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Ineth

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Everything posted by Ineth

  1. Ineth
    The top of walls and columns is black because that's where the ceiling would begin. Except that the ceiling is hidden, so that players can see the scene. This is how it has aways been in the Infinity Engine games, and it does make sense.
  2. Ineth
    I'm hoping that the Adventure Hall NPCs will still show some personality (at least giving the player a range of voice sets for combat taunts / banter to choose from for each of them).
  3. Ineth
    This sounds so cool! Just don't let useless signature items block important gear slots... *cogh*BG2-Imoen's-belt*cogh*
  4. Ineth
    That's what happens when you fail to buy "Antidote" potions before wandering off into a dungeon...
  5. Ineth
    "Shake It Off" - this sounds a little too casual and non-fantasy-like compared to the other ability names.
  6. Ineth
    The majority of gamers do, but not everyone. Here are some statistics on the prevalence of display aspect ratios among gamers: Data from the latest Steam Hardware Survey (May 2013): percentage | aspect | resolutions in this category of users | ratio | (most common first) -----------+----------+---------------------------------------------- 62.14% | 1.78 : 1 | 1920x1080, 1366x768, 1600x900, and 15 more... 20.64% | 1.60 : 1 | 1680x1050, 1440x900, 1280x800, and 6 more... 8.25% | 1.25 : 1 | 1280x1024, 853x683 5.15% | 1.33 : 1 | 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x960, and 5 more... 2.68% | 1.77 : 1 | 1360x768, 1176x664 0.94% | other | 1280x768, 1024x600, 5760x1080, and 8 more... Percentage of users with non-widescreen displays (4:3 or narrower): 13.60% Data from the Star Citizen backer survey (Feb 2013): percentage | aspect | resolutions in this category of users | ratio | (most common first) -----------+----------+---------------------------------------------- 55.91% | 1.78 : 1 | 1920x1080, 1600x900, 2560x1440, and 18 more... 29.76% | 1.60 : 1 | 1920x1200, 1680x1050, 1440x900, and 7 more... 4.70% | 1.25 : 1 | 1280x1024 3.35% | 1.33 : 1 | 1600x1200, 1024x768, 1280x960, and 6 more... 1.54% | 5.33 : 1 | 5760x1080 4.73% | other | 3840x1080, 1360x768, 1600x1024, and 11 more... Percentage of users with non-widescreen displays (4:3 or narrower): 8.05% So while the percentage of non-widescreen users is small, it is not negligible. And the following considerations might provide further reason to also optimize PE's user-interface for non-widescreen displays: Conserving screen real-estate is most important for smaller displays, and those are more commonly non-widescreen than bigger displays.The PE target audience likely includes a smaller percentage of modern "hard-core" gamers than the Steam users or Star Citizen backers. It suspect that many PE backers were the young gamers of the late 90s / early 00s - who now have jobs and families, and computers which primarily serve productive purposes (rather than high-end gaming rigs optimized for modern PC games).So the percentage of non-widescreen users among the PE target audience might well be higher than that shown in the above tables.
  7. Ineth
    I'm not a fan of floating UI boxes for this kind of game, but in this mockup they are relatively unobtrusive and don't feel too out of place. All things considered, I'd definitely prefer this UI to the previously presented mockups which placed the portraits (or the whole UI) in a side-panel.
  8. Ineth
    In an action MMO where your character has like 3 different abilities that you repetitively spam all the time, this makes sense. But if the Infinity games are anything to go by, PE characters will have many, many spells and abilities to choose from at any given time. In this scenario, navigating through the ability selection UI via keyboard sounds pretty tedious.
  9. Ineth
    Increase your display's contrast/gamma.
  10. Ineth
    So you expect the user to move the mouse to the very top-right corner to select the first character (for example), and then to the very bottom-left corner to select an action for that character? It wouldn't be a game-breaking issue, but surely a UI can be made more convenient for mouse users than that.
  11. Ineth
    Yeah, Sensuki's last mockup but with the dialog box at the far right instead of the far left, would be my choice.
  12. Ineth
    Well put.
  13. Ineth
    That's because those games were designed for 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions, and the widescreen mod was just a hack that didn't really change the UI layout. PE is being designed for modern resolutions, so I don't think it will have those problems. It's possible to do it well, if they make good use of tiling borders / dynamically cropped & positioned backrounds / etc. They should take a web designer on board, those people tend to have more experience in this area then "normal" developers, because scalability has always been a concern for websites.
  14. Ineth
    If that's how you feel about IWD2, then chances are the user-interface won't be the only thing you'll be disappointed with in PE.
