Solid GUI in Progress

[anameforobsidian]

For me, solid guis help preserve the feel of a pnp adventure brought to life.  I was not a fan of NWNs utilitarian interface.  Show a little art, make it look like a window into a different world.

[h3st]

Those two UIs have different goals, though:

• One is a game world UI. I want to see as much of the map as possible, but with some allowances made: status information of characters, maybe a minimap. Preferably no buttons for inventory, pause, character sheet, etc; keyboard shortcuts are better since they don't take up screen estate.
• The other is an inventory screen. Now you're not interacting with the world any more; you're organizing your inventory. It's a different mode. Hopefully nothing is moving in the game world, because now we can't see it! Similarly the character sheet, journal and other modes should be full-screen—just like the world interaction mode, i.e. "normal mode".

So what I want is for each mode to use the available screen estate as best possible. Having half the screen taken up by the inventory or character sheet 100% of the time would be annoying. Having it taken up by doodles and looking at the game world through a straw is not my cup of tea.

 

Though one aside, and that's textual interfaces. If the text box is allowed to take the full width of the screen at any resolution, there are two possible situations:

• The font size is unchanged. This results in low readability—lines really shouldn't be longer than 80-100 characters before they break to the next line.
• The font size scales. That would result in having to walk back a few steps to make the text appear at a reasonable size.

So text boxes should be artificially small and not take up the entire screen, even though dialogue is a mode of its own. I do like some frills, like the ligatures.

 

So if I can turn off the thingy in the middle, the way the UI looks now seems fine to me—one small set of status icons to the bottom left, and an action log in the bottom right.

 

The NWN screenshot (if that's what it is) does show at least one horrible idea though: A text box and a map with a transparent background. I know people like terminals with transparency because it looks cool (been there done that), but it really doesn't help readability. Beyond that I suspect it doesn't look very good because of the potato quality of the graphics.

 

(Inb4 some emacs lover comes chiming in about how modes are evil)

[Karkarov]

Can someone explain how this is a better GUI design? Other than from a nostalgia point of view. FWIW I'm not bashing, I'm genuinley interested in the pros/cons.

There is one legit reason a person might want it and it is simply personal opinion / sense of design.  Some people don't like "active" elements inside the UI "gaps" because they feel it is harder to see and or interact with those elements.  They prefer having a hard line that separates the actual game field form the UI because it just makes it easier to differentiate the two.  In all honesty I prefer that as well in situations where you have a complex UI with a large amount of elements at play.  Eternity though I probably won't use it.

[Sabotin]

One thing bugging me in the inventory screen: the stash button and the crafting button. Why can't both be icons or both be buttons with text, not one of each! xD

[Yonjuro]

Those two UIs have different goals, though....

 

 Certainly, but the main screen UI in the IE is kind of like a dashboard/windshield metaphor. The dashboard part looks appropriate to the game world but is separate from it. The NWN UI looks like you only have the windshield but a flock of birds has flown overhead and **** all over it.   (It also takes up a huge amount of real estate as rendered but, of course, parts of it can be closed).

 

 That said, the PoE solid UI will be optional and I think that was a good decision (and I get your point about key commands).

[Remmirath]

I think that it's a great thing to have both options, and I'm glad to see that they're working on the solid GUI.

 

I myself strongly prefer a solid GUI, but I can see the argument for the other kind as well; it's simply not to my taste, and most of the potential downsides of a solid GUI don't bother me. I am not going to be looking much at the pieces of the game that can be seen around the movable UI bits anyhow, so I'd rather have those somewhat awkward looking gaps covered up with something. I'm also very fond of a UI that looks as though it fits in with the game world. It adds considerably to the aesthetic appeal of the interface, while a UI that looks out of place detracts from it a noticable amount. I'm much more bothered by floating numbers and status effects than I am by a solid UI taking up some more real estate, as those two things infringe more on the part of the game that I'm actually looking at and paying attention to.

[Bli1942]

Can someone explain how this is a better GUI design? Other than from a nostalgia point of view. FWIW I'm not bashing, I'm genuinley interested in the pros/cons.

 

I don't know why, but I prefer having a solid bar across the bottom. I don't really like small separate windows with the game in between them.

 

Having a solid background ties it all together I guess

[Hassat Hunter]

You think the game world is ugly? : (

I think the others have said it pretty well already by now, no point for me to repeat it.

And no...

 

What I do find ugly though is those green balls above everyone's head in combat... what's the reason about that anyway? What does it do. WHY IS IT THERE? What would be lost if we just cut it out?

[PrimeJunta]

@HH you can switch the combat tooltips off in the game options if you like.

 

I find them pretty important though as they display how each of the toons is doing and what they're up to.