Sensuki's Suggestions #012: Non-Terrible Main HUD [Mockup]

[PrimeJunta]

FWIW I wouldn't object to a "story mode" one step below Easy, for the folks who don't care about combat and are just in it for the story. Not to mention the really nifty-looking armor. 

 

It'd be dead simple to add and wouldn't harm anybody's enjoyment who's playing it at the regular difficulties.

[Yonjuro]

 

The real world also doesn't show damage numbers floating over the heads of people when you hit them.

 

No one here is arguing that the combat log shouldn't be minimizable/hidable (it should. just like in the IE games) Just that it should never, EVER be removed. this is a Role playing GAME, it is not an auto-play movie.

I wasn't entirely serious in my post and I don't think the combat log should go or is a bad thing in itself. I was just playing on your questionable claim that anyone who doesn't care about min/max'ing their character is a casual who should go play DA instead of PoE.

 

 

 If this is a private fight, I don't want to intrude (  ), but I will point out that learning the game mechanics doesn't necessarily imply anything like min/maxing a character build.

 

 Quite the reverse, if you know the game well, you can beat it with a weaker character.

Edited August 27, 2014 by Yonjuro

[Fiebras]

Clearly, the only possible solution to pacify everyone´s raging nerd-boners is for Obsidian to include a menu option for custom UI design. With checkboxes, re-sizeable windows and a grid layout for you to play around in. That way everyone can play at being a videogame designer and we can have "my creative UI design is better than your creative UI design" e-peen threads.

 

 

Or we can continue to inefectually club each other with our virtual nerdsticks made of opinongurments (the thickest metal known to man).

 

 

I dont have a strong problem with the current UI but Sensuki´s sugestion of centering the character portraits (the part that you will be interacting with the most in my experience) is not a bad one if you arent using keyboard shortcuts.

I actually prefer the combat log to be on the left as I find it more confortable to read that way but it currently has a problem of being too small for its font size (which could stand to be smaller) and being inefectual in the way and quantinty it displays relevant information.

The central butons are indeed useless if you use keyboard shortcuts but there are people that will prefer to use them.

A menu option to choose in which of the three botom screen positions the three windows (characters, combat log and menus) is located would let everyone pick the configuration they feel more confortable with, while letting Obsidian stick to their design desicion to keeping the menu at the bottom of the scree. But I dont know how much time and resources that will take and Id rather they focus everything on getting the game mechanics aspect working first.

 

 

 

FWIW I wouldn't object to a "story mode" one step below Easy, for the folks who don't care about combat and are just in it for the story. Not to mention the really nifty-looking armor. 

 

It'd be dead simple to add and wouldn't harm anybody's enjoyment who's playing it at the regular difficulties.

One could argue that combat dificulty is part of how you tell and experience the story and wether it is dificult or not depends on how you want to tell the story. But thats from Miyazaki and Demon´s Souls is hardly the same genre as PoE.

[Mr. Magniloquent]

Not a fan of this at all. It only exacerbates the current problems.

 

Character portraits need to be on the side, so that status effect indicators may be larger and more clearly readable. This also permits character action indicators and action bars which currently clutter up combat to be placed by their portrait on the side as well. The same applies to the menu selection box. This gives ample room for the text and feedback window at the bottom.

[Helm]

The recommendation is ok, there is just way too much clutter at the bottom of the screen IMO. It really isn't much better than what we already have.

 

Improving the UI is a good idea, but the real problems are the absurd Sawyerisms at the game's core anyway.

Edited August 27, 2014 by Helm

[illathid]

Just a question, has anyone tried doing some modding with the beta at all? I imagine interface mods would be pretty popular, and with the beta out people could get a head start.

[war:head]

 

 

The real world also doesn't show damage numbers floating over the heads of people when you hit them.

 

No one here is arguing that the combat log shouldn't be minimizable/hidable (it should. just like in the IE games) Just that it should never, EVER be removed. this is a Role playing GAME, it is not an auto-play movie.

I wasn't entirely serious in my post and I don't think the combat log should go or is a bad thing in itself. I was just playing on your questionable claim that anyone who doesn't care about min/max'ing their character is a casual who should go play DA instead of PoE.

