Some interface suggestions

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Rune

Recruit
Features are probably planned by the bucketload and suggested as well.

However there's some room for improving the interface a little bit.

1: Display toggles on inventory, with the following possibilities:
- Only show better than what I have now
- Only show bludgeoning weapons
- Only show things I can use
- Only show things I can afford
(Those are the most common things I'm looking for, dunno about you guys)

2: The glove slot isn't entirely intuitive. Write 'hands' above it, or have a paperdoll figure behind it.

3: When exiting a tournament, or training, you always face away from the trainer/tournament guy, but you are most likely to want to return to the one you left from. Change it so you stand next to and face whichever of them you spoke to last. (This has probably been suggested before.).

4: Allow inventory to be shown in combat too, but not with the 'backpack' unless standing next to it, with the wielded weapon/ammo highlighted. Useful in case you have two lances (one jousting and one damage, e.g., or several types of arrows.).

6: Add what town buys something at the best price to the trade goods' description. It is after all readily available information. Could depend on trade skill.

7: Reduce overhead on food management. When out of food, automatically start eating the next highest quality food, and add a comment overview 'starting to eat X'.

8: The load game screen isn't quite intuitive enough. It needs to be a little clearer the procedure for loading a game - press restore and then a save slot, or vice versa. Suggestion: Make which save game is selected a little more obvious, and until a slot is selected, keep delete and restore buttons darkened. Add a 'loading game' splash screen.

9: Selling prisoners. You usually want to sell them all. Little need to go into the sell screen and sell each individually, unless you want to keep the fastest prisoners to increase travel speed. Add a 'sell all captives' option to the initial talk menu with the slave traders.

Thank you for your attention.
Rune
 
1) Maybe.
2) I like the idea of having a diagram of a human behind it.
3) Knowen problem ,hopefully will be fixed soon.
4) By backpack do you mean the chest? You can't carry your entire inventory with you into battle, hence the chest, but you do have 4 weapons slots. You jsut have to run back to your chest, while the chest isn't 100% realistic, soldiers never ran back to camp to grab more weapons, they were preoccupied with the battle.
5) You missed #5.
6) Nah, not needed, but maybe having some kind of thing that involves the gossip thing conncected to your trade skill to find out about pricechanges
7) I agree.
:cool: I am not completely sure of what your saying, but it would be ncie to have a load progression bar and a random splash screen (or picture (not completely sure what a splash screen is)), like just one for that load. And you can add your own pictures as well if you want different than the default ones.
9) But what if you want to keep some of them? Maybe a sell all button and buttons for sell all in slot.
 
4: Yes, I mean the chest, as in, allow inventory to be shown but without the chest, unless you were standing next to the chest, and add a highlight to the currently held/loaded weapon/ammo. This suggestion will not change anything about how things work, except give you an interface to see which of your weapons are being wielded, and which of your ammo is being used.

5: I did? Golly. A casualty of editing, I believe. However, adding a clarification to the 'draw' skill that it affects both bows and crossbows, or not, might be an idea. So, how's that for a #5?

8: A splash screen could be a 'Loading game... ' text box or window, so you know something happened when you pressed 'restore', with or without an image. It is a term used in some design programs, although admittedly usually for when you start an application.

9: Good point, which is why it should be ADDED to the conversation options and not replace the existing go to sell screen one, so you'd have the following three conversation options, paraphrased.
1: Sell all prisoners & bye.
2: Go to the sell screen.
3: Bye.

Thank you for your response.
Rune

(edited. I realized some of the shorter answers might be considered 'snarky'.)
 
4) I'm not gonig to get into that.
5) Yes it should be clarified.
8: Yes, ok, I figured that's what it was, I agree. ANd maybe have it customizable (I couldn't remember that word in my previous post)
9) Ok, I like that.
 
After rechecking M&B I realized that the restore and delete buttons ARE darkened until a slot is selected. It was just too subtle for me to notice. :oops:

That might be a hint it could be made more obviously darker, or perhaps I need glasses. :shock:
 
I like Idea2 but it involves a bit of work for Armagan to make it.
Because all the black squares and frames in inventry screen (that includes equipment slots) shares only one small square in ui_gadget.dds file.
 
