some screen shots:

1: Race and gender. Would be nice to have a character race picture somewhere here, but that can wait I guess.

2: Character class (and spell books if applicable). Looks like there will be a problem fitting in more classes, I may need to make a plan.

3: Starting kit. Includes flavour text, modifiers and the actual list of starting items. This replaces the Modifier assignment step.

4: Spell selection. This only appears for character classes that start with spells. Random doesn't work yet.

5: Finally, personal details. Name, portrait and personality are assigned here. It also displays a summary of the character's starting modifiers, the sum of race, class, gender, and starting kit.

As part of this work starting kits have been normalised out into their own database table, rather than being an atribute attached to character class (and race in the case of Faeries and Dryads). I have a lot of work outstanding writing flavour text for all the various starting kits. That will happen over time.

I'm feeling like I should get back to the foe AI, but we'll see how it goes.

Development Update: No sooner said than done

I've been tackling the redesign of the Create Character wizard. When the muse takes you...

The work is not yet complete, but the new design is a lot more consistent and fun to use than the old. It now goes Race & Gender -> Class -> Kit -> Spells -> Name/Portrait/Personality.

Race/Gender and Class both benefit greatly from redesigned screens. Kit gets a whole screen and will become a "first-class" choice. Moving the personals section to the end adds some focus to those details.

Kit choice! Kits will include their own descriptions, names (they're currently named after the primary weapon), and a set of modifiers that replaces modifier assignment. This will make for a great chance to add some flavour, and hide new players from the complexities of weapon attack modes and spell book favoured modifiers. A redesigned screen will give me the chance to display all the starting items of each the kit for inspection by the player.

Work outstanding is the redesign of the kits screen, and a lot of data entry content creation around kit names and descriptions. I'll post some screen shots when it's done, I think this blog needs more picture.