Gairnulf

Ok, uploading my other two ideas IE games nostalgic: http://imageshack.com/a/img538/1479/mflbM8.jpg Solid backgrounds, the green gem is to be used to toggle - http://imageshack.com/a/img913/3223/5mESW7.jpg Sensuki's suggestion (from this thread) - http://imageshack.com/a/img674/2636/vETHWV.jpg My preferred variant is the one with solid backgrounds:

[Description of the issue] When loading a game, there are game tips displayed on the loading screen. However, if the area loads too fast you can't read the tip in time. [DETAILED list of steps to reproduce the issue AND what to look for] - Load a game - After it loads, look at your combat log. Nothing [Expected behaviour] The tips should be displayed in the combat log after loading a game. I have a rather fast PC and I usually don't have a chance to read the whole tip.

I almost feel elitist to be one of 4 people who knew about the hotkeys and didn't use them

Yep, if they let us drag them around and then lock their positions, so we don't drag them accidentally. I don't know if that won't be too much work though.

I don't really understand what they could have meant by that

Once I'm done with the other two versions I'm thinking of, I think I'll start a poll thread and offer my 4 versions, Sensuki's version (I'll export another jpg where the combat log is on the left and provide a link to his thread), and the current interface. Interesting what will the majority say.

On the right seems like the worst option because the three important zones are split the farthest from each other (center of the screen, bottom left, and bottom right).

That's true, but there's a flip side to this argument - during battle the most important info you'd want to follow is what's going on on the screen (that's in the center of the screen), then how is your party's endurance changing (which makes sense being on the left, exactly because it's a higher priority area), and possibly the combat log (that's why I'd put it in the center). So with this in mind, it could be argued that the portraits are ok on the left. Anyway I think wherever they are, with enough time the player would get used to any configuration.

Hormalakh's UI for inventory suggestion is the best i've seen for PoE. Obsidian has unfortunately not considered it yet. http://hormalakh.blogspot.de/2014/09/looking-at-inventory-ui-bb301.html It's a step in the right direction. That's pretty good. I was thinking to move to the inventory UI after I'm done with all the variants I've considered for the HUD.

Did they bring up any motivation on why not? I was considering making another pic where I've ordered them that way. I have two more versions in mind actually, then I guess I'll start a poll thread.

I'm sorry, but your classification is strange and isn't functional. Just because a game isn't "interesting" (which is very subjective) doesn't mean it's an ARPG. NWN and its expansions had sub-par content but here we're talking about UI. I mentioned NWN because its UI was a precursor for DA:O UI. It was worse but they were heading in the right direction.No time to write a detailed review of NWN, and this isn't the place, but I agree not every uninteresting game is an action RPG. Although I would argue every NWN is an uninteresting game I agree the DAO interface was an improvement to NWN and NWN2 but I think all three games have little to suggest to PoE in terms od UI. If you think otherwise, give me some examples, I can't think of any.

I agree, and I try to demonstrate the same. If you would want my psd, I can send it over to you, or through dropbox. Actually in the IE games in addition to hiding being hotkeyed, you could click the colored gems to hide the side pbars (I think).

They're not ? Why would they not be collapsible ? That's pretty much what happened yep. The very first UI version had the menu in the middle, which is inconvenient. Unfortunately they kept it there. I just couldn't be bothered thinking of a symmetrical design that put the menu at the side.If they are collapsable, I didn't see anything to suggest so. In the current UI they have these handles, which you can click and drag, and in your mockup they don't. I'm sure they'll realize their mistake about the HUD layout. And do you have any more info on how it came to be designed around the clock's picture?

I didn't know that. I wish they would speak. When I think about it. i think the differentiation in BGII was when you were speaking to a quest giver or a quest-important character, only then did the game switch to the PC. In the rest of the cases - random NPCs, shops, etc, you could use any character for conversations. It didn't make any difference though which I'm not sure if it's a good thing.

Yeah, then NWN was an ARPG too. You see, PoE UI is worse than NWN:HotU UI... The composition mostly - it wastes vertical real estate for no reason. But speaking of parts - where is my minimap?Honestly, in an isometric game I don't think a minimap is needed. It was needed in a 3d person game like NWN (where I didn't like it, I was constantly adjusting it) or DAO. I'm not sure if you are being ironic about NWN being an action RPG, but to my mind it was, at least I found it just as uninteresting as most action RPGs I've played - generic quests, no characterization of plot-important characters and companions, filler combat. DAO was marketed as BGII's spiritual successor but the better description would be - a balanced compromise between BGII and NWN, and in a new setting. Of course nobody in Bioware would have dared to mention NWN as something DAO was building upon, and this should tell us a lot about NWN's quality.

