Sensuki

We both prefer the BG2 Style UI. We both like blood over the portrait. The difference between our opinions there is that I think on smaller portraits that it wouldn't work and with two colors it looks silly. You seem to want blood on the portrait no matter what? I like U shaped UI style the best for an IE style game. IWD2 bottom bar would be my second preference, followed by a Titan Quest style middle bar. I really do not want something like Karkarov's mockup or a minimalistic transparent MMO style UI. You also seem to be disregarding two facts: The UI is a bottom bar style, they won't change it even if you file a court order. And the portraits are not going to be BG1 size as much as I want them to be. I prefer the BG2 UI over IWD2, but they are *not* going to do it. If you don't want to accept that, then that's your problem. So what. They've already decided how they are going to handle it, they are not going to use blood over the portraits. Once again, if you don't want to accept their word, or my relaying of it to you, that's fine. That's your problem. The portrait size may change ... within the realm of a few pixels. Not gonna happen. They said they're doing a bottom bar. It's gonna be a bottom bar like IWD2. I prefer BG2 UI but I can live with a bottom bar. Once again, that's your problem if you can't deal with that. A dev came into the thread and said it's going to be a bottom bar. Did you not see that post? Or the one about the portrait size in Kaz's thread? Maybe they don't exist!

Does it cover Psyche/Will defense as well? Did you even read the thread? Strength, mentioned about 6 times.

I guess it's a bit of both. Look up "Presence" in the Call of Cthulu & Ars Magica P&P systems for a similar definition.

Voted turn based for Torment and had fun trolling the RTWP qq'ers in the Kickstarter comments.

I plan to upgrade to a 27" (or larger screen) when they start doing 120Hz + 8-10 bit colors. Had one of those Korean PLS ones but had to sell it due to cash flow issues.

CRISPD works but I'd rather see them in this order in the character gen screen Strength Dexterity Constitution Intellect Perception Resolve

To be fair, they didn't explain the "cost" of the new features other than money. A lot of people are concerned about them taking away from other features, and adding significantly more development time to the game. When the actuality is it's probably just more money for outsourcing environment art and to bring another writer onto the project. So the time difference will be there, but it wouldn't be very long I don't think Scaling and Aspect Ratio are both a concern, I wonder whether they can get the UI to scale if they have art assets for the > 1080P resolutions. A set portrait size of 73x86 is going to be smaller on a 1440p screen than it would be on a 1080p screen. One of the reasons I did the mockup of the middle UI with the sides cut off is it pretty much fits 4:3, so it's a "lazy" solution to the problem, I guess. Most other skeuomorphic games I've played alter button size and stuff (like DotA 2) but also have dead space on the UI to collapse.

So far I'd say I was pretty on the money, though it's not really too hard to guess from the quotes around. Will be interesting to see the other bonuses besides the main six attack & defense related stuff.

The new spring.me is woeful

Great *thumbs up*

The information gets around fast enough anyway. My point was more it was a shame that the codex was so hostile, they're pretty nice to inXile and other devs for the most part. It is only the loss of the forum if a developer stops posting on it.

Indeed so. For the record, back when you started making your changes, did you go with a gap in the middle design ?

Indeed it is, it's three very easy mouse movements despite the distance and I've also got years and years of Infinity Engine muscle memory so that just feels right to me. Mouse acceleration is actually bad because it increases your likelyhood to misclick. Devs are set in stone on the UI though, it's gonna be bottom only and we can only hope that they don't completely derp out and do something like what Karkarov made.

