Hormalakh

Synergy is a good idea.

I hated having to cast spells if I was trying to play real-time. Some way of making sure that accessing the grimoire/spells is fairly easy would be great.

A very cool website that I found posts real weapons that look cool. One of them that I saw was called a "gun katar." I think my mage would definitely enchant this. http://www.collector...g01/Lot-101.htm Another cool one I found here: The tanegashima (Onimusha uses this name for another enchanted weapon in that game too). This is a real weapon.

Any specific ideas on how to make crafting "deeper" as you call it? I am of the same mind as you, but I honestly can't think of any games that are SP that have done crafting remotely well enough to where I enjoyed it. BG2's Cromwell was too specific and limited - it seemed almost like quests in that game. Cespenar from the ToB was much better, but it was still missing a little something. I also didn't think having to wait for Cespenar to go through your packs one at a time (and you having to skip items that you knew you didn't have everything for) was the best way they could have done it. Perhaps some sort of menu would have been better.

Yeah I agree. I was just trying to say that the dialogue isn't the challenge. I didn't mean to make it sound like all three options would be the same, but rather that picking any dialogue option shouldn't be the "insta-win" scenario where your only challenge was the dialogue.

n/t

I don't have an issue with context sensitive clicks. That should just be a more effective way to click the mouse and if it's more effective than non-contextual clicking, then so be it. But it doesn't obviate the need for keyboard hotkeys. There will be situations where you want to do something other than what the contextual click is for. In those cases, a hotkey would be great. In your starcraft example, the context sensitive mouse-click, didn't mean that they didn't have hotkeys for players who used the keyboard. Right clicking usually moved the army, where as A+click attack-moved, killing anything in the path.

I would be fine with contextual cursors when there is only one possible action to be done to an object as this makes sense and is good design. I'd rather not have contextual cursors because I would want to do more than one thing to a chest/door. In cases where I can do more than one thing to an object, (i.e. should be able to "attack" it, trap it, pick the lock, attach an explosive to it, etc), then having hotkeys would be great. There will usually be more than one thing to can do with any object in-game, and making each object only have one single context doesn't make sense. That leaves a contextual menu that you open with a right-click, and then select the correct action with another click. How big should the menu be? If it's too small, people might make a mistake and attack the chest instead of picking it. If it's too big you still have the dragging mouse issue. Let's assume that you only have one context to the chest. Great, we've solved the problem for one specific object (chests). What about other NPCs? Will you also have context-sensitive menus for them? Pickpocketing? Attacking? Dialogue? Sneakattack? Cast spell, etc? What about other objects? Doors? Will you have a lockpick, lock, bash, open, close context menu or no? How about setting a trap? Or disarming a trap? Would you just right-click the floor and it automatically sets a trap? What if you wanted to throw an object there instead? There are too many contexts to have a single-click. Edit: Changed mind about contextual clicking.

It's not just mouse click. It's two mouse clicks. With a mouse alone, you need to drag your mouse over to the picklock skill, and click it. Then you need to drag your mouse over to the chest/door and click again to pick the lock. With a keyboard, you hit the "pick lock" hotkey, and drag your mouse to the chest/door and click. One click + key vs two clicks. With the use of a keyboard, I can always have one hand on the keybaord, and one on the mouse. I'd quickly choose the particular party member with one key, activate the picklock skill with another key, and only have to drag the mouse over once to click on the chest/door. However, having the mouse also able to do the same thing (redundancy) allows people with disabilities to play the game without having to use the keyboard. Remember, this is a computer game, might as use the computer's peripheral devices.

Other than combat movement, you also have world movement too. Getting across the map in the IE games would slow down some party members more than others depending on their weight limits. I remember having 2 boots of speed and always having my two tanks at any particular location (outside of combat) before anyone else.

I wouldn't mind coming up with one and presenting it to the devs. In a lot of the older IE-based RPGs that I played, I saw just little things that would have made the game easier to play with a keyboard. That's why I think that if the devs start creating their UIs with this in mind from the beginning it would be easier to implement and shouldn't waste resources. BG2 was a great example of keyboard shortcuts being done right (with a few small changes). I don't want to talk about this in your thread, so we'll continue the discussion over in the relevant thread, for those interested.

