Critisism regarding the User Interface etc. (The polite version)

Hadriel

This is with regards to the new screenshot posted just now by Beamdog, look at the stickys at "General" section of the forums.

I will keep this as constructive as I can:

1. You were bragging about having rebuilt the user interface from the ground up, with high resolution textures etc. How is that high resolution textures for the user interface? I think vanilla BG wins in this department still.

2. Why did you completely change the chat window? Please tell me it's possible to extend it all the way to the sides of the screen? What we get is more of the blue background, why not use it to cram more text there instead?

3. Where is the consistency? Portraits need a lot of rework in my opinion, they stand out too much. What about some adjustments in Photoshop?

4. Golden lines on the user interface. On the left side the golden line is going all the way down, on the right side it doesn't. You might want to finish that?

5. What's up with all those buttons on the right side? More is not always better. Why not move them to the left where the other buttons are? This way portraits can have their own field. What about borders for the portraits? What happened to those?

Tanthalas

Better.

rimaan

As I understand it, there will be no real chance of the interface as in terms of less mouseclicking and more hotkeys, is that correct?

Theudipald

It looked mongoloid to say the least, but hell, I'm sure some modder with aesthetic preferences similar to mine will fix that eventually. I don't get why they had to go and remove the frames around the portraits though. To me, the frames gave the impression of actual painted portraits, whereas now it just looks like someone slapped on a row of stickers. As for the portraits themselves I see nothing wrong with them. I'll even go so far as to say I like them.

Sceptenar

Could someone please post a link to this screenshot?

SpaceInvader

I love how the Beamdog team is taking care of all the opinions of this community since the beginning of the project.
And despite the way @Hadriel wrote his 1st post, I think his suggestions would really improve the game interface.

The_New_Romance

@Sceptenar Here you are: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/4431/a-new-screenshot-approaches/p1

Sceptenar

The_New_Romance said:

@Sceptenar Here you are: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/4431/a-new-screenshot-approaches/p1

Thanks for the link, should have brought my eyes with me...

I don't like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWWcOSpmJdw

Hertz

2. Is it possible that the game text