  15. Ineth
    Really? They seem pretty self-explanatory: bottom-left: "compass" = open map screen top-left: "mouse with dotted box" = select all characters top-center: "loot bag" = open inventory screen top-right: "quill & parchment" = open journal screen bottom-right: "gears" = open settings screen bottom: "watch hand" = pause/unpause
  16. Ineth
    I actually really like the wood-textured UI background in the screenshot, especially the combat-feedback box at the right - it looks Infinity Engine'ish but at the same time more modern and interesting. What I don't like is the left part with all the portraits and spell icons - not 100% sure why, but it feels somehow irritating. I suspect that part of the blame rests on the glaring neon-blue color of the health-bars, and the imho not-quite-fitting spell icons. Those icons (taken from the IE games) are probably just placeholders though, so maybe it will look better once the real icons (that will hopefully be designed specificaly for this UI) are in place, and the overall color scheme is fine-tuned.
  17. Ineth
    What do you mean? I don't see any deviation from what they've said about the Monk class all along.
  18. Ineth
    The devs can only make a certain amount of game content within their budget and time constraints, so I'd like them to make all of it "count". Fleshing out big city districts full of commoner's homes with nothing interesting or useful to explore whatsoever, just so you can have your open-world sandbox feeling, would be a waste of resources in my opinion. PS: Who said anything about restricting you to a "linear path"? Did Athkatla feel "linear" to you?
  19. Ineth
    So why don't you simply run the game at a lower screen resolution? Then your monitor will automatically up-scale it for you... Just because your monitor supports an insanely high resolution, doesn't mean you have to use it for everything.
  20. Ineth
    Yeah in BG2 you didn't need to rest so often, I too often kept going until most party members were fatigued. But in IWD1, having to back out of dungeons mid-way - in order to rest and regain hitpoints/spells - was a common phenomenon. So it seems to me this has a lot to do with area design, it's not just a question of game mechanics (which were very similar in the two games).
  21. Ineth
    What about dynamic hair?
  22. Ineth
    Yeah....I've never liked the "psychic guard" concept either.[...] Yap, thats one thing i didn't liked either. [...] getting all guards aggro eventhough nobody did witness my crime breaks the immersion for me. I disagree. You have to keep in mind that cRPG systems tend to be abstractions of the world the game is set in, not simulations. In reality, a town would have hundreds/thousands of inhabitants. Whatever you do in the streets, someone would probably witness it (hiding around a corner, peeking out of a window etc.). If you attack someone in a house, someone would probably witness it as well (people in other parts of the house hearing your footsteps and then listening or peeking through cracks in the wall/floor, neighbors hearing screams or spell effects, etc.). In actual game implementations, those hundreds/thousands of inhabitants standing/sitting/lying/walking/running/sneaking around and observing/acting freely, tend to be "represented" by a few handful of town NPCs standing around at fixed locations. It doesn't make sense to implement guard/reputation systems based on the assumption that those few static town NPCs actually simulate the town life in its entirety - because they don't. Those systems should instead be implemented to match the consequences that would *actually* happen in the real town, even if the player won't see everything that leads to those consequences on screen. TL;DR: Just because you've killed all NPCs in a particular room of a house doesn't mean there weren't any witnesses.
  23. Ineth
    Yes, now that you mention it, I think Jaheira complained when in a city and expressed content when out in the wilderness. But no context-sensitivity to what was currently going on - like success vs failure at battle, being hunted vs exploring at your leisure, etc. I think those were part of her "romance" script, so if you had just told her to shut up when she brought it up, the "romance" would have terminated and she wouldn't have brought it up again.
  24. Ineth
    As a keyboard shortcut, sure. Cramming an extra button in the interface would not be needed though, it would just distract from more important stuff.
  25. Ineth
    Yeah, those NPC banter lines in BG2 were often not at all appropriate to the situation at hand - I guess they were timed randomly without taking any context into account. In particular, Imoen perfected the art of causing awkward moments with inappropriate interjections, thanks to her light-hearted personality and soft, girly voice-over... For example: The party is ambushed by a pack of nasty monsters. Four of the six companions die a horrible death, only the Bhaal-child and Imoen manage to barely get away with their lives. Looking at the dead bodies of her friends and those of the monsters scattered around the floor of the foul-smelling cave, and herself injured near-death, Imoen interjects - in a happy, up-lifting tone: "Now I remember why traveling with you was always so much fun!" ...or: The party trembles in fear as the gigantic dragon angrily turns toward them; adrenalin shoots through their veins. Except for Imoen, who proclaims in a playful tone: "*Yawn*... I'm getting a little sleeeeepy!"
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