v0.523 – Combat Stances, Cleaner UI, and More Polish

Today’s update adds meaningful strategic depth and a lot of visual/UI polish across the board. Here’s what’s new in v0.523:

⚔️ Combat Stance System Added

• Players can now choose a combat stance before each fight:

  • Balanced – No stat changes

  • Aggressive – Higher damage, lower defense, +30% energy use

  • Defensive – Lower damage, higher defense, -20% energy use

  • Counter – Lower damage, but high crit chance when attacked

• Stances affect stats and AI behavior, giving players more tactical control

• Stat display now shows green/red modifiers (e.g., Strength: 7 (+2)) when a stance is selected

• Stance selection UI includes hover tooltips for each stance

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🧱 Arena UI Rework

• Equipment button replaced with a Stance dropdown

• Three vertical equipment icons (weapon, armor, shield) now show on each gladiator card

• Clicking an icon opens the correct equipment scene, and returns properly to the Arena

• HP and Energy bars have been resized by 50% to make room for new elements

• Energy bar no longer shrinks when adjacent text is present

• Cleaned up spacing and layout to fit 1280×600 resolution

🏛️ Hall of Fame Fixes

• Fixed issue where the original 3 fallen gladiators' cards would disappear mid-game

• Logic was intact — now visuals persist as intended

📜 Combat Scene UI Polish

• Combat Log removed from view by default

• Speed counter and crowd meter moved to the bottom of the screen

• Added a new Combat Log button on the bottom left — toggles a styled log box using the new background

• Much cleaner and more readable combat layout

🛠️ Other Fixes and Improvements

• UI backgrounds updated:

  • Event Log now uses black_background.png

  • Schedule Panel now uses black_marble_background.png

• Removed redundant ArenaIcon (kept ArenaLabel only)

• Adjusted gladiator card position in Arena UI — they now appear below the HSeparator properly

• In Recruit scene, MaxPotentialTooltip now appears on the same line as the StarCapLabel to save space

• Gladiators are now properly constrained within the CombatArea during battle — no more drifting out of bounds