3) Knowen problem ,hopefully will be fixed soon.

If you want to change any 'entry point' press "ctrl + e", click on it and hold down x, y or z to rotate. Then save the scene and reload. Takes 15 seconds.

Your first point is the most interesting.
 
maybe it's not relevant but I changed ui.dds file to change the background colour of inventry slot (not ui_gadget, sorry). Well, it worked and you can see black helm. But the model was lit in such way that it looked strange... Ichanged back to black again.
 
A few ideas to add to this:

(And apologies for mostly carping. I'm very impressed, and wouldn't bother posting suggestions otherwise. :smile: )


Most of these concern rough edges in the interface where it forces me to waste time doing "nothing interesting" - ploughing through multiple interface steps when one would do. (By contrast, the "nothing" while in transit on the world map is interesting, because you're watching the tracks, looking for potential trouble or targets, and generally maintaining situational awareness. I *like* that part. :smile: )


- Permit me to talk to everybody in my party at any time. [It's a pain to go out of town to talk to a hero in order to figure out if he can use the piece of equipment I'm thinking of buying....]

- While the current "talk to the person" interface to gain info on followers is entertaining at first, a quicker means of getting to the info - a right-click from the party screen, perhaps? - would be quicker and more useful after the chat window gets old.

- When I'm done trading with one follower, it doesn't mean I'm done trading with all of them - abort back to the Party screen (or provide an option to go back to the Party screen).


- Let me conduct Party Management in town. While I'm hiring in the Tavern, even...! :smile:


- Let me check the Party screen while I'm looking at the menu for a town. If I'm resting to heal up, let me check if I'm healed or not before I go to the tavern....



- Walking around town is fun, but unless there will eventually be more to it, I'd be just as happy to turn the towns into an interface menu to get through them faster. There aren't any meaningful decisions to be made wandering around town, or from place to place, etc. Trudging towards a door, up to a counter, etc when I fully expect nothing will happen is wasted time.

Note that this doesn't necessarily mean a loss of atmosphere. Microprose's RPG Darklands used menus to go from place to place and make decisions in towns, but combined them with excellent music, artwork, and writing to convey the sense of place. Fast, easy, yet colorful. :smile:

If the towns will eventually become more active places (if Zendar is *not* considered a finished location) them I'm willing to reserve judgement. Morrowind's towns are generally entertaining to walk through, after all (though the next iteration supposedly will use fast travel mechanisms to avoid walking through them twice....)
 
Another thing:

A "Back" button in the design-your-character stage of starting the game would be nice... especially for those times when you accidentally hit "Start Game" instead of "Restore Game", which leaves the quickest return option (at the moment) of terminating the applicaton and starting it again.
 
Rune said:
After rechecking M&B I realized that the restore and delete buttons ARE darkened until a slot is selected. It was just too subtle for me to notice. :oops:

That might be a hint it could be made more obviously darker, or perhaps I need glasses. :shock:


Don't fret it, I actually made a post several months ago with the same suggestion. I went back and looked came to the same conclusion as you... we both need glasses (or in my case, thicker glasses).

I like the ideas in general, especially the toggle for inventory, but I have a few questions:
1. How to determine what is better than what you have? Especially for weapons, is a heavy mace better than an arming sword?
2. Things you can use... I assume this is a filter for ability and skill requirements?

For point 4. I assume you mean inventory as only the things ON you at the time. In other words, what you currently have equipped. That I can see as helpful, especially in your example where you have two lances equipped... it isn't intuitive which is the jousting and which is the great lance.

Point 7. I like this idea, however, I would have it be something that you can toggle. As it currently is, I get a reminder to check my food stores each time. Without that, I'd play along and then end up somewhere without food. Perhaps if in the comment displayed said something like: "Starting to eat x, you now have y food left in inventory."
 
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