Fear: UIv2

[Silent Winter]

Ehm, even without the  EE, one is able to completely collapse the HUD.

And yes, BG2's HUD is pretty slick, useful and good looking.

 

Also while walking outside thought up a fix for the 'stamina bar' issue... since it's a long-term resource, and health a fight-resource how about;

 

* During regular play the icon will get filled blue with stamina damage. The bluer, the more risk you get of being killed.

* During combat the blue overlay dissapears and the red one (health appears).

* After combat is over, you no longer need health info, and it goes back displaying stamina, probably slightly changed due to combat results.

* If for whatever reason you need to look up Stamina in a battle (is there one?) you can still hover over the icon and get HP and Stamina information.

 

Considering the way I have read stamina and health works, this should work perfectly, and completely removes the ugly red/blue or blue-bar issues all HUD mockups plagued to this day and are horrible beyond words...

Sounds like a good idea to me (though you've mixed up health and stamina - stamina is the in-combat one and health is the long-term one).

Having said that - stamina damage is also taken (at 1/4 of the value) from health - so I think you could die in combat even if you've got stamina left (unless they fix stamina to be a maximum of 'health x 4' - even then you'd want to remember how much health you've got left, so a mouseover might be handy)

[The Mist Devil]

I felt like IWD2's UI was a good hybrid between the BG one and IWD one. The portraits were small, true, but sinc eit was more combat oriented it worked. I'm sure there's something that can be done to work things out.

[Mor]

Especially since one of my key sticky points is a chat box/combat log to the side that is optional to disable so that you only ever see it in actual conversation or if you purposefully pull it up.

ahh.. I actually was wondering why you didn't do 180 to the portraits/actions and docked it to the conversation/combat log. I don't know about disabling(start as minimized?) the log, my gut reaction says no, but to be honest if they design the UI right much of the reason for its existence goes out of the window, especially on expert.

 

Anyway, I wanted to note, that out of all the UI I seen, your is one of two that actually kept to the design concept provided to us. It seem that most people just moved things around to look pretty, forgetting its function i.e. the portraits space was used to show active buffs(spells,curse etc). Obsidian use something similar and added those little flags under each portrait.

[Karkarov]

 

ahh.. I actually was wondering why you didn't do 180 to the portraits/actions and docked it to the conversation/combat log. I don't know about disabling(start as minimized?) the log, my gut reaction says no, but to be honest if they design the UI right much of the reason for its existence goes out of the window, especially on expert.

 

Anyway, I wanted to note, that out of all the UI I seen, your is one of two that actually kept to the design concept provided to us. It seem that most people just moved things around to look pretty, forgetting its function i.e. the portraits space was used to show active buffs(spells,curse etc). Obsidian use something similar and added those little flags under each portrait.

 

Of course when you go into "real chat" a larger central window would show up like in the IE games.  However ideally the non conversation chat window with the conversation/combat log could be scaled to be taller, shorter, or just outright hidden if you want.  A press of a button could hide it or make it visible, say "L" for Log.

 

Thanks for the compliment as well, I appreciate it.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Karkarov

[Sensuki]

Sensuki's concern is that way back in the mock up thread Sawyer basically quoted my final mockup version and said "this is pretty close to what we are doing".  Since mine is minimalist while focusing on looking nice but being primarily about function he obviously hates it.  Especially since one of my key sticky points is a chat box/combat log to the side that is optional to disable so that you only ever see it in actual conversation or if you purposefully pull it up.

Pretty much. The only reason why they would follow along the lines of your design is to *try* and appeal to both crowds. Which oddly enough is not what they said they were doing in a recent interview, but who knows.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Sensuki

[Hassat Hunter]

Forgetting its function i.e. the portraits space was used to show active buffs(spells,curse etc). Obsidian use something similar and added those little flags under each portrait.

That was the Baldur's Gate way.

It worked fine till the BG2 endgame, when you got so many (de)buffs the entire portrait was filled with icons. But it should work just fine for PE, instead of taking more space under the portrait.

 

All in all BG(2)'s UI was very efficient in the use of space, thinking outside the box of other RPG's who had their health bars etc.

[Sensuki]

I loved the portrait covered in blood thing, but obviously that won't work with stamina and health.

[neo6874]

Here is an illustration of 4:3(800x600) like BG, compared to much more common 16:9(1366×768,1680×1050,1920×1080):

 

 

So unless they are going to develop a UI for every aspect ratio(very unlikely) those "wings" on the side will not be used for any functions. Which is why UI are commonly docked to the middle/corner(like here or diablo3) or combined of several elements they allow you to customize according to your preference.

 

 

Btw I rearranged your UI, it makes more sense to put the action buttons near the portraits/abilities. Also can someone confirm if the UI will be on the bottom or not?