 

 

 If this is a private fight, I don't want to intrude (  ), but I will point out that learning the game mechanics doesn't necessarily imply anything like min/maxing a character build.

 

 Quite the reverse, if you know the game well, you can beat it with a weaker character.

 

Wasn't a private fight (not even a fight at all) and I fully agree. Stun was talking about min/max'ing, though, which isn't inherently bad but he also implied that it's the only way to play the game which is nonsense.

[Yonjuro]

Wasn't a private fight (not even a fight at all) and I fully agree. Stun was talking about min/max'ing, though, which isn't inherently bad but he also implied that it's the only way to play the game which is nonsense.

 

 (As we all know, Stun can speak for himself but,) I think you misunderstood his post:

 

Maybe YOU don't care about what's going on under the hood, But Me, I'm a total nerd. I don't just want to know whether my paralyse spell succeeded, I want to know what the enemy rolled to fail. I want to know what bonuses or penalties came into play, so that I can work in the future to increase my success with all my skills. etc.....

 

 'my skills' means the skills of the player, not the character. He was talking about increasing his own skills with the game, not making an uber character.

[Stun]

And I didn't mean to imply that it was the only way to play the game either. I *Did* mean to imply that if you took away my ability to look under the hood, and make tactical and party build adjustments based on what I'm seeing in the combat log, that it would make me feel like I was playing a movie.

 

I do agree that my stance might be one of the extremes mentioned in the Stormwind Fallacy. Yeah. So be it. 5 years of Witcher, Dragon Age and Elder scrolls games will do that to an Infinity engine game fan. I want my Combat logs. They constitute just as good a use of screen real estate as the gameworld scenery itself.

[Shevek]

Why cant they let us just move the crap where we want like a mmo? I would like the characters on the side like the ie games. Some folks probably want it as is. Anywho, i hope they make the ui moddable.

Edited August 27, 2014 by Shevek

[Stun]

^I could have *sworn* that they DID say we'd be able to move the panels around where we wished. But when I was called to task on that claim, I found myself not able to find any mention of such a thing.

[Malekith]

^I could have *sworn* that they DID say we'd be able to move the panels around where we wished. But when I was called to task on that claim, I found myself not able to find any mention of such a thing.

They didn't, and propably won't happen.

[Silent Winter]

Wouldn't a solid UI limit the modularity of the UI? (or vice versa, wouldn't a modular UI limit the design of the solid UI?)

not really - there'd be a bottom layer with basic 'PoE-feels texture', each panel would have its own frame that blends into the bottom layer at the edges - since it would only be movable in the x-axis, it wouldn't be very hard to implement.

(If my render machine were functional, I could whip up an example but sadly ... )

[Mico Selva]

Your HUD is better than the current beta one, Sensuki, but I still have two problems with it.

 

1. HUD in the IE games changed based on the character/characters selected. This way if you had a summon or mind controlled someone, the HUD automatically adjusted, allowing you to use this temporary character's abilities. PoE HUD does not take this into account and, for example, when I mind controlled someone/something using Puppet Master ability, I could only auto-attack with that character, because there was no interface to use his/her/its abilities.

Your HUD does not really deal with this issue either (at least not in any obvious way).

2. Current monitors and TVs have much more horizontal space than vertical space. Putting the HUD on the bottom further reduces that vertical space. I would much prefer to have the HUD on one of the sides (or even both), only leaving combat log at the bottom (with the additional possibility of making it transparent).

 

Your version definitely solves some problems, but IMO not all of them.

[Mayama]

Your HUD is better than the current beta one, Sensuki, but I still have two problems with it.

 

1. HUD in the IE games changed based on the character/characters selected. This way if you had a summon or mind controlled someone, the HUD automatically adjusted, allowing you to use this temporary character's abilities. PoE HUD does not take this into account and, for example, when I mind controlled someone/something using Puppet Master ability, I could only auto-attack with that character, because there was no interface to use his/her/its abilities.

Your HUD does not really deal with this issue either (at least not in any obvious way).

2. Current monitors and TVs have much more horizontal space than vertical space. Putting the HUD on the bottom further reduces that vertical space. I would much prefer to have the HUD on one of the sides (or even both), only leaving combat log at the bottom (with the additional possibility of making it transparent).