I play on 1920x1080 on a 24" display, but actually the one thing I approve of the strongest in the current UI is that it's all in one area of the screen. BGII was wasting too much screen space with the vertical bars, in my opinion. I think the challenge, and it's achievable, is to fit everything only at the bottom. In Sensuki's mockup none of the elements are hideable, which I'd say is a drawback. The combat log on the left and portraits on the right is a good thing to try out, it might be convenient, but I personally prefer the combat log to be in the bottom center, for a reason I have pointed out previously - it's easier to just look down while paused in a battle than to look down and right, or down and left. Some more analysis - I think the main culprit for the uneconomical use of screen space is the pretty clock at the center. It certainly is beautiful, but to me it feels like the whole HUD was designed around it (including in the literal meaning, hehe). For example who needs a 'Cancel action' button, when you have the spacebar to pause and issue a different command?! Who needs a 'Select all' button, although that was present in BGII, when you have the equals key, and the mouse lasso, and the pause button? Answer - someone who needs to come up with 12 buttons, no more and no less, in order to fill the space around the clock with something :D It can almost imagine how someone designed the clock and the team liked it, and then someone said, we'll have to find a way to fit the rest of the HUD around this, but we'll manage it, it's so pretty after all I'll repeat myself for what I said in another thread - I think the people who have put the current UI (hud, shops and all) together haven't played many or much RPGs, at least that's the impression I get from looking at their UIs. Hopefully they'll find where and how to improve things after they spend a week playing BTW, Sensuki, I can send you my psd file, where I've broken up the HUD into layers, it will be easier for you to experiment with it, I guess.

I love DAO, but if you remove its characters' interactions it's more an action RPG. It's possible to play it in 3d person perspective (in many places it's prefferable to), and these things make its UI very difficult to compare with PoE. My base for comparison is more BGII (the IE game I've played the most). BTW,I hope te folks at Obsidian realize they'll probably need to add another button to the UI, the party AI toggle. What parts of the HUD do you find underwhelming? I'm not asking about the inventory, shops etc. UI, because the problems there are obvious.

Second version. Complete (mostly) list of changes: - The corner ornaments from the bottom left/right corners are now above the ui elements. - The UI elements are closer to the bottom of the screen to clean up screen space. - The portraits have a solid background and are closer together. - The combat log is in the middle and is wider than default (duh) - The previously center button bar is now on the right side - The clock is over the left corner ornament - Line height for the combat log has been reduced to a normal value. No more shading of the top and bottom of the combat log. I prefer to be able to read the text than have a shading effect. Link to full-sized image: http://imageshack.com/a/img661/5145/N2yilu.jpg

I agree floating numbers damage numbers are useless. And they kind of negate the principle of not displaying the total health of enemies. When your party is stronger and you can kill an enemy with a few blows, it would be easy to estimate his total health.

This looks cool. I may be proven wrong, but it seems to me that the people who designed this UI haven't spent much time playing the game. Either that or this is some temporary solution on the programmers' part until the actual designers are ready with their concepts for the UI layouts. Only the main HUD seems to be in a finished state, from all the UI elements I've seen. This has inspired me for a pastime activity of coming up with my own versions of the UI and showing them on the forum.

I don't feel like arguing over why I think this is the correct behavior to expect. I hope you'll agree it's easier to remember the order of your party'sportraits than calculate which character is closest to the container you are about to click or character you're about to start dialogue with, and do this calculation every time before you click. I also don't agree dialogue should only be initiated by the PC. I don't see why should there be such limitation. It's more work adding the checks where other characters refer to the PC if the conversation requres it, or writing specific dialogue options only available when conversation is started by party members, but otherwise, why not be able to roleplay the rest of the party. The expected behavior should be that whoever was selected should start conversation when clicking on another character, and if more than one was selected, it should be the leftmost character, whether or not the PC is among those selected. Clicking an NPC without the PC being selected and having the PC move and start the conversation is indeed unintuitive.

I just discovered I had bought that option too I wan't to be Cynical Master Thief of the Obsidian Order

Might be interesting, though I don't feel geeky enough to inspect other people's code for fun, not for now at least :D If they have already defined types of messages, it may be easier, but if the division is only 'dialogue' and 'combat' messages, it would need more work.

Like in the IE games - whoever is selected, and if multiple are selected, the topmost (in our case, the leftmost).

Actually, I think it's more complicated than that, even without having seen their source code. It wouldn't be done with conditional operators (if/else statements), because their code is most probably written around an MVC pattern, meaning the parts of the code that deal with reading data from the database (where the data will be stored about what type of message falls into what group) and the parts that display it (the code which defines the size and shape of the options screens, of the combat log, what pictures they use for background, etc.) are connected by 'controller' (hence Model-View-Controller), code which says what data should load into what visual object. I imagine creating the functionality would involve first creating a 'table' (it could be a csv files, or just array variables of key-value pairs, one where different types of messages are defined, then another, where different groups for these messages are defined separately, and finally another one where a type of message is matched to a group. I see it as only two groups: display/don't display. That's just the data. Then it would be needed to provide an interface, to assign a group to each type of message. If we have 5 types of messages, on the 'view' side we would need, let's say, two dropdowns in the options screen. In one you choose the type of message, in the other you choose if it should display in the log or not. When you set preferences, they will be written in the third 'table' (be that a file or a variable). Then the combat log will have to read that variable and display only messages of the 'display' group (it's only here where the if/then/else statement you mention comes into play). That's roughly how it would look like, and it would take quite a few hours. The easier, and cheaper, way to go about this is to let the programmers pre-define the display/don't display groups and let us toggle an option to disregard if the message belongs to the 'don't display' group, and this would be the extra-verbose mode, what we have now, and then most of us will stick to the less-verbose mode. They would stll have to define groups of messages though, in case they don't already have something to differentiate types of messages with. Again, I'm just guessing at what their code organization is, but you can trust me on this, it won't be done with a few conditional operators at the View level. It probably could be done this way too, but it would be very sloppy and Tim Cain would disapprove of it