Optional -- lemme put pillars on the side so if I wanna make it look like BG I can (Individually controllable, so if I just one on the left for the "game control" buttons - pause, game, map, inventory, character sheet, journal, etc. - I can do that)

Edited December 13, 2013 by neo6874

[Hassat Hunter]

I loved the portrait covered in blood thing, but obviously that won't work with stamina and health.

I think so...

Actually, I pretty much said how easily it could be done on the last page

[Jajo]

Oh, look, it's UI again. And still some people think, that in a game where core mechanics is the ability to pause at will, having functionality hidden away to gain 5% more background visibility (no matter how fractured it is) is better than using that space to have game interaction commands readily available and easy to discern.

Also, apparently making UI look pretty serves no purpose at all. I've heard it here first.

[Rabain]

I loved the portrait covered in blood thing, but obviously that won't work with stamina and health.

 

It could work for both even on the same portrait, blue for stamina, red for health or pick a colour set.  The stamina is really only going to be seen in combat because it refills fairly quickly outside combat so displaying it as an additional overlay should not be hard for people to grasp.  Personally I'd prefer the portrait covered in blood to the little red and blue bars that to me just look really dated to be honest.  They could even put a border around the stamina / health to further visually separate them.  This would be a really easy thing for them to do, all it is really is the existing blue and red bars, stretched over the portrait with some transparency value.

 

 

Edited December 13, 2013 by Rabain

[Sensuki]

Not gonna happen lol, that doesn't look very good.

[Rabain]

Opinions vary, I prefer that over the blue and red bar any day of the week.  Fortunately for most people neither you nor I are in charge of development.

[Sensuki]

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.

[Hassat Hunter]

I completely disagree.

And if the portraits are too small, increase their size?

 

The art on them is very good from what I can tell, so there's no reason why not to.

It sure beats the hell out of tiny pictures with silly bars next to them. Then they might aswell do stupid stuff like have 24/24HP under the portrait. And I hope OE's artists don't make that sucky an interface.

[Rabain]

Sorry but I'd laugh if they put numbers only in for health and stamina.  Numbers would not serve the purpose that the bars or overlay does.  With a bar or overlay, and I'd even go as far as to say overlay (blood on the portrait) is actually more intuitive, the purpose they are designed is to give you an easy peripheral indication of current health levels, if you want exact numbers you mouse over.  You can see someones health go down much easier via a bar or overlay than you can by a number without taking your focus off what you are doing, that is the purpose of them in the first place.  

 

This is why the majority of games use bars and overlays and not just numbers.  The number obviously gives you exact information but it isn't the most intuitive thing to use.  In BG I could see the current health levels of my whole team out of the corner of my eye without ever taking my focus off the combat.  If all the portraits had numbers on them I'd be constantly switching back and forth between looking at combat, the numbers (and separately for each character).  It would be a terrible design decision to only use numbers.

[Sensuki]

I completely disagree.

And if the portraits are too small, increase their size?

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.

 

Sorry but I'd laugh if they put numbers only in for health and stamina. Numbers would not serve the purpose that the bars or overlay does. With a bar or overlay, and I'd even go as far as to say overlay (blood on the portrait) is actually more intuitive, the purpose they are designed is to give you an easy peripheral indication of current health levels, if you want exact numbers you mouse over. You can see someones health go down much easier via a bar or overlay than you can by a number without taking your focus off what you are doing, that is the purpose of them in the first place.

 

This is why the majority of games use bars and overlays and not just numbers. The number obviously gives you exact information but it isn't the most intuitive thing to use. In BG I could see the current health levels of my whole team out of the corner of my eye without ever taking my focus off the combat. If all the portraits had numbers on them I'd be constantly switching back and forth between looking at combat, the numbers (and separately for each character). It would be a terrible design decision to only use numbers.

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.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Sensuki

[Hassat Hunter]

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.

J.E. Sawyer said we got a repair system and items that degenerated on use.

 

Look what happened there.

 

And it makes the game so much better due to it.

 

Can't really comment on the rest, no time to read it all, will read tonight or something

[Sensuki]

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.

 

Edited December 13, 2013 by Sensuki

[Karkarov]

Pretty much. The only reason why they would follow along the lines of your design is to *try* and appeal to both crowds. Which oddly enough is not what they said they were doing in a recent interview, but who knows.

My UI design does not "appeal" to any crowd.  I simply designed it to have all the functionality that was available in the Baldur's Gate2 UI but would look nicer, take up less space, be easier to use with less mouse movement, have more options for people who don't value things like the combat log, and meet all the stated design idea's Obsidian cared about in their original UI mockup post.

