It's that time again! Devlog!!!
To start things off, this devlog deals with the modifications to the game UI mainly and some functionality updates as well.
UI MODIFICATIONS
Main Menu
To start it off, let's talk about the main menu updates:
First is the modified inventory. In game, players can hold a maximum of 30 items at any given time. It is currently still under debate as to whether to allow similar items to stack but the final decision will be made based on the story and crafting elements once those are finalized.
The first thing you'll notice on the inventory tab is that you can see the remaining avatar transformations, your HP (Health Points), EP (Energy Points) and stats. below everything is a rank progress bar which shows the % till the next level.
The next tab shows the status of Juno in that you are able to view states affecting Juno as well as, when unlocked in game, runes and their status effects as shown below:
Runes occupy a space on the soul board which will be explained in game but in short, it's an equipment system which does not follow traditional RPG rules in that you must equip a weapon on a weapon slot and an armor on an armor slot. You are free to place as many runes, however you want barring the in-game explained limitations.
Skills in Juno are plentiful and as such, it was a task to navigate through all those menus looking for a particular skill or even to equip/unequip them when closing and reopening the menus as such, a sort and filter mode have been added to the skill modification:
This makes it super easy to navigate throughout all the nearly 200 skills in game. There is a limit to only being able to carry 10 skills into battle at a time however.
The social tab has also been reworked to bring it more inline with the rest of the menu interface as well as show you the appearance Juno takes when performing an avatar transformation with that character.
You can view a compact version of skill information by tapping the [Confirm] button which you can set in game, speaking of which...
You can modify the input settings of the game. Yeah. Not much can be said on this point to be honest. It's something that's expected in all games in this day and age and I'm saying that it's here.
Battle Scene
There have been complaints that the battle scene does not occupy the entire screen and looking at some of the old screenshots like these:
I can understand why. The UI was also a confusing mess but that's a thing of the past, the new UI and scene:
Has a more compact player status removing a lot of unnecessary elements like weapon data and boxy graphics which serve to be more eye-sore than functionality. the battle area also occupies a significant portion of the screen but has been changed so that the arena now shrinks instead of expands.
The grids are now compacted together and minimize on the wasted space your eyes would have to move to observe the entire field.
The battle command now appears above Juno's head but this is a UI element that may be subject to change based on player feedback.
Skills in battle do not show a lot of detail as compared to before given that you can observe this detail from the main menu.
Likewise changed are the avatars you can assume in battle:
More information is given towards the status boosts and skills.
FUNCTIONAL MODIFICATIONS
Most functional changes would be related to the battle scene which can be summarized into bullet points:
- Player Speed limit cap adjusted, motion speed bonus to AGI increased! (You get more speed from AGI)
- Summon type skills added, players and enemies can summon a battler to do battle. The summoned battler doesn't have much of an AI so it's not good to rely on it too much.
- Damage Obstacles added: Obstacles which cause damage on impact and can affect movement and projectiles.
- Blind State (Player): Now noise effect the entire screen to make it harder to see.
- Skill use now recharges after every battle, balancing factors implemented to prevent abuse.
- Skills can now be directly used instead of having to shift to them in battle thanks to input upgrade.
- Avatar uses recharge if not used in battle.