Right I know it's not. But I think that action games do some things well and those ideas should be incorporated into this game. Having hotkeys doesn't take away from the play style of cRPGs. They only allow you to perform actions faster than you otherwise would be able to. What's the difference between trudging through a few skill screens clicking away, and being able to to quickly perform the same action with a hotkey? One just wastes time, while the other allows you to focus on the things that matter: the story and the characters. If you think that RPGs are defined by clicking away, I would disagree with you. I don't like wasting time clicking on a bunch of screens just to be able to do a simple action (over and over again too, sometimes). Let me spend my time on those parts that matter. As for those mechanics that seem to "break" with hotkeys, I would say that it isn't the hotkey that breaks it, but rather the way the mechanic is implemented that does so. The healing potion example as given before is one. Instead of forcing me to "slow down" by making me have to click with a mouse, make potion drinking a timed-action, like Baldur's Gate 2 does. Instead of allowing potions to work immediately, make them take a certain amount of time before I can do it again. That worked well. The quickslot hotkey wasn't part of the mechanism and so it still worked as it should.

I see the Tony Evans posting is back. sniff...poor Tony.

The only point I disagree with is the last one. You should be able to either click the chest and click "pick lock," or hit L and click the chest. That, while being slightly redundant, allows you to either click only once (on the chest) or click twice (once on the chest, the second time on the "pick lock" skill). I want to USE my keyboard, not just the mouse. This is a computer game after all, I don't need to be limited by only two buttons on my mouse.

A great game is that which makes issuing commands to your protagonist as if you were the protagonist yourself by utilizing an intuitive control interface. You are thinking about what you want your character to do, not what mouse buttons/keyboard keys to push to make that happen.

Please explain why you think so. If we have quickslot locations, why would it be evil to utilize those during combat? The point of utilizing hotkeys is to allow you to immediately tell the game what you wish for your player to do. Mouse clicks just make this take longer. If battles can pause during game, and you're allowed to drink as many potions as you want, then it shouldn't matter. But if your problem is that you shouldn't be able to drink as many potions as you want when the game is paused, then the mechanic should be in place for that; hotkeys shouldn't make a difference.

Some more thoughts when considering keyboard inputs: Keyboards are important. Please use them. Keyboards should work as redundant inputs for mouse-clicks. For example, instead of clicking on a party member, you should be able to hit a key that does the same thing. Make combat controls that are used frequently (or with cooldowns) utilize a single hotkey to activate. Look at SC/2, AOE, WCIII, etc for inspiration. Make class specific commands also use one (or maximum two) keys. Do not make players have to go through several clicks to utilize a command. The more a certain action is meant to be used, the faster I should be able to activate that action. Thus, this should have as little clicks or keys as possible. Attack move? Hit A. Pickpocket? P. Pick locks? L. The mouse clicks should also be similar. The GUI should have these skills on the main screen so that I do not traverse several screens to utilize them. Menu screens should be hot-keyable. F10 for main menu. F#s should be used. Flipping through “pages” should have a consistent key to do this. Page up,down, etc. Tab button giving a quick-look health, mana, stamina look. BG2 did this I believe. Space for autopuase is fine. When in different screens, you should be able to use the same hotkeys to do a different action. If in dialogue, allow us to use keys to choose dialogue options instead of having to click.

I wanted to resurrect this thread and ask if the moderators can move this thread to the engine and technology forum? I have a few thoughts about this and I don't want to make another thread in that forum. User controls When I look at other Real-Time Strategy games like Age of Empires, Starcraft, Warcraft, and other similar titles, I notice that they spend a good amount of time working on the user interface, and utilize both the mouse and the keyboard as input controls. However RPGs rarely do this and I think that this is a shame. In a lot of the cRPGs that I've played in the past, the mouse always seems to be the main player input used to make player choices and even then, players sometimes have to traverse several mouse clicks before arriving at the skill they wish to use. You have to click on the party member, click through a series of options, click on a part of the map, to finally perform a certain action. Keyboards however, are usually given little thought, and implementing thoughtful keyboard function seems like a last-minute rush before the end of the development cycle. Even then, the keyboard functions are minimally or poorly designed, forcing players to only use the mouse as the sole input controller. I wanted to bring this to Obsidian's attention before the UI is completely created, so that a thoughtful and intuitive keyboard layout can also be considered that works well with the UI in the game. I had made a similar thread about "hotkeys" being customizable but I think that the issue won't necessarily be solved with just redefining hotkeys. The whole user interface in RPGs has to be completely rethought. Please use RTS games as an inspiration for an innovative, intuitive approach towards utilizing party mechanics in-game. I have several initial thoughts about this that I have noted below. The final interface should obviously take mechanics into account, and so these initial thoughts will change as more of the gaming mechanics are introduced to us, the backers and players.