 

Also Stun, it isn't that your idea doesn't look good.  It looks fine.  The issue is that with smaller portraits it will be hard to differentiate the two meters at a glance making the UI a little tougher to use.  Health tracking needs to be something you can do fast at a glance.  Also for any users who might be color blind well... your concept just doesn't work to begin with.  The bar would either just look all red or all blue to them.

 

EDIT: While I am thinking about it this is why the bars on the bottom don't work either.  Again, the idea is to make health tracking fast and simple so you can do it literally at a glance.  The smaller you make the bars the harder you make it to track progress.  With the bars vertically oriented you give room for easier to see and subtle changes to the status of the bars so smaller changes can have clear easy to see differences in effect from larger changes.  In other words taking 6 stamina damage versus 8 might look the same on the bar if horizontally aligned... but vertically you may see a difference.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Karkarov

[Sensuki]

My UI design does not "appeal" to any crowd.  I simply designed it to have all the functionality that was available in the Baldur's Gate2 UI but would look nicer, take up less space, be easier to use with less mouse movement, have more options for people who don't value things like the combat log, and meet all the stated design idea's Obsidian cared about in their original UI mockup post.

Oh really? Well let's have a look at some of your biases from past quotes in the Art 54 Update.

 

Mostly because I realize the current more minimalist design of UI's has been gravitated to because well... they are better. I can see a half dozen useless buttons at a glance on the mock up. An options button? Or I could just press "escape" like in every PC game on the market. I know some people on this forum haven't played a game since planescape torment but this can be done.... a lot better.

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.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Sensuki

[Sensuki]

In this post you promote putting useful buttons such as Inventory and whatnot at the top of the screen - which is horrible design

 

 

 

Easily fixed just by adding a central "brick" of buttons at the top middle.  The clock for pause (spacebar), the outer ring of the clock for options (escape).  Two buttons aligned to the top on the left the first select all (f12) or formation (F) as you prefer, the second being inventory (I).  To the right in the same alignment you would get your questlog or journal (J), and your map (M).  On the map screen you also getting a button for resting and or camping whatever you want to call it

 

Oh yes, select all, formations and inventory at the top of the screen. Very smart.

 

 

 

The reason I am including buttons is just to make a simple point.  The reason so many UI's today are minimalist is because 90% of basic common commands are easier to perform with a keystroke than with a mouse click.

 

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.

 

 

 

Lets look at modern UI designs in strategy RPG's. Like .... the game X-Com: Enemy Unknown. I know a lot of major review sites gave it game of the year. Almost everyone gave it PC game of the Year. Much like the IE games it has a top down isometric view even if it is fully 3d. Here is a link to a screen shot of the pc version during combat: http://media1.gamein...n/insideufo.jpg

 

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

 

[Boox]

Have the devs mentioned where status and effect icons will be placed on the UI? Will they be displayed over the character portraits like in BG2? If yes, it would make it harder to discern stamina and health levels when using Rabain's suggestion.

[Sensuki]

More evidence that your UI mockup isn't even what you want

 

 

 

Even still doing it this way does feel dated.  The only reason he mock ups I have posted don't go really out there is because the forum users will be totally opposed (in general) to anything actually progressive in UI design and I think the devs themselves want to stick to a more dated UI systems for whatever reason.

 

 

 

The brick ui covers a large portion of the screen, 16.3% at 720p to be exact.  To be more specific the ui mock ups I make actually progressively cover less and less of the screen the higher resolution you go, even factoring in increasing their scale by say... 20% in 1080p versus it's size in 720p.  It may "look" like the screen stops at the edge of the UI on the brick mock up, but it doesn't, there is still map there, the UI just blocks the whole bottom 16% so you can't tell.  Meanwhile when you play at 1920x1200 my mock up is now far enough left your area transition (even the small one you started with) is perfectly visible.

 

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.

 

 

 

Basically the combat log actually breaks immersion in the worst way and doesn't even tell you anything on screen visual and audio cues don't.  It is something only the die hard min maxer gamer needs.

 

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.

 

 

 

combat log pop up in the bottom left and be much taller so it can be read through.

 

Once again, advocating the use of pop-up elements. Deary me.

 

 

 

As for how can all this be done?  Actually quite easy, sound effects, visual effects, character reactions.  When a guy hits you and your character makes an "oof" sort of sound effect and sort of bends backwards they clearly took a hit.  When your character yells out "ARghhh!" and falls on the ground they clearly took a lot more than "a hit".  Likewise character animations and sound effects can show parries, blocks with shields, your character can call out "My attack is ineffective?!?!" (heh heh), and any number of other cues to let you know what is going on in combat.

 

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.

[Sensuki]

Have the devs mentioned where status and effect icons will be placed on the UI? Will they be displayed over the character portraits like in BG2? If yes, it would make it harder to discern stamina and health levels when using Rabain's suggestion.

 

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