please do something about the dialogue box

[troika_hnguyen]

Originally posted by toblix
Speaking of wearing prawnshell dresses, will the third/fourth mouse button and/or/xor mouse wheel be supported in any way? Hmmm?

mousewheel for UI's

Originally posted by troika_hnguyen
yes, the design standpoint was to go for simplistic/minimal and avoid the need to constantly hover over icons to find out what a spell/skill/feat does.

of course, similarly, the screenshot doesn't show it, but when you hover over a spells/skills/feats' name, it displays a short description in the text box at the bottom of the interface. but names over icons was a conscious decision.

as for dreary and uninspiring, well, to each his/her own

Sorry, I just don't like how it looks. Nothing personal of course

I'm sure it works great though, and I am a great champion of simplifying things I actually didn't mind NWN's means of spell selection which seems similar to this, but I think if I have to scroll up and down often when choosing spells I'm sure I will be annoyed even if everything is perfectly efficient.

It's just even with the many other annoyences of the IE games the spellbook was one thing I always liked, even though much of the rest of the interface was badly done at times

[Banedir]

I love your interface for the reasons I've listed above, but also for this...:

It's Dungeons and Dragons!

When you play, you don't use icons and stuff...you write the spells down in a list when you prepare them for the day, then you erase them, or cross them out or mark a tick box as they get used. It's nice to see that on a computer game.

One weird thing I did see in one radial menu screenshot was for a person choosing a sorcerer spell to cast; the choices were like Burning Hands twice, Magic Missile three times, another first level spell three times. I bet there's sumkinda story behind that.

My only real concern was addressed when I found out you could move the radial menu thing, so, cool. The system looks easy to use and very pretty. Good work!

[seanly]

Since the game is turn-based, I don't think there is a need for icons. You're going to have all day to pull up the radial list & scroll to your spells (or feats, whatever). I'd rather have an easy to read spell name than a spell icon. Icons are good for quickly selecting (once you die enough times memorizing them), but why not avoid mistakes by using text? I'd rather know for sure that I've picked Entangle than wonder if the icon was for Entangle or Deworm my Cat. I know that the infinity engine games were pausable, but I'm just making some points.

Why are we arguing about interface decisions. The IE games made heavy use of icons because they had to make the spell fit into a quickbar square at the bottom of a low-resoulution screen. ToEE is going for a more information-heavy interface than the IE, and breaking everything out into full text makes sense. The drawback I see with this is that it makes the interface less "pretty". That doesn't bother me personally. Game designers seem particularly prone to the disease of making "cool" interfaces that are barely functional (see nearly every audio/video player app in existance for further examples of this trend). Still, new players that might otherwise try and like the game might be put off by an interface that throws a lot of confusing text and them all at once. Then again, ToEE doesn't seem like the kind of game you're going to just figure out without reading the manual, so it probably doesn't matter much.

[roonechr]

Nyep.

Hmm . . . it seems my point has been woefully misinterpreted

http://www.gamespy.com/previews/augu...eofeepc/37.jpg

I was never talking about the icons used during the actual game, those I hated in the IE games. I'm talking about the spells book in which you could clearly and simply see what spells you chose. Sure you would have to go to the next page in order to see the next spell level, but it was still a clear and easy to use interface with little hassle (unlike some of the other interfaces they used like the inventory and the actual non-quick slot spell interface ).

The interface in that picture simply looks for lack of a better word . . . annoying, there are probably many others ways they could have presented that information that would have limited or perhaps even eliminated scroll bars. Tabs like the ones already in use for each spell level, some kind of radial menu, or a collapsible list such as NWN used (though that could be in and simply not noticeable in a picture) would have probably been improvements. This just irritates me right now because it seems everything else in the game has been streamlined to be easy and intuitive .

It would have been nice if there was some graphical way to see the spells easier, after all like I said above a picture is worth a thousand words. And hey the equipment indicators looks nice a body shape or something might have been an improvement, but it still seems to get all the pertinent information across visually.

[roonechr]

I see what you mean. However, as long as you can see all of the spells of a specific level to choose from I don't think it's a big deal.

BTW the player of the Cleric of Pelor obviously doesn't realize that they don't have to memorize healing spells anymore.

I guess the spell window doesn't really bother me. It's pretty much just like the NWN one, except it's a single window rather than two (a good thing). Collapsable lists might be nice, but I usually just expand them all in NWN anyway. I'm hoping the fact that they put all the spell levels on the same page means that we can use high-level slots to memorize low-level spells. I wonder what the metamagic interface is.

On the nitpicky side, why isn't this full screen? It's not like I can do anything with the main game screen while this dialog is up, so why not give me more space to work with. Also, the spells per day thing at the bottom seems needlessly bulky, and hard to extend for a sequel.

I agree with birdiedude. Spell icons looked nice.

http://icewind2.blackisle.com/images/screens/20b.jpg

http://icewind2.blackisle.com/images/screens/18b.jpg

Still, this and the level cap are my only concerns and these are of minor importance.

