Your soulstone - like a New Vegas Pipboy for PE?

[Sabotin]

In my opinion the GUI has one job it has to do: be totally ignored. What I mean is that the player should almost not notice he is using a metagame tool to interact with the game. That means it has to be in the game's style so it doesn't stick out, but it also should not have anything that attracts attention to it; no fancy animations, no "in-world" connection, nothing to frustrate the player and trips to it should be short and to the point. Now going from this I think that the interface is a very personal preference (different people are bothered by different things), so there's no way to make everyone happy.

 

As for having an info hub I'm all for it, but without countless menus for different stats just for the sake of being gimmicky. Maybe have basic info on one page and have detailed tooltips when you mouse over them or something.

[Azrayel]

This has justa gotta be in there!

 

I'm in the love with the idea already; if not a stone, a book of some sort. It'd make for a similarly functioning device on an appropriate technological level-- although the Soul Stone idea was nifty and ought to be a UI mod however the cookie crumbles, not to mention the aforementioned to the studios as it'd be Obsidian.

 

Speaking of UI mod, supposing the unimaginable happens and we don't actually get this sort of interface it sounds like the team is leaving things highly mod/Able; even without specific tools I think that the technical wizards should be able to whip something up. If they managed it before the games were built in Unity, iShould imagine it'll just be a cakewalk now.

[Lephys]

In my opinion the GUI has one job it has to do: be totally ignored. What I mean is that the player should almost not notice he is using a metagame tool to interact with the game. That means it has to be in the game's style so it doesn't stick out, but it also should not have anything that attracts attention to it; no fancy animations, no "in-world" connection, nothing to frustrate the player and trips to it should be short and to the point.

 

I'm 100% behind this, but I would think that one aspect of that would BE "in-world connection." I mean, the more the buying-stuff-from-a-merchant interface conveys the idea that a shop transaction is going on, the more effective it is at professional interfacery.

 

It's like camouflage. The more closely you resemble that shrub you're trying to hide in, the better you blend in.

 

A really good example of this is in the game Alone in the Dark (the more recent one... I think it was a remake of one from the '80s or something?). When you accessed your inventory, you simply gained a 1st-person perspective from your character's eyes, looking down as he opened up his little utility-leather-jacket. You could only carry what would fit in all the pockets and velcro-ties and whatnot, and when you selected/equipped things, he literally just grabbed them out of his jacket and put away whatever was previously equipped.

 

Image example:

 

 

 

 

That's what I mean by the positive effects of the interface's connection to the game's reality.

[Nonek]

For me Ultima 7 did this almost perfectly, the paper doll was simple, logical and easy to understand. Want that sword in your hand? Then you drag it from your belt or backpack to the Avatars hand, it did what it said on the tin. That said, could it be improved? Yes, I think so.

 

Personally i'd make the belt a quick slot, and add to it as you added pouches and such, from a simple money purse to the very useful webbing. A scabbard, weapon loop or quiver would grant access to your chosen weapon, a shield or two handed weapon (bow/flamberge) i'd have slung over one shoulder. Of course all of these slots i'd map to a quickbar, and of course with shortcuts.

[Tauron]

I loved BG style, you opened spell book and it looks like a book. Hated NW ui btw. There should be some balance betwean style and userfriendly obviously. At least option to switch betwean two or make ui very moddable or even better, more customised. Like Editor. So people can choose their own style.

[aelreth]

I've thought that IWD2 was the pinnacle of the Infinity Engine.

[uaciaut]

Pip boy was a neat idea of giving real solid shape to your player menus, as vats was for pausing the game. If designers manage to find a similar quirk to give the impression that the player menus are the result of something solid that's measuring your stats it would be interesting, but i wouldn't consider it a necessity, especially since pip-boy was something easy to implement and made a lot of sense.

[AGX-17]

If you want it to be immersive, your inventory should be a big sack full of crap piled up chaotically, and you should have to use your cursor to drag and drop/rummage through the bag to get what you want. Potions at the bottom of your bag should have their bottles broken by the weight and pointy ends of all the collected loot piled on top, with a soggy wet spot at the bottom with stamina, health and mana potions dripping off. After all, the earliest items you tend to acquire are potions, poultices and the like. If you have a lot of money you can buy a compartmentalized trunk which can hold only a small amount of gear which would act like a more traditional grid-style inventory, though without the grid, per se. Obviously you couldn't bring this into a dungeon unless you had some hulking beast of a man to carry it on his back.

 

Example of a small one:

 

 

 

 

Kind of late, but on the subject of Skyrim's UI, it was designed for consoles, as all Bethesda UIs have been since Oblivion (Todd Howard: "I LUUUUURV XBOX all our games are priority Xbox games from now on, and we'll port them to PC and PS3! Oh, about the PS3 thing... just kidding!"). And they were never good at UIs anyway. The Pip-Boy is probably going to be the highlight of their UI design career.

Edited January 19, 2013 by AGX-17

[Rostere]

I thought the old IE games' UI was great.