The work-in-progress statbox is here: User:CorakTM/Sandbox
I've worked on and off on some code regarding the character statbox, which I've found to be pretty useful. It's taken some adjustments for me to get used to the wiki code and html stuff I needed, since I've mostly done C, C++ and some scripting language before. I got into it mainly because of the problems with level-based resistance changes, and had wanted to make it so it could be easily adjusted for all profiles if there was another change, or if another Elona mod ever got popular. I also wanted to add a racial bonus one, but it turned out that there is almost always an exception to racial bonuses. Things including undead, yith, spiders, and fairies usually had a special bonus, but if it can't be applied to every instance of the monster then it can't be used. I ended up including a section where special bonuses could be applied, but since those who are using the statbox might not want to use it, it doesn't show up if it's left blank.
So, the advantages to the changes:
- Every existing statbox remains usuable, although the current resistances will not appear. The resistance box displaying the NPC level bonus will show what they get at the level they are set to in the box. I'd like the resistance section to link to the info regarding why you can't just provide a set amound of resistance.
- Lined up stats, so the potentials don't mess up the look of the box. Pretty minor cosmetic change, but easier to read. It automatically splits the stats into stat and potential if the potentials are included.
- Support for narrowing down the version that's displayed. Using Normal won't display any Plus information, such as the NPC level bonus box for it. Using Plus uses the updated icons, as well as reordering the skills to make them easier to find. Leaving it empty works fine, and acts the same as Normal, except it displays both Elona and Plus boxes for level resistances.
- Much easier to find the skill you want to find if you're looking for a pet for a certain purpose. Some of the skills appear in a different order if it's in Plus mode. I've only finished traveling and eye of mind right now, but the other ones should be easy to do.
- I'm thinking about using a sub-template to find which skills
The downsides:
- The obvious one would probably be that everyone is used to the old one, and this seems clunky and unnecessary.
- I went to one column to make it a little cleaner, but for boxes where the NPC has a ton of skills this can be awfully long. I wanted to see if the description text would end up looking better, so I'm open to going back to 2 columns for some of the stuff. All the wikia "recent activity" and other boxes clutters up the screen already so there's not a lot of room over there for stuff.
- Monsters that might have innate resistances would have to be manually re-added. This is only one line and makes it accurate for both games, but I can't say how long it'd take. I'd probably be doing a lot of that.