Knowledge is Power

One of the big problems with GearHead1 is that the game just doesn’t provide all the information that the player needs. Even when information is provided, it’s not always in a useful form. As Powerglide says, knowing is half the battle.

The next interface that I need to work on is the inventory/equipment menu. I’ll be importing the system from GH2 in which item info is shown as the menu is browsed. This makes it much easier to see what you’re carrying, and understand the difference between different items.

GearHead2 Inventory Menu

There are a few improvements I plan to make over the basic GH2 model:

• Show the PC’s name and encumbrance level, and allow switching to lancemate inventories by pressing left or right (as in Dungeon Monkey Eternal).
• Show volume. It’s an important stat for Mecha Engineering, but at the moment it’s completely hidden in GearHead1.
• Instead of showing a weapon’s Speed stat, convert that into an exact recharge time. Along the same lines I should show the PC’s exact reaction time on the character sheet.
• Also for weapons, show which skill it uses. Bonus points for showing the weapon’s attack score (user’s skill + stat bonus + accuracy + MV/TV/Se).
• Allow some way to see a list of the character’s defenses, in order of precedence, indicating the attack types each is good against.

I don’t think I’m going to import the item images yet since not every item has an image and the last thing I want right now is to add something else to my list of needed content.