Over the past week, I've been working on the user interface and mechanics for managing followers. While not the most exciting part of the game, everything is coming together and it's starting to feel playable.
In the image above , you can see the menu which allows you to manage your active and reserve followers in a location. You can drag to change the position of followers (important for placing your melee followers at the front and your ranged followers at the back), and switching followers between active and reserve (your active followers will fight in battles, and your reserve followers can be used to relieve your active followers). You're allowed up to six active and six passive followers in a location, and can manage all of your followers in the world map. When you convert a follower, it is immediately added to your active or passive followers unless there is no room left, in which case you will have to wait until you leave the area to access them.
You can also click on followers to bring up information about them, including their stats, experience, level and equipment. You will eventually be able to manage equipment and learn skills.
Clicking on the type of the follower or bringing up the follower type menu lets you browse through known follower types and view information about those followers, from base stats, type(s), skills (learned automatically for that type every 5 levels), and power.
The power can be Martial, Arcane and Divine, and determines how followers draw mana for powering their skills. Arcane followers use their own (typically small) mana pool. Divine followers call upon their deity's mana pool to cast their spells - this gives them access to more mana, but also uses up mana the deity needs to use spells. The mana bar slider in the UI lets you distribute your remaining mana between followers and spells - all mana to the left of the slider is usable by Divine followers, and all mana to the right of the slider is usable for spells (the followers won't be able to draw upon that mana). Martial followers use their physical prowess and training to power their skills - meaning that any skills they learn that require mana will be completely free.
The battle UI with the mana slider.
A lot of the systems are now in place for exploring locations, but there is still more to work out, and I have to add dungeons and the world map. I'll keep you up to date on the progress, but I'm quickly moving towards having a demo of the game up!
