Hello, TLS fans!
The main features of the next major update to The Lunarian Shuffle will be equipment related. In the vanilla form of FFIV, the equipment screen is almost insultingly devoid of helpful information. Much of what makes weapons or armor useful are the elemental, racial, and status effect bonuses that they possess. Similarly, the hit rate or evasion granted by equipment often makes it or breaks it (such as the Drain Spear, whose 20% hit rate makes it nearly worthless.) However, absolutely none of that information has been provided to the player in-game... until now!
This is what a nearly-complete version of the modified screen looks like. Since that screenshot, I have also added coloration to the element and ailment icons.
Aside from being just generally something players deserve but weren't given in FFIV, the big reason that I undertook this project was to make way for my next major feature for TLS: randomized equipment!" Whereas the equipment shuffle changes what sorts of items each character can wear, the randomized equipment feature will change what each piece of equipment does. So, you might open a chest in the final dungeon and discover the One Ring, or you might look in the Tomra shop and find the Virus Rod. The GUI from vanilla FFIV would leave you completely in the dark as to what that equipment actually does for you, but with the equipment screen modification above, you'll have all the information you need shown to you clearly and quickly!
The rest of the randomized equipment feature will require a lot of work - designing how the items are made, selecting names that can show up for those items, actually coding these things into the game, and finally balancing it so it makes sense on each of Easy, Hard, and Super Hard modes. If you (yes, YOU!) have any ideas for names of equipment, head over to our discord server (an invite is linked below) and get me as many weapon and armor names as like, and many of them will likely show up in the final build!
You can also keep up with the progress by viewing my Twitch channel every Sunday at 3:00pm Eastern US time:
