Delaware's engine

[Phosphor]

Did you really expect that to work, though? I mean, you did notice that there is no way to turn off NPC AI or tell the NPC to stay in place, right?

Well, you can activate "solo mode" and move alone, and activate it when you need the NPCs to back you up, but that's about the extent of AI control or "ambush" planning.

 

For realistic improvements to the KOTOR engine, I'd like to see movement fixed. Don't allow the PC to get caught on little mounds of earth, small corners or tree branches. Some more detailed and varied NPC scripting would be good, or even a customisable script set-up if possible.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I meant the design styles, not an actual merging of those two engines.

Granted. You had me worried back there :ph34r:

[Slowtrain]

I'm curious by what measure the IE was a good engine. SUre it powered some good games, but the engine was inflexible and difficult and the devs hated it.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I'm guessing he was talking of the design of the games it powered, but fell in the trap of not being able to disassociate the engine from the games.

 

Just guessing. >_>

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

I Like the one KOEI used on Dynasty Warriors IV.

 

It looks like Bioware are designing their games from the engine up now. The KOTOR one did exactly what they wanted it to do for the type of game KOTOR was meant to be (not the type of game people might want it to be).

 

Likewise the Jade engine is looks to have been built with very much with the sort of game Bioware had planned.

 

Perhaps there is greater advantage in that approach than trying to hammer in the features you want into an older engine.

[Phosphor]

Granted. You had me worried back there :ph34r:

You can relax, I'm not completely mad.

 

As for by which measure I consider the IE a good engine.. I thought character control was very well done, and party management excellent. The interface was always well set up, and when BIS modded the engine for IWD2, it was extremely good to use.

As a player, I didn't find the engine that inflexible at the time. Gauged against some engines now, yes, it has some flexibility problems (at least in BG1, BG2 and IWD1) but at the time those games were current, it was perfectly user-friendly.

I like the view the IE gives, and I by far prefer the static interface bar for each character rather than a radial wheel or some other "floating" interface.

[Slowtrain]

Radial action menus are high on my list of most annoying game GUI affectations ever. :angry:

 

It was almost enough to kill PS:T for me totally.

 

But not quite.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Radial menus aren't bad. They take getting used to, admitedly, and they (usually) have the ability to be dragged across the screen.

[Slowtrain]

Radial menus aren't bad. They take getting used to, admitedly, and they (usually) have the ability to be dragged across the screen.

I don't do real well with circles.

 

I prefer straight lines and 90 degree angles. Cleaner and simpler.

[Phosphor]

I don't do real well with circles.

 

I prefer straight lines and 90 degree angles. Cleaner and simpler.

Likewise.

 

The radial wheel in PS:T wasn't that bad, as it didn't need to be accessed a whole lot. Not like the wheel in NWN or TOEE. NWN's interface has got to be the worst. Even after playing through nearly the entire game before I got fed up with the tedium, I never got used to the radial wheel or flipping through numerous so-called quick bars.

 

I don't like when developers try to do something different with an interface, as it always comes at the expense of functionality.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

I think this depends mostly on the person. No doubt a straight, cascading menu will be just as functional and simpler to use and understand. I just don't really have a problem with either. I think the problem with radial menus happen when options start being diplayed in unusual angles (which can be bad). You could always try reverting back to icons, or shorten the option names. Or make it so the menu would only expand towards directions which were easy on the eyes and neck twisting.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

I don't like when developers try to do something different with an interface, as it always comes at the expense of functionality.

Not really functionality what it is doing is fighting your instincts. Which is why you feel uncomfortable with it and while it feels less functional. Same thing happens when you give a PC user a gamepad, or a console user a mouse. It takes a little time to get used to and there is a period of adjustment.

 

General design would be.

 

All regular functions on the top layer.

Less used functions second layer.

Rarely used or non time sensitive functions bottom layer.

 

No interface should ever have more than 3 layers.

[Slowtrain]

I dunno, SP. There's something about rotating about in a circle that doesn't work for me as well as choosing striahgt off a drop down menu.

 

Maybe its only familiarity though. <_<

[Phosphor]

Not really functionality what it is doing is fighting your instincts. Which is why you feel uncomfortable with it and while it feels less functional. Same thing happens when you give a PC user a gamepad, or a console user a mouse. It takes a little time to get used to and there is a period of adjustment.

 

General design would be.

 

All regular functions on the top layer.

Less used functions second layer.

Rarely used or non time sensitive functions bottom layer.

 

No interface should ever have more than 3 layers.

Radial interface menus never sit right with me, even after a lengthy use. I never got used to NWNs and only barely accustomed to TOEE's.

I like things laid out neatly in order, on a start-to-finish path, not a circular endless path.

I agree with the three-layer analysis.

[Slowtrain]

Actually, my therapist says I have problems visualizing abstract spaces. Maybe that's the reason.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

I dunno, SP. There's something about rotating about in a circle that doesn't work for me as well as choosing striahgt off a drop down menu.

 

Maybe its only familiarity though. <_<

Well anyone who uses applications on a day to day basis will be used to the whole cascading menu thing almost on an instinctive level.

