I think the UI is good, I don't really want to say anything else as everyone has either mentioned what I thought or brought up points that have been floating about the whole time. personally it has a new look which revitalises the game in subtle way, I like when things become enhanced and different. The gold looks really good and I think the bevelled edges someone had mentioned is a great suggestion.
My wife will never play BG. She tolerates its existence. My daughter (majoring in Japanese language) will get a copy (of course paid for by her walking ATM NPC - "dad") when the Japanese translation is done. We want to hear "You must gather your party..." in nihongo, as well as many of the banters.
@Kerozevok That looks terrific from a coloring standpoint. I love what @Daylight did with the portrait frames in his version. Has the UI been confirmed to be moddable? If so, I know the community will do a great job given what I am seeing in this thread.
My favorite community generated UI idea so far is the one that puts the portraits at the bottom, and leaves all the UI away from the sides, inspired by the IWD2 UI.
Devs, could we not have had something like the IWD2 UI, which seems custom designed for modern widescreen aspects? It would maximize play area viewing in widescreen, and keep all the controls unobtrusively at the bottom of the screen.
Customizable color schemes in the UI would also be a huge plus. That way, you would avoid all the bitchin' and moanin' from all these supporters who hate the blue-on-gold scheme you chose for the default. You don't want your hard work to fail just because of a color scheme choice, surely. If Microsoft can include user-chosen color schemes for Windows, I'm not sure why you couldn't do the same for BG, especiallly since you say you have reworked the coding to allow for more flexibility.
And, even if I criticize your choices, I am one of your staunchest supporters, and I imagine that everybody who's posting in these forums is, also. I hope you are not discouraged that the majority of the posts seem to be against your initial screenshot release. If I were you guys, I would pay careful attention and try to implement as many suggestions from your fans as possible, especially as customizable options.
In fact, I would summarize my advice to you in three words: location, location.... oops, no, that's real estate. I meant "customizability, customizability, customizability."
I completely disagree with having the portraits (and all the relevant information) at the bottom of the screen. I think that would be fine if monitors went in the direction the original BG devs thought it would (bigger and squarer) but everything is widescreen now and with such a large chunk of the bottom half taken up, you're severely limited to a thin wide slice of the in-game action.
Having the interface both on the bottom and sides just works, it frames it well and leaves a very reasonable amount of in-game space. You want as square a space as possible, so you can see as much of your surroundings as possible.
I find this thread quite amusing, what shall the following 10 screenshots bring to our beloved forums.
I have already given my opinion and although I have seen new things which I am not keen on (they have still not been mentioned) I will wait for the final release and see the final result of the GUI.
What I am going to say has already been mentioned on another thread (have not read it on this one)
As per @trentoster, screenshots take weeks to get approval from Atari, WotC,... If this is true people are complaining or criticizing on a single screenshot at least two to three weeks old.
I am quite sure the devs have already seen the flaws we are pointing out so lets just keep our fingers crossed and see the final result.
I am not gonna debate colors and positioning as I think it is pointless and matter of personal taste, but I can't help but be slightly disappointed by the following (which I guess is still a matter of personal taste ): - All of the golden stuff seems "foggy" or low resolution or something, which I think clashes with the very sharp game area and portraits. - The horizontal and vertical parts of the GUI do not look like they connect properly on the right side ( possibly because the elements overlap, because the vertical parts can slide down?). - The chat window looks very "collage-like"? I don't know how to describe it better. By the texture on the lower left I would think that that corner shouldn't be a sharp one; the lower right side looks much better. - The text appears to go over the GUI element by a few pixels (visible near the red "D" if you look close). - The AI toggle button seems to be a different style than the other 3 on that side.
Overall I think it needs some polish, but I guess these pictures are still with GUI being WIP?
When they say moddable GUI, what will actually be moddable ? Being able to edit the GUI's hue, change some buttons placements, scale the text box... what are the limits ?
You're lucky my wife isn't in this forum... try to give her anything pink and shel'll make you swallow it whole... Although I'm not sure how you could swallow a game's UI, I know her well enough to know she'd find a way.
...Wait, am I *supposed* to take this in a dirty way or not? I can't tell. ._.;
The talk icon is really handy for killing dragons by forcing them into conversation before they can turn hostile after you attack them, and then repeating until they die.
The talk icon is really handy for killing dragons by forcing them into conversation before they can turn hostile after you attack them, and then repeating until they die.
Not that I do that.
Or did that.
To Thaxll'ssyllyia.
I always do that to Marl in vanilla BG1.
"Heh, you tell 'em, Marl!"
Negotiate your way to get 900 XP. Talk to him again "Git outta my face." NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT TO ME. TIME TO DIE, MORTAL SCUM. 600 more free XP and he stands there while I wack him!!
You're lucky my wife isn't in this forum... try to give her anything pink and shel'll make you swallow it whole... Although I'm not sure how you could swallow a game's UI, I know her well enough to know she'd find a way.
...Wait, am I *supposed* to take this in a dirty way or not? I can't tell. ._.;
I could answer that... but as was the case with the anal probe discussion in the Adventure Y thread, the mods would have to flag this thread as 18+
I like the blue background. Ever since I played Gears of War, I have an extreme hatred of grey and brown.
Haha. I got that feeling from playing Fallout:New Vegas... something like 32000 colors (random number) they said when the game launched... yeah... 32k shades of grey and brown they meant..
