Chargen layout is ready!

We finished May with a complete character generator, with every feature at least outlined and ready to implement. 

We might cut the inventory editor (or leave it as a dev mode option) and instead just have all gear set by your career choice instead, which makes sense and makes chagen much faster. That may be less flexible, but at least then we don't need to gamify trading gear points or story points for items, leading to what Kent rightly called, "I traded my intelligence for bread." :p

For folks who like getting into the weeds and spending an hour on just their appearance and stats, that should be easy, but for players who just want to hit randomize all and start playing, that should only take maybe 2 seconds. 

The three page buttons are big, bold, and clearly show the progression though each page. Clicking them sends you back to the three pages quickly and easily, without losing any progress, so you can check each panel. The appearance and inventory editor buttons feel a little hidden, but they are always thee in the middle panel, with "go back" just being the three main page buttons below.

 My main concern was that this would all be very overwhelming to new players especially, so I made sure everything was big, visual, and packed with additional information in mouse-hover tool-tips that pop up on virtually every item. If you don't know what a button does or what that stat means, you can just hover over it and get a detailed description of what it is doing and probably an equation for how it effects your stats.

The goal for the preset editor is for anyone to quickly write a short backstory, assign traits, health conditions, starting gear, appearance, skills... and save that to a selectable starting character. For balance testing that is invaluable, as well as for players eventually who want a quick start and just want to skip to playing the game. 

Being able to save presets will also be cool for modders, because each preset gets written to an XML that can be exported from the game and uploaded to a modding website as a package. So if in the future a modder adds the inevitable Jedi or Halo Spartan faction, it will be easy to start that mod with those clothes, traits, and skills already pre-loaded with preset characters to choose from. 

I think of all the pre-alpha UIs here, the Scenario Editor will probably change the most drastically. We haven't got to the stage where we've begin editing the world map generator yet, a kinda distant milestone, and those checkboxes are a little less flexible than we'd like. So likely that will be heavily adapted as time goes on. 

The first two pages and the appearance window I'm fairly certain will stay long term with minor adjustments. There's always room for feedback from players, and this format is easy to edit and change as we move forward. 

I wanted my first pass to look as done as possible to really get a feel for the features we've set up so far, and get a taste for what that will be like as players are exposed to all this for the first time. It's a lot of information, and every character in the game players will meet will share this level of detail. 

Things like traits, motivations, and skills are huge, so I made sure they have a substantial presence here. 

If you've made Walter White, a balding 50 year old high school science teacher from North America, with very high crafting: chemistry skills and surprising intelligence and aggression -- then gave him lung cancer, a bad back, and the trait Vengeful, you need to see the impacts on his movement speed (probably the most important), carry weight, and what motivations he has in his rolladex.  

That bad back and lung caner are pretty dangerous traits, lowering walk speed, stamina, and carry weight. So is the vengeful trait. Any character who harms him or insults him, might generate a quest to retaliate which hurts his mood until it is done, (but he gets a big kick out of completing it.)

So I made sure those info panels were front & center. 

I'm a little torn on the Motivations panel being on both pages vs the Stats panel (that move speed thing especially is a big one, to me, as a player. Getting stuck in an ailing slowboy is a tough start!) I might be convinced to move stats to both pages, and put motivations in its current place. 

The only big difference would be the Motivations being impacted by the career and PENTA stats, on page 1. Changing age, career, and the big 5 really impacts how motivated your character will be to go adventure (and thus travel off map away from home), how driven they are to gain skills vs indulge in pleasure, and how violent or social they are. 

Since motivations Wants & Needs is where this game derives it core hook for the big gameplay loop,  I wanted that on both pages, so you can see how that changes as you tweak stats. 

Your master blacksmith will want more specific materials for their smithy than an amateur, for instance, motivated to hone their skills at a high level. They may also be influenced by their Endurance & Aggression stats to really wander far from home to achieve that goal, or not want to leave home at all. It will also tell you how bad the mood penalty might get for ignoring his core motives.

It's an intricate dance, and I want that to be very obvious, so no player ever gets stuck with a middling build they find out after an hour of playing they have no interest in pursuing. 

Do you really want that middle aged 1800s french housewife who just wants to find her way back to her family? Or did you really want the grizzled 1990s veteran US solider on a mission to conquer this alien civilization for Space America? 

The diversity this system can generate is impressive, but it can also be dangerous. You can roll yourself a very hard start and not know it your first time, so I had to be careful to make sure whatever character & scenario you start with, you'll still have opportunities to gain party members after you land on the fragment in that first half hour of playtime, learn enough of their language to build a relationship, start a town or caravan of your own, or settle in an NPC town. 

You can wander the Fragment permanently too, as a loner, never breaking ground and never staying in one place for long, but I want to make sure you know going in what that means, and buff your disease resistance & endurance to start (the homeless veteran career might be a good call -- they start with a backpack of survival gear, along with the traits wanderlust, desensitized lv2, and war trauma lv2.) 

There's a lot going on, so I'm glad the layout is done and ready to integrate into the main project.