Exactly. To be perfectly honest I think that the bottom UI is just a design that the PE devs (Josh Sawyer in particular) prefers over the U shaped UI. That said you don't see too many games with a U shaped UI. And yeah the mouse movement statement is a farce. To further my point about the manner in which gamers move their mouse, let me paste a video of a competitive quake 3 player from a few years ago. Right handed and low sensitivity player. Notice how his preferred method of movement is a left to right flick, followed by re-positioning his mouse to the left. He only flicks/turns left when the map/gameplay dictates. http://www.esreality.com/files/movies/2006/mew_playing_06.avi And let me demonstrate real mouse movement in a simulated situation. I have taken two mockups and a BG2 screenshot, placed a star on the screen to dictate my starting cursor position, then drawn my mouse movements in mspaint so that the movement is tracked. These movements are made with the following settings 1920x1080 Windows sensitivity: 6 (Default) Enhanced Pointer Precision: Off DPI scaling: Off MarkC Windows 8 Mouse fix 1000Hz Polling rate Logitech G400 @ 400 DPI Total area moved on the mousepad was probably around 10-12 cm (although this is only a 1280x720 screenshot), it would be a bit more in game. For a comparison, in Call of Duty 4 I have to move my mouse over 60cm to do a 360 degree turn. Now this one does have the least movement out of all of them, as the action bar is closer to the portraits, but I still moved my mouse about 8-10cm in total. The actual distance between the portraits and the ability icons is pretty much negligible in terms of mouse pad space - even on my abnormally low mouse sensitivity set up. And finally a BG2 screenshot (however this is a smaller screenshot) Total distance is the most out of all of them, and the distance between the portrait and the action bar is large, but that mouse movement took me less than half a second to make - in a lot of situations the player would be paused anyway, debating their decision. So the actual movement is probably a non issue, especially considering you can select your character in the world. The distance here was about 6-8cm, but it would be more on 1920x1080. The situation is totally dependent on - where your cursor is on the screen when you decide to make this movement, and where your target is on the screen. Those two movements take up the most amount of mouse movement, the actual movement between the portrait and the ability icon, even in the Baldur's Gate 2 instance is almost negligible on my low mouse sensitivity setup. Someone with a 1800 dpi mouse and mouse accel would move their mouse what ? 1-cm for each movement ? depending on how fast they move their mouse. And finally whether the ability icons is on the left or the right or above the player portraits is completely irrelevant regarding "comfort", as you still have to make three movements anyway.

I couldn't agree more, but since you're new here and missed the debarcle that was Art Update #54, Obsidian have stated that they will not be using the U shaped UI design of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. They are against it. The main reason for not using it is plausible at best and it is because of the distance between the character portraits and the action bar at the bottom - apparently having to click a portrait on the side of the screen and then mouse down to the bottom is "not economical". I personally think that is a ridiculous notion considering that these days that distance is easily mitigated by high dpi mice, high mouse sensitivity and mouse acceleration being turned on by default in windows and mac for most people ... and that distance in screen pixels would likely equate to 1cm or 2cm of mouse movement (IF THAT) for the majority of current day users. I use a low mouse sensitivity, no mouse accel and 400dpi so that's probably 10-15cm for me and I don't mind at all, I like moving my mouse ... but what do I know.

I was informed that Josh Sawyer used to post on the RPGCodex, but was a target for relentless trolls. I think he lurks it sometimes.

Nah not yet, we'll have to wait for another revision. Which I don't think will be for a while.

More evidence that your UI mockup isn't even what you want This argument is bullsh1t because in ALL of the IE games you can access the bottom of the map area transition. False argument trying to add points in your favor to get rid of the UI. You think that the combat log breaks immerson but you actually like pop-up and floating elements in the game world? How does an element of a contained UI that pretty much extends the bottom of the screen break immersion when a floating damage number doesn't? How exactly? Retarded logic. Once again, advocating the use of pop-up elements. Deary me. Yeah sounds really intuitive *rolleyes* Anyway that's enough of your wisdom for one day, as the rest of that thread descended into arguing over whether the game will be combat focused or not.

In this post you promote putting useful buttons such as Inventory and whatnot at the top of the screen - which is horrible design Oh yes, select all, formations and inventory at the top of the screen. Very smart. In this statement you make it clear that you are a hotkey person, and find such UI elements that hotkeys can handle, redundant - so your design really isn't even for your own use, the sole purpose is just to make it smaller so that you don't have to see as much of it. If the UI took up the whole length of the screen and you could collapse the sides of it, would you be mad that it took up that extra 5% viewable space in the middle of the screen ? I'll bet you would. In this example you note that XCOM: Enemy Unknown got game of the year from multiple sites, when pretty much all old school X-Com fans say it is not a very good game and it has nowhere near the amount of options as in the older games. It is a game designed with the console in mind, and thus functions are limited to what is available on a controller. These modern faux strategy games can get away with using such minimalistic UIs because of the lack of inputs required to play the game - and also because that is the marketing trend. Pillars of Eternity will have a lot more options than this. Any self respecting PC strategical fan probably thinks that the new XCOM is not very good. At least, that is how it is over at the RPGCodex, a site which probably has the largest following of turn-based tactical RPG fans. YMMV. Also if you haven't realized yet, PC Game reviewing is a sham. Most games companies pay journalists or bribe them to give them good reviews. No reviewers are allowed to give negative reviews of EA products otherwise they will be blacklisted from being able to do further pre-release reviews of their products. The Doritos and Mountain Dew propaganda. So if you are actually putting stock in reviews like this, then that completely reduces your credibility in my eyes. On top of the fact that you have console tags in your profile, and your game choices. Here is your second mockup. This one is definitely better than the first one, but you are still ignoring the reason as to why that menu is there - such as the select all and formation buttons. Obsidian have stated that they are actually going to have more room for action bar buttons because their default UI did not have enough for Action bar, Quickslot items and UI functional pieces that I mentioned previously such as the guard interface, skill buttons, perhaps even a grimoire button or something. continue in next post