Just wanted to make a quick suggestion about color saturation and texture usage. This picture was done quick only to show that GUI shouldn't "pop out" so much but instead it should work in harmony with game graphics.
I know that the official screenshot is still work in progress but i just wanted to give my two cents. Apologies if I stepped on anyone's shoes.
P.S The little extra details in the picture are only me playing around, nothing else.
This solves most of the issues with the new UI like lack of texture depth around the framed GUI sections, portrait frames and contrast (bright gold looked better vs. light gray stone ala BG1 than it does vs darker blue). If this shipped with either a wider text box, or a user adjustable textbox width, I would be happy.
Apparently the UI will be moddable, per the released feature list posted. I missed this earlier. Beamdog's UI is impressive but now, Modders lead! Improvements for everyone!
New, high resolution GUI. The Graphic User Interface (GUI) has been completely unhardcoded, thus making it possible to overcome its inherent limitations in terms of resolution. Beamdog / Overhaul Games are currently working on a brand new, high resolution GUI drawn by BG:EE's Art Director Nat Jones and fellow artist Madoline Bee, which will be customizable / moddable to a generous extent (some limits still apply due to the original BG code's resilience to Cameron Tofer's attacks; hopefully, Cameron will manage to find a silver-coated machete with which to treat the old code post-ship, further expanding the GUI's customizability).
Comments
@BelgarathMTH - I recently went back to the Brown color UI when 1PPv4 was released. @Erephine did a very nice job with it!
Soo desu!
http://nsa30.casimages.com/img/2012/09/07/12090708581539243.jpg
Devs, could we not have had something like the IWD2 UI, which seems custom designed for modern widescreen aspects? It would maximize play area viewing in widescreen, and keep all the controls unobtrusively at the bottom of the screen.
Customizable color schemes in the UI would also be a huge plus. That way, you would avoid all the bitchin' and moanin' from all these supporters who hate the blue-on-gold scheme you chose for the default. You don't want your hard work to fail just because of a color scheme choice, surely. If Microsoft can include user-chosen color schemes for Windows, I'm not sure why you couldn't do the same for BG, especiallly since you say you have reworked the coding to allow for more flexibility.
And, even if I criticize your choices, I am one of your staunchest supporters, and I imagine that everybody who's posting in these forums is, also. I hope you are not discouraged that the majority of the posts seem to be against your initial screenshot release. If I were you guys, I would pay careful attention and try to implement as many suggestions from your fans as possible, especially as customizable options.
In fact, I would summarize my advice to you in three words: location, location.... oops, no, that's real estate. I meant "customizability, customizability, customizability."
Having the interface both on the bottom and sides just works, it frames it well and leaves a very reasonable amount of in-game space. You want as square a space as possible, so you can see as much of your surroundings as possible.
I have already given my opinion and although I have seen new things which I am not keen on (they have still not been mentioned) I will wait for the final release and see the final result of the GUI.
What I am going to say has already been mentioned on another thread (have not read it on this one)
As per @trentoster, screenshots take weeks to get approval from Atari, WotC,... If this is true people are complaining or criticizing on a single screenshot at least two to three weeks old.
I am quite sure the devs have already seen the flaws we are pointing out so lets just keep our fingers crossed and see the final result.
- All of the golden stuff seems "foggy" or low resolution or something, which I think clashes with the very sharp game area and portraits.
- The horizontal and vertical parts of the GUI do not look like they connect properly on the right side ( possibly because the elements overlap, because the vertical parts can slide down?).
- The chat window looks very "collage-like"? I don't know how to describe it better. By the texture on the lower left I would think that that corner shouldn't be a sharp one; the lower right side looks much better.
- The text appears to go over the GUI element by a few pixels (visible near the red "D" if you look close).
- The AI toggle button seems to be a different style than the other 3 on that side.
Overall I think it needs some polish, but I guess these pictures are still with GUI being WIP?
Anyone ever use this one btw ?
Being able to edit the GUI's hue, change some buttons placements, scale the text box... what are the limits ?
http://nsa30.casimages.com/img/2012/09/07/120907100710136506.png
@Daylight version is simply outstanding ! I love the texture used in place of the rock one with the less contrasting blue/sepia colors, props !
I don't know... Need to do some tests with DLTCEP for see what's possible.
@lordkim "Anyone ever use this one btw ?" >> Never. ^^
@Tanthalas The portraits on this column are just here for the selection, no need to have a poster.
And even with a frame, the portraits are bigger than in NWN2 or DAO.
Not that I do that.
Or did that.
To Thaxll'ssyllyia.
"Heh, you tell 'em, Marl!"
Negotiate your way to get 900 XP. Talk to him again "Git outta my face." NO ONE TALKS LIKE THAT TO ME. TIME TO DIE, MORTAL SCUM. 600 more free XP and he stands there while I wack him!!
I could answer that... but as was the case with the anal probe discussion in the Adventure Y thread, the mods would have to flag this thread as 18+
It isn't about me, would you guys?
New, high resolution GUI.
The Graphic User Interface (GUI) has been completely unhardcoded, thus making it possible to overcome its inherent limitations in terms of resolution. Beamdog / Overhaul Games are currently working on a brand new, high resolution GUI drawn by BG:EE's Art Director Nat Jones and fellow artist Madoline Bee, which will be customizable / moddable to a generous extent (some limits still apply due to the original BG code's resilience to Cameron Tofer's attacks; hopefully, Cameron will manage to find a silver-coated machete with which to treat the old code post-ship, further expanding the GUI's customizability).