 

Trust me it wasnt at all pleasent trying to overcome 6 years of Mouse+WASD when playing my first console FPS's. It was both bad because.. Well I sucked a lot more than usual and it was actually physically painful trying to do things the same way.

 

I wasnt overly fussed with NWN's approach either (because I fall into the use cascading menu's every day catagory) but you really cant argue its functionality which was very very good. Both in the number of options and in keeping what would be a very bulky interface off the game screen unless it was needed.

 

Where the IE interface worked for me was in its intergration to the game screen it never felt at all instrusive because of that U shape. Funnily enough if you close in the top of the screen too. Like Arcarnum did it gives a feeling of being boxed in

[Phosphor]

I wasnt overly fussed with NWN's approach either (because I fall into the use cascading menu's every day catagory) but you really cant argue its functionality which was very very good. Both in the number of options and in keeping what would be a very bulky interface off the game screen unless it was needed.

I would argue NWN's interface functionality. It spins off into too many sub-menus of sub-menus of sub-menus all in a outward radial fashion. It's not at all conducive to a steady game play, instead you spend all your time looking for things, particularly when combined with the three-level quick bar arrangement.

All this in a real-time game is just horribly awkward.

I think that the use of a scroll-through system like in KOTOR would work well, with a window for certain skills, abilities, feats etc. I find that quick and easy to navigate as it's essentially static, not spiralling off.

[mkreku]

I usually like games with lots of keyboard shortcuts the most, although I must say I kind of liked TOEE's strange, circular interface. It was pretty.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Why not combine both ideas, though? Instead of making it radial in the sense of sprouting options in every direction, why not pick up on the basic premise of a free-floating, drag'n'drop menu, but instead of being fully radial, make it cascading into 4 directions, all easilly visible and accessible by the player? Suppose you're looking at ToEE's circular menu. Instead of the options branching out like this, that they branch out like this (actual working explained here).

 

Yes, i know its a terrible idea, but it would provide more or less the same functionality of a radial menu, while having the options more clearly visible.

[Karzak]

using that engine would be a step back on game design because of engine limitations and since there are better engines avaible ...

They don't have time to make KotOR2 on another engine.

 

It will be same o lame o.

[triCritical]

Well the branch thing happens either because they are static models or because there is no vertcal axis.

 

Its possible to make a branch break (or simply not block) on how the model is set.

 

SWKotoR biggest failure was that it used the same engine design of NwN, there is no vertical axis on that game (dont be fooled by some models behavior in the game, that is easy to fake) and a lot of things could not be done, using that engine would be a step back on game design because of engine limitations and since there are better engines avaible ...

There is a vertical axis, they just chose not to utilize it. I render two dimensional stuff all the time in OpenGL, and choose a viewport, modelview and projection in such a way that 3D appears to be 2D. And it just not a rendering, modeling issue either, it just the fact that the engine is capable of nothing when it comes to physics.

 

Yeah, the engine was pretty weak. I also remember when NWN came out, and I went to the BIo-Boards for the last time, to say what the hell, there are no hills, just ramps, and the maps... err arcade levels are enclosed in by ugly cardboard textures. It was prehistoric, considering how much more realistic everything in Morrowind looked, which came out earlier, which also had a easy to use toolkit.

[triCritical]

using that engine would be a step back on game design because of engine limitations and since there are better engines avaible ...

They don't have time to make KotOR2 on another engine.

 

It will be same o lame o.

They may have not time, but it would have to be a step up.

[Kasoroth]

Why not combine both ideas, though? Instead of making it radial in the sense of sprouting options in every direction, why not pick up on the basic premise of a free-floating, drag'n'drop menu, but instead of being fully radial, make it cascading into 4 directions, all easilly visible and accessible by the player? Suppose you're looking at ToEE's circular menu. Instead of the options branching out like this, that they branch out like this (actual working explained here).

 

Yes, i know its a terrible idea, but it would provide more or less the same functionality of a radial menu, while having the options more clearly visible.

I like this much better than a radial menu. I generally prefer sub menus to open up to the right of the previous level, with the first submenu choice directly to the right, with other sub menu choices below that one. I read books left to right, top to bottom, and I like my menus to be the same way.

 

Also, I think that the order of the menu options should be user configurable, so you can put commonly used ones first. Some things I would absolutely NOT want (but Microsoft seems to love in their newer versions of Windows) are:

 

1) Menus that don't show you all the choices right away, and make you click a "show full menu" arrow at the bottom of the menu. That's always the first thing I turn off when I install Windows. Does anyone actually like that "feature" of Windows?

 

2) Menus that automatically rearrange their order to put most commonly used options first. I like being able to rearrange menus myself, I hate it when the computer decides to do it for me. For me, knowing where in the menu the choice I want is without even needing to look is much more useful than having a common choice near the top. For commonly used commands, even ones buried at the bottom of a menu, I'll instinctively move my mouse to the right spot before I even look at the actual menu options. If the computer has suddenly decided to put something different in that spot, it will cause a whole lot more confusion and hesitation than if I had to look for the option in a totally unfamiliar menu.

 

-Kasoroth

[Gorth]

Does anyone actually like that "feature" of Windows?

That would be definite No! :angry:

[Darque]

Does anyone actually like that "feature" of Windows?

That would be definite No! :angry:

I'm going with the no answer.