September 2019

September 7

Lots of progress has been made. Realistically, I should have posted a Dev Log a few days ago as the UI was coming together, but it slipped my mind at the time. Most of the UI work for the Loadouts tab is done, and more than that, it even partially functions!

The initial view of the Loadouts tab looks like this:





Each loadout has its own card in the table, with up to four visible at a time. For now, the weapon icon is a generic icon, and is not based on the set's weapon, it will make sense in a bit. Alongside the name and save date of the loadout, you can also see some of the stats of the loadout on the right.

The top row of stats is ATT (or M.ATT), and DEF. For space reasons, the shown value is divided by a thousand and rounded down to one decimal place. EX: 39457 ATT would show as 39.4. On the second row, in order, you have Attack Speed, Balance, and Critical.

It is not yet functional, but loadout cards will also have the same type of hover tooltips as Profiles, with more stat info shown, and a description you can set yourself.

On the right side of the tab itself, you will see another copy of the New/Save/Edit/Delete block from the Profiles tab, nothing new to cover here. Above that block, you will see a new Armory piece for option icons. This one lets you switch between List view and Grid view. List view is what you see here, and Grid view is used to filter down your loadouts list, in the event you have a lot of them. It looks like this...





Each weapon type has a pre-determined icon to "represent" that weapon, with the goal of being as distinguishable as possible. These are also the icons used for the loadout cards in List view. Once you click one of the icons on the grid, you will be switched back to List view, except that the only loadouts that will be shown are those of the selected weapon type. For example, if I have 55 saved loadouts, and I click Teide, I would only see the 9 loadouts that have a Teide equipped.

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Beyond just the visual aspects, most of the work for loading loadouts is already done. This is why the image of the List view only has one loadout, instead of the usual mockup filling the viewing area. That one loadout is being loaded from the server, and the Armory code is actually able to also load its data when selecting it.

My next step from here is to finish my item data string interpreter, as while it can successfully pack item data (as was used to create this loadout save), it is not able to unpack them at all. Once I can do that, the Armory is going to be painfully close to actually being usable. To avoid getting hopes up, it is still quite a ways off release, but once loadouts can be loaded (and later saved), that will be a huge progress landmark in itself.

September 12

The last few days have been pretty eclectic in what I've been working on. All item data can now be saved, and all item data can now be loaded. With that, item data packing and parsing is done. From there, I've been working on random broken or missing parts to patch things up overall.

I've finished remaking the code for displaying item typing such as "Longsword, Weapon", or "Chest Armor (Outfit)". This will ensure that it is never undefined in any circumstances, and gives me more control over what it displays. With this, I'm not forced to show a type and sub-type for each item. I only need to for those it makes sense for, like weapons and armor.

I've implemented Wardrobe Room-related things to the Armory. Avatar items now show how many Wardrobe Points they give, and in which category. Avatar items now have their Rarity rank correctly changed to the value matching the amount of Wardrobe Points they give. EX: 60 point sets are now Legendary rank.

I fixed a logic error that caused enhancement data for accessories to not be applied despite being saved and loaded successfully. It was caused by the server not sending an indicator for which enhancement stats to use.

I fixed a small issue in my icon generating code that caused icons with backgrounds to fail to load.

I fixed an issue where Counterforce didn't work because I gave it the wrong name.

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Work from here will continue on finishing the Loadouts module. I still need to add the code to Edit, Create, and Delete loadouts. Like Save, I can mostly copy the code from the Profiles module.

Once the Loadouts module is done, I think my next objective is to make a module to set which battle is active. On its own, this tab will only be useful as a reference for the stats/caps of each battle. Its main purpose is for the module coming after it to calculate Effective ATT, Average Power, and etc. I haven't figured out a name for it yet, since I've already used "Overview".

September 25

From Friday the 13th to Wednesday the 18th I had some rather bad health issues, which I've been taking the rest of this time since to recover. Today, I finally feel up to coding again, so Armory development has resumed. I made no mention before this point because I am adhering to my decision to not post Dev Logs that are solely about delays or bad news.

Today, I finished up what I started on the 13th, and editing Loadouts now works. It is a little uncustomary, but I am posting this Dev Log before finishing my work for the day. Today, I should have Create and Delete Loadout done as well. I'm just worried I may forget to post later, with how my days have been lately.

With all following as expected, the Loadouts module should be done today. Then I can start planning on how to handle setting battles for calculating Average Power/etc.

September 29

Loadouts was not done that day, and was actually not finished until today. I had a realization as I was writing to validate loadout creation. I can save loadouts that have had items changed or added, but it was not able to save a loadout where an item had been removed that was previously there (it only updated columns with changes, and at the time, being undefined was not a "change").

It was at this time that I realized that despite v4 having been in development for technically a year now, there was no way to unequip an equipped item. This oversight has been corrected. A red Unequip button has been added to the Gear Params Prompt, to the left of Apply, spaced out enough to not be in range of an accidental click/tap.

Once I had that worked out, I went on a mini-spree of quality of life improvements to the Gear tab and the Gear Params Prompt. Right clicking a slot that is not already selected will now select it and open the Gear Params Prompt, as you would expect. Previously, it would do nothing, requiring you to left click the slot first. This annoyance is no more.

Creating and Deleting loadouts now works, and this module is now done. Until I get annoyed at some inconvenience later.

I still haven't come upon a plan I like for battle selection. I could easily just slap out a table like the v2 Armory had, but that table was a pain in the ass to navigate, and I'd like to do better. My current idle musing is to rip off the nice looking area grid icons off the Titles module, and reuse them here as a filter for this module.