Party inventory is an awesome idea. Just have half of the inventory screen as a character's paperdoll with a few quickslots available. The other vertical half should be a "party inventory," As your party increases in size, the number of squares for the inventory increases. Say each character adds 80 or so squares to the party inventory. Then you can have backpacks and cases in that party inventory as well. I guess the only issue with this is that finding certain items becomes a chore, because a lot of times I used certain party members to carry certain items (one member always carried scrolls, one always carried potions, one always carried weapons, etc). The other issue is how to implement weight restrictions. If there is a party inventory, then whose strength is used to calculate the amount of weight you can carry? Do you just add them all up? A lot of times, you'd have the really strong one carry as much armor as he could, but you'd run out of space before reaching the weight limit. If you make a party inventory now that weight limit can be shared among different members and seems a little "broken."

Yeah I really like this. I hope they use crafting as an actual solution to several puzzles, e.g. crafting keys instad of picking locks, etc. The whole reason I started this thread was because I felt like crafting and enchantment are not ideas implemented as an interesting mechanic in a game, but rather they are either crutches for solving other problems or just "something cool for those interested." In MMOs, the problem is to allow multiple players to have similar items. In SP games, this problem doesn't exist and so crafting feels out of place and feels like an afterthought. I want crafting to be a thoughtful mechanic with actual utility. We did make it a stretch goal afterall. I don't want my stretch goals to be last-minute thoughtless mechanics. The crafting skill(s) should be as thoughtful as the pickpocket, lockpicking, and dialogue skills.

Yeah, I agree. Make dialogue a information-gathering, reputation building, haggling experience. You can determine your rewards from your talks. There can be surprises here and there, but as a general rule, yeah. I agree.

I really hope there's a chainmail bikini in-game, but is gender restricted to men only. That would be a nice "cliche" for you horn-dogs.

Yeah honestly, the discussions here flow so fast that it really becomes a full time job just to keep things organized and readable. The moderators already have a full time job moderating over the boards. It's a weird dilemma - too much information and ideas flowing at once. I wonder how many of these threads the devs actually get a chance to read? You'd probably need 2-3 people reading the boards full time just to keep up with the discussions and not all of the posts (like this one here) really add much to the discussions of mechanics and gameplay. It's a tough job and I'm glad Osvir's doing it

I think that perhaps it's time we start thinking about dialogue differently. Dialogue in RPG games should perhaps have a different role than combat and other puzzles. Its role should to be to gather information allowing you future options in game, as well as to make puzzles easier or more difficult (only by giving you hints, not actually solving the puzzle for you). Dialog itself shouldn't be a puzzle with a "correct" or "right" answer. It should be more "do you want to find out about information A or information B?" Then after the conversation is over, that should be it. You still have to do a combat or a puzzle, but perhaps the details of that combat change. The difficulty of the combat might change slightly, but otherwise the dialogue itself isn't a "win" or "lose." It's only an information gathering and reputation building mechanic. Your actions should otherwise determine whether you "win" or "lose." As an example, you are speaking to a king who treats his kingdom poorly. The king asks for your help in defending his castle from the rebels. You speak with the king to figure out what the facts are in making your decision. Then once you have decided, there are two scenarios. If you accept to help, then you have to fight off the rebels. If you decline, you have to fight the castle guards. Perhaps by saving the castle, the king tells you of a certain treasure that you can find. However if you save the rebels, they tell you about another item that you might be interested in. What about the non-deadly approach? Well if your character is a dialogue expert, perhaps he can act as mediator between the two. Yay, you saved the kingdom from a bloody conflict. Now however, an army of goblins attack the castle, and it is your job to defend the castle from them. You still have combat, and the actions are still there, but it's towards different groups. Dialogue shouldn't determine the outcome. Your actions should. The dialogue in and of itself isn't really a "challenge." The information you can gain from these dialogues doesn't become the actual "decision" made but rather aids in helping you decide. You also can't always get all the information from one person. They might tire of speaking with you, might be busy with something else, might have to go somewhere else, might get angry at you, whatever. The point is, you get one opportunity to speak with them, and certain flags are triggered by your dialogue options. You can't get all the flags triggered, but you get the ones triggered that you wish to roleplay. Maybe the next time you replay the game, you pick a different dialogue option that fits your character.