[Gulshog]

Originally posted by birdiedude
Hmm . . . it seems my point has been woefully misinterpreted

http://www.gamespy.com/previews/augu...eofeepc/37.jpg

The interface in that picture simply looks for lack of a better word . . . annoying, there are probably many others ways they could have presented that information that would have limited or perhaps even eliminated scroll bars. Tabs like the ones already in use for each spell level, some kind of radial menu, or a collapsible list such as NWN used (though that could be in and simply not noticeable in a picture) would have probably been improvements. This just irritates me right now because it seems everything else in the game has been streamlined to be easy and intuitive .

It would have been nice if there was some graphical way to see the spells easier, after all like I said above a picture is worth a thousand words. And hey the equipment indicators looks nice a body shape or something might have been an improvement, but it still seems to get all the pertinent information across visually.

I don't know how they could make it any easier, dude. It's perfectly easy to me to see what is going on in that picture.

On the left you have all your known spells, scrollable. On the right you have all the spells you have readied, and any empty slots that need to be filled.

Below that is spells per day.

A Cleric's main spells, and Domain spells are an easy clicky tab away.

How much easier can you get? Seems easy and intuitive to me. If they made it any easier, monkeys could play the game.

[Lachoon]

Agreed. And being literate, I can recognize text before some archaic pictograph that is supposed to represent a spell or something.

lol@archaic pictograph, man lets make ToEE use ASCII graphics, yeah MUD 1s t3h rulzor.

On the subject of spell icons:

Baldur's Gate icons were rather simplistic . On the other hand, the icons in Torment and Icewind Dale II, drawn by Brian Menze, were absolutely stunning. You may remember Brian as the guy who drew the Fallout Boy cartoons for the Fallout series.

I prefer icons to text.

[roonechr]

I agree that well done icons are cool and would prefer those to text. But it's a minor thing , and I would much prefer to have the game in my hands.

I prefer text to icons .
I want to play the game not spend 2-3 hours trying to lear what spell represents what icon.

I want to play the game not spend 2-3 hours trying to lear what spell represents what icon. [/b]

Talk about hyperbole...

Originally posted by Mikk


http://icewind2.blackisle.com/images/screens/20b.jpg

http://icewind2.blackisle.com/images/screens/18b.jpg

yes, that GUI looks so much better than http://www.gamespy.com/previews/augu...ofeepc/37.jpg, it's almost silly

"clean and easy to use" doesn't necessarily mean a Space Game inspired GUI, btw how can anyone think that the IWD and BG GUI was hard to use, one must be retarded to think that

[Sword of Cyric]

Originally posted by poolofpoo
"clean and easy to use" doesn't necessarily mean a Space Game inspired GUI,

Well, obviously there are people here who like the look of the interface.

People like me, i like the sci-fi look.

Come on, in P&P player's are always on the search for the most practical sheet.

The dragon once provided sheets with an fantastic artlook, but they just earned much bad critics, since the were almost completly useless for any pratical use. 2/3 used for artwork and on the last 1/3 still no real space to write anything down.

Originally posted by poolofpoo
btw how can anyone think that the IWD and BG GUI was hard to use, one must be retarded to think that

Saying that the ToEE interface looks better doesn't have to mean that the other interfaces were hard to use, just that the new one looks better.

[Executor_5]

Originally posted by Banedir
One weird thing I did see in one radial menu screenshot was for a person choosing a sorcerer spell to cast; the choices were like Burning Hands twice, Magic Missile three times, another first level spell three times. I bet there's sumkinda story behind that.

I asked that question a while back. Troika said that at the time the screenshot was taken, spontaneous casting hadn't yet been implemented.

I thought NwN had a pretty good interface.

Both radial menus and a shortcut bar. I liked it a lot.

Anyway, the problem here is some people prefer then interface to be utilitarian, while others like a fully fleshed out game with pictures and all. If you ask me, I'll take the latter any day.

Originally posted by JDMG42
Why are we arguing about interface decisions. The IE games made heavy use of icons because they had to make the spell fit into a quickbar square at the bottom of a low-resoulution screen. ToEE is going for a more information-heavy interface than the IE, and breaking everything out into full text makes sense. The drawback I see with this is that it makes the interface less "pretty". That doesn't bother me personally. Game designers seem particularly prone to the disease of making "cool" interfaces that are barely functional (see nearly every audio/video player app in existance for further examples of this trend). Still, new players that might otherwise try and like the game might be put off by an interface that throws a lot of confusing text and them all at once. Then again, ToEE doesn't seem like the kind of game you're going to just figure out without reading the manual, so it probably doesn't matter much.

The other drawback is that not everyone in the world speaks English. It's one more thing to translate and deal with if you ever translate the game for other markets.

Granted, in ToEE most of the customers will be people familiar with DnD enough to probably know the spell names, so it's not *too* big of a deal.

[seanly]

Translating is a moot point as the pop-ups when you scroll over the icon would also need to be translate.

Originally posted by seanly
Translating is a moot point as the pop-ups when you scroll over the icon would also need to be translate.

The translation might be, but perhaps not the actual sizing and spacing of the pop-ups. And I'm not saying for sure, I'm just saying in my experience doing localization, little problems pop up alot in practice.