EBF5: Skills Menu

Hey guys, I’m almost done with the skill menus. These were a pain because of the huge amount of information that skills contain, and the skill menu was probably the worst part of the GUI in EBF4.

I think I managed to make things much cleaner this time, with skills neatly sorted by type, and the upgrade window clearly showing you exactly what is changing. Also there’s no penalty for moving extra skills between players this time.
skills 1
skills 2

44 thoughts on “EBF5: Skills Menu

  1. angel g.s

    I was wondering one thing, since flash player is going to disappear because you do not use java? I do not know much about games but I think that if it works with minecraft it could work with EBF or do as in sky 9 games and make a game type installation only that simple and without as many lios as others, as well as old RPG games ❓

    Reply
  2. Sanford

    Will items that say ‘boosts damage of fire skills’ now instead say something like ‘increases the damage of fire skills by 20%’? In EBF4, I was rather annoyed that I couldn’t figure out whether an item that increased my attack, or an item that boosted skill power was more useful.

    Reply
      1. Sanford

        Well, if you have the % increase in the item’s description, you could have the bonus increase as you level up the item, while still being clear about the amount of increase.

        You could still have an NPC tell you the effects are multiplicative (i.e., if you have +100% attack and +20% damage on fire skills, fire skills do 2.4 times their base damage).

        Or something like that. You’re the game designer, not me.

        Reply
      2. Dewayne Thomas

        I always wondered what the odds were of special attacks occurring like where it says May Unleash Holy Sword While Attacking. Is it always like 50% or something for every one of them?

        Reply
  3. AckYi

    You should make duel npc sistem. you talk to npc, they ask you for fihgt, you accpet and you figth theyr crew. Wish you see this 😀 :yay:

    Reply
    1. Dewayne Thomas

      Or like in FFX where you would talk to Belgamine and fight her summons with yours. The way they work in this though maybe make it like a puzzle and you have to select summons in the right order to kill enemies or something.

      Reply
  4. Dewayne Thomas

    The menu looks amazing and really clears up a lot of problems i had with the older games. I always had trouble distinguishing some of the spells at a quick glance especially the ones at the bottom that were kinda all mashed together. Is there still a limit on who can learn certain extra abilities? It’s a pain to remember who can learn what but at least now they are easy to swap which is fantastic. Also, does this mean you can buy an extra ability with one character and give it to another for free?

    Reply
      1. Dewayne Thomas

        Excellent. On that note, are there features that you’re adding or changing in this game that you would like to go back and add to the older ones?

        Reply
  5. Devin de Vries

    I actually thought the EBF4 Menu was pretty decent.
    BUT being able to see what the extra skills are and having some more detailed info on skill leveling are welcome changes.

    That said, when you get to making the new Equips menu, could you perhaps make it so that you can save multiple loadouts for each
    character? In EBF4, I didn’t get to experiment with equips as much as I wanted, because I was always scared I would forget my current setup.

    Reply
  6. nick green

    i love all your games so far and i’m looking foreword to you newest, the GUI is looking great and i’m curios if you started the GUI without and CUI or if your doing them simultaneously?

    Reply
  7. Muneeb

    I LOVE this new system hope newer posts will be just a great :love2: :coffee:
    and just as Galefury was saying hotkeys for the fight parts would be amazing maybe make a option menu so you can customize the hotkeys ❓

    Reply
  8. Galefury

    Looks awesome, and I like the additional info about skill effects like burn!

    The only menu I’m not entirely happy with is the actual fighting (although it is improved over EBF4 already!). You spend so much time fighting, so the controls should be as smooth as possible. Fewer clicks, and maybe a few hotkeys for the most used actions. Being able to open menus by mouseover instead of click would probably be quite useful. As would some sort of hotkeys for using the last used skills (for example the number keys). Then I wouldn’t have to move the mouse from the skills to the enemies and back again for every single attack. Hotkeys for cycling through players would also be great (for example QWE to select each player). Those two sets of hotkeys alone would make battles so much more smooth, please think about it!

    Being able to do either the last used attack or a normal attack just by clicking on an enemy would also be super neat.

    Reply
    1. Matt Roszak Post author

      I’ll consider hotkeys and other extra control stuff after launch, if a lot of people are interested in it.

      Reply
      1. Drake

        I personally would love to see hotkeys coming to this game. Anything which allows us to click less trough the menues is welcome. In battle hotkeys for switching characters, waiting(selecting next character), defending and opening the skills menu might be useful. Maybe allow us to use the numbers for recently used skills to repeatedly recast it without clicking on the skill itself.

        So maybe sth. like:
        ‘W’ or ‘N’: Wait or select next character (W is closer to other hotkeys)
        ‘D’: Defend
        1-8: Recently used skills
        ‘Q’ and ‘E’: Select 1st or 2nd character in backup to switch with current player.
        ‘A’: Opens skills
        ‘S’: Opens summons
        ‘I’ or ‘F’: Opens items menu (F is closer to other hotkeys)
        ‘C’, ‘Esc’: Cancel current action(while targeting with an ability for example)

        At this rate we’d have most of the hotkeys close to each other and allows us quick interaction while battling enemies.

        Reply
    2. Dewayne Thomas

      Switching character hotkeys on QWE is an amazing idea although I think it’s going to be a 1 click switch kinda system anyway. Would still be very nice to have hotkeys though.
      Is the last spells used in the menu still going to be in the UI? I think that’s as good as a repeat action kind of click and prevents accidental attacks when clicking to see the enemy data.

      Reply
  9. Drake

    “Also there’s no penalty for moving extra skills between players this time”
    – Does this mean that AP will be no more character specific or can any character learn any extra skill but only one of them using it at the same time?

    Reply
    1. weatherly23

      I’m guessing this is what it means: the skills are still only usable by one player at a time each, but once you level up an extra skill, it stays leveled up when you swap it between players. For example, once you level up Purify to Max, you can swap it to another player and it’ll stay Max. I think that’s what he means.
      Before, if you wanted to give an extra skill to a different player, you had to unlearn it, which always resets it to level 1, meaning you have to spend AP on another player to get it back up.
      On a related note, I hope AP gets an extra use outside leveling skills if extra skills stay leveled permanently. In 4, you use it for unlearning and relearning extra skills, but permanent levels for them would result in AP for nothing eventually.

      Reply
  10. TyloThorn

    Amazing! Looks like this is gonna be very convenient and helpful. Also reading the effects… this is SUCH an awesome idea, which i thought to be nice back in EBF 3, being able to focus the firestorm. I love that, thanks! Save to say skills are gonna be even more fun to level than before, also with the ability to swap extra skills, giving a much greater variety to possible approach/strategy. Judging from quality and what this work deserves so far, EBF 4 was just the tip of the iceberg. :stars:

    Reply

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