 

Your version definitely solves some problems, but IMO not all of them.

1) Their seems to be a bug with summoned minions, mind controlled units etc. They sometimes do not show up as extra party members.

 

2) The problem is that it would take alot more mouse movement to make orders. Which would make combat quite anoying. The skills should be placed at the bottom for that exact reason. The current implementation would make it hard to use without hotkeys. My personal favourite would be to have a hotkey that opens the skill menu of the selected hero at the position of your mouse cursor.

 

Why cant they let us just move the crap where we want like a mmo? I would like the characters on the side like the ie games. Some folks probably want it as is. Anywho, i hope they make the ui moddable.

 

This is something Blizzard's WoW really did right and its a shame that almost no other game picked it up. Opening the UI API for everyone would improve alot of games.

[Sedrefilos]

You can't have a game like this without combat log. Like Sensuki said, if you don't like floating text and turn it off, you must have a way to see what's happening.

All rpgs (action, mmo, tactical) that use stat mechanics have a combat log. And although I very rarely use it (most of the time I turn it off - I prefere floating text) I can see it is very useful to many.

I like the UI as it is but with the Sensuki mock-up. It's more practical. I don't like the solid stuff because I see less of the game and more of stone texture, statues or whatever "immersive" thingies devs have shoved in there. As if the rest of the game is not immersive enough.

Funny thing is, I wouldn't be surprized if some people demanded an even older UI style, you know, the one with the 1/4 of the screen dedicated to action and buttons to click for movement

[prodigydancer]

I'd prefer customizable (floating) HUD elements so that I could re-arrange it as I prefer. And fully customizable keybidnings. It's a real shame that so many games don't let you bind something like SHIFT+Q or don't let you customize keybindings at all.

[plenilune]

I'd rather they use the time to create a proper UI that 80% are happy with. They have a lot of UI work left...

[Corivar]

No thanks, id rather keep the ui as is than go with what op suggested. Why not just allow the ui to be unlocked so people can move items wherever they want the way a lot of mmo's currently do.

[Nyamiou The Galeanthrope]

What do you guys think?

 

Your mock up is perfect, I wish they decide to replace the currently bad designed UI with this one.

[Nyamiou The Galeanthrope]

It feels to me like the current UI in-game is a copy-paste job from Temple of Elemental Evil. Seriously. Take a look: http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/greyhawktoee_060503_026_640w.jpg

 

I would much prefer a UI like this: http://static.strategyinformer.com/r/game_images/thumbs/647x/0132/0026545.jpg

In Temple of Elemental Evil the most important part of the UI is a circular thing (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/26/Toee_5.jpg) that appear when you need it, it doesn't look like much but it was actually pretty cool to use for me.

[Guest 4ward]

 just wanted to see if the 16 inventory slot and weapons sets from the inventory ui could fit in. I don't have the beta so i used Sensuki's screenshot instead and did an ms paint job. I'd really like to be able to move items around and choose weapons without the need to constantly change to the inventory ui for that. Of course, the log could be moved to the right and the inventory and weapon sets slots next to the portraits for easier moving of items to the portraits. Just as a suggestion...

Cheers

 

[constantine]

Not sure that I love the arrangement, but it is preferable to the way it's set up now. I'll say again what I said before in the 'general suggestions' thread: please just separate these three HUD elements and allow us to rearrange them, at least along the bottom of the screen; even better if they could be flipped vertically and moved around the border. I'm not sure how much effort this would take, but it seems like it would be the best way to please all parties if possible.

I wouldn t mind a flexible UI where I could throw everything wherever I like.

[Namutree]

 

Not sure that I love the arrangement, but it is preferable to the way it's set up now. I'll say again what I said before in the 'general suggestions' thread: please just separate these three HUD elements and allow us to rearrange them, at least along the bottom of the screen; even better if they could be flipped vertically and moved around the border. I'm not sure how much effort this would take, but it seems like it would be the best way to please all parties if possible.

I wouldn t mind a flexible UI where I could throw everything wherever I like.

 

That would be cool.

[GreyFox]

Forgot about this thread and wow Sensuki's still looks way better than the way it is now....not sure why in the world the combat log still sits on the right side.

 

Those floating damage numbers really kills immersion for me as well.