Oh really? Well let's have a look at some of your biases from past quotes in the Art 54 Update. In this post, your very first post in the Art Update 54 thread, you specifically state that you belong to the minimalist crowd. Your first UI mockup has no action bar icons, and it has no menu / UI functionality icons. In your first design you are specifically promoting POP-OUT menu elements. You also clearly state that your #1 Priority is screen real estate and you specifically relate that to TACTICAL RPGs. Most tactical RPGs are turn-based, not real time with pause. Oh sorry, your idea of a tactical RPG is probably Dragon Age: Origins, I forgot. First let's have a look at some UI's of tactical isometric games (FYI X-COM and 7.62 High Cal are RTWP): Jagged Alliance 2: Fallout Tactics: Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic X-Com: Apocalypse Silent Storm 7.62 - High Caliber All of these games, despite being in the 4:3 age have full bottom skeuomorphic designs. Each one crams as much functionality into the UI as it can muster so that the player has access to all of the features of the game relevant for combat (and some of these games have a lot more options than Eternity does). In your design you are ignoring buttons like Guard interface, Skill use, Quick slots, Select All, Toggle AI On/Off just to name a few. Some of these are very key elements. You also state that you are going to collapse at least half of the UI to get it out of the way. I will continue with further posts.

INB4 Space Opera. lol. Won't be getting anything remotely historical, it will definitely be fantasy/sci-fi or 'modern'. There aren't too many devs interested in a historical RPG unless it's got elves and **** in it.

They won't INCREASE the height of the UI size. There is a snowball's chance in hell of that. My best UI mockup offered a good UI with the BG1 size portraits, but they ignored it and said they were sticking with a smaller portrait size so they could have the Action bar above the portraits.

J.E. Sawyer said that their portrait size is 73x86px - They won't get much bigger or smaller, probably within the range of 5px MAX. Numbers are the most intuitive. I was speaking in general terms, not specifically relating to Pillars of Eternity's Stamina and Health system. Let me use a non-RPG example to illustrate this. In Call of Duty 1, you have a Health bar. This is great, because you can see how much health you have - relatively, but not the exact number ... however in competitive online play, when you hit someone with a KAR98 and it didn't kill them they wouldn't have much health left so you would say "HE'S TAGGED, DOWN TO THE LAST BIT OF BAR" or something stupid like that because you didn't know how much health he had. A Health Number would have alleviated this as then you would know exactly how much damage a KAR98 did on a certain body shot and would instead be able to comm "HE'S TAGGED, 5 HEALTH". This is the reason why I believe IWD2 use Health Number, due to the smaller portrait size they couldn't realistically do the blood fill on the portrait anymore because there was a very small amount of total space to work with. And this is why they have gone with the Health Bar design in Pillars of Eternity because they can't really do two Health and Stamina numbers because relative to the portrait position they take up too much horizontal space that is needed for other UI elements. Small Bars take up a trivial amount of horizontal space and use up vertical space instead, which is fine. There is zero chance that they will implement your idea because of the portrait size in Pillars of Eternity and the two health mechanisms, two colored fills on a portrait looks silly and is clunky and unintuitive - no matter what you two think.

Not only does it look bad it's not functional or intuitive. How are you supposed to tell how much Stamina or Health you have left in a very small portrait (73x86px) at a glance? You can't. The BG portraits were fairly sizable in comparison to the UI size, if you knew the HP amount of your character you'd have a rough idea of what health they had. HP displayed on mouse over as well, BG2 implemented over-the-head display upon pressing TAB. Actual numbers are the most intuitive, followed by the health/stamina bar design ... and then the blood on the portrait.

In a recent post Brandon Adler (BAdler) said that they will not be talking about the Expansion for quite a while yet, but when they do they will probably do an update about it.