Large List of Usability Improvements
Hi guys -
For your consideration, a list of suggestions that would have a major impact on the usability of this interface. None of these are "fun", the focus is strictly on improving UX of system. I know that to call this a laundry list would be a bit of an understatement, and I'm a software engineer so I understand that some of these will be a heck of a lot harder than others, but the BG UI is very outdated - I don't mean the graphics, I mean the playability.
Please consider these as improvements that would cement this as the only version worth having.
*** Inventory Screen ***
* Multiselect items in inventory
* "Bag All" option on inventory screen - put everything in a player's inventory into a bag.
* "Give All" option on inventory screen - give all selected items to a player.
* "Auto Hand Off" options - players looting an item would automatically give items to a class that can use them if they can't.
* Icon indicating whether a given spell can be written to a mage's spellbook without having to do multiple clicks to figure that out.
* Mouseover on armor and weapons would indicate changes to stats compared to current equipped weapon (i.e. -1 THACO, +2 damage) for identified items.
* Improve Bag of Holding interface: sortable data grid as described in Buy/Sell Interface Section
* Other bags should be sortable by type as well
** Looting **
* A "grab all" button
* Showing everyone's inventory in range when you loot. The screen real estate is there. Let us drag and drop.
** Journal **
* Ability to mark quests as active (see main gameplay screen section)
** Bottom Bar **
* More quickslots at higher resolutions.
** Basic Pain in the Butt Solutions **
There are some things about BG that have become fairly annoying as time has moved on. I don't think any of these are unbalancing:
* Autoheal mode button - doesn't work in combat. Healer just keeps casting their lowest level heals on target party member until they're all the way back up or you tell them to stop. It's just so painful to sit there and click and click and click and wait. I've often kept two healers in my party just to speed this process up because it's so frustratingly slow.
* Buff spell chains - doesn't work in combat - like contingency only they don't fire instantly. I'd like to be able to push a button and have my players start casting a predefined list of spells in order. Example: Viconia casts Protection From Evil 10' radius followed by chant. Simultaneously Edwin casts Fire Shield Red followed by Spell Trap. Dorn poisons his weapon. We're not unbalancing anything here besides our sanity.
* Autodisable all visible traps - not magically, but just have the thief walk to the nearest trap and disable it, like autoheal mode but for traps.
** Buy/Sell Interface **
* Show more information in the buy screen - make it a data grid with multiple sortable columns.
* Hide common items checkbox - do we really need to see the longswords and so forth?
* Autosell contents of gem bags
* Autosell ammo of a given type "aka sell all the bolts or all the arrows"
** Main Gameplay Screen **
* When holding down tab, float the names of all NPCs in the same font (and without the scroll) that is used to show PC's current hitpoints. I hate having to pause the game to stop people from moving, mouse over each one, and hold down tab.
* When holding down tab, highlight areas that can be interacted with (like statues or levers, maybe yellow). It can be really frustrating trying to get your mouse in the right spot to interact with things.
* Show players HP totals above or below portraits.
* Add back in the ability to select party members 1-3 and 4-6 with hotkeys
* Button to have all players consolidate on active player's location.
* Button to tell party to all move to the nearest map exit and attempt to leave.
* Option to have low opacity window in a corner listing active quests. Sure, maybe it's limited to only a few, and maybe it's collapsible/hidable, but I'd love to be able to see a little information on
* Separate log areas for dialog and combat information - I like to see my to-hit rolls, but hate that dialog gets lost immediately into a fight. I'd love to be able to resize and move these windows and show/hide them
* Mousing over a portrait and holding down tab show open up a flyout showing more information about health and status effects - the icons over the portraits are valuable but having them spelled out would be an improvement.
** Options **
Ability to auto-pause based on status effects being applied (like poison or level drain)
** Opening Screen **
* Option to resume last saved single player game
** Save Game Feature **
Ability to save games to iCloud... I'd like to be able to transfer games seamlessly between my iPad and my Mac.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this.
For your consideration, a list of suggestions that would have a major impact on the usability of this interface. None of these are "fun", the focus is strictly on improving UX of system. I know that to call this a laundry list would be a bit of an understatement, and I'm a software engineer so I understand that some of these will be a heck of a lot harder than others, but the BG UI is very outdated - I don't mean the graphics, I mean the playability.
Please consider these as improvements that would cement this as the only version worth having.
*** Inventory Screen ***
* Multiselect items in inventory
* "Bag All" option on inventory screen - put everything in a player's inventory into a bag.
* "Give All" option on inventory screen - give all selected items to a player.
* "Auto Hand Off" options - players looting an item would automatically give items to a class that can use them if they can't.
* Icon indicating whether a given spell can be written to a mage's spellbook without having to do multiple clicks to figure that out.
* Mouseover on armor and weapons would indicate changes to stats compared to current equipped weapon (i.e. -1 THACO, +2 damage) for identified items.
* Improve Bag of Holding interface: sortable data grid as described in Buy/Sell Interface Section
* Other bags should be sortable by type as well
** Looting **
* A "grab all" button
* Showing everyone's inventory in range when you loot. The screen real estate is there. Let us drag and drop.
** Journal **
* Ability to mark quests as active (see main gameplay screen section)
** Bottom Bar **
* More quickslots at higher resolutions.
** Basic Pain in the Butt Solutions **
There are some things about BG that have become fairly annoying as time has moved on. I don't think any of these are unbalancing:
* Autoheal mode button - doesn't work in combat. Healer just keeps casting their lowest level heals on target party member until they're all the way back up or you tell them to stop. It's just so painful to sit there and click and click and click and wait. I've often kept two healers in my party just to speed this process up because it's so frustratingly slow.
* Buff spell chains - doesn't work in combat - like contingency only they don't fire instantly. I'd like to be able to push a button and have my players start casting a predefined list of spells in order. Example: Viconia casts Protection From Evil 10' radius followed by chant. Simultaneously Edwin casts Fire Shield Red followed by Spell Trap. Dorn poisons his weapon. We're not unbalancing anything here besides our sanity.
* Autodisable all visible traps - not magically, but just have the thief walk to the nearest trap and disable it, like autoheal mode but for traps.
** Buy/Sell Interface **
* Show more information in the buy screen - make it a data grid with multiple sortable columns.
* Hide common items checkbox - do we really need to see the longswords and so forth?
* Autosell contents of gem bags
* Autosell ammo of a given type "aka sell all the bolts or all the arrows"
** Main Gameplay Screen **
* When holding down tab, float the names of all NPCs in the same font (and without the scroll) that is used to show PC's current hitpoints. I hate having to pause the game to stop people from moving, mouse over each one, and hold down tab.
* When holding down tab, highlight areas that can be interacted with (like statues or levers, maybe yellow). It can be really frustrating trying to get your mouse in the right spot to interact with things.
* Show players HP totals above or below portraits.
* Add back in the ability to select party members 1-3 and 4-6 with hotkeys
* Button to have all players consolidate on active player's location.
* Button to tell party to all move to the nearest map exit and attempt to leave.
* Option to have low opacity window in a corner listing active quests. Sure, maybe it's limited to only a few, and maybe it's collapsible/hidable, but I'd love to be able to see a little information on
* Separate log areas for dialog and combat information - I like to see my to-hit rolls, but hate that dialog gets lost immediately into a fight. I'd love to be able to resize and move these windows and show/hide them
* Mousing over a portrait and holding down tab show open up a flyout showing more information about health and status effects - the icons over the portraits are valuable but having them spelled out would be an improvement.
** Options **
Ability to auto-pause based on status effects being applied (like poison or level drain)
** Opening Screen **
* Option to resume last saved single player game
** Save Game Feature **
Ability to save games to iCloud... I'd like to be able to transfer games seamlessly between my iPad and my Mac.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this.
1
Comments
I would take a different approach to container bags though. Rather than using a shop window interface I think it might be better to have dedicated slots for them on the inventory screen; say one for normal inventory, one for bag of holding, one for scrolls, etc. Once you've added the container you would be able to click on it to change the main inventory interface to that of the bag, supplemented with additional scrolling functionality. If you wanted to switch items from one container to another, you would open the inventory interface for that bag and then drag and drop the item on the slot for the container you wanted to transfer it to. Furthermore, once you had the bag for the specific type of item, say gems, every gem you picked up would automatically go into the gem bag. This would remove micro management as well as allow you to use a bag of holding as your main inventory for non specific items once you got it.
An autosort button would also be nice, NWN style, which would queue items by type once clicked.
Picked up items should be automatically checked against the highest party lore skill for identification purposes.
Newly picked up items should be highlighted in the inventory the first time you open it to make it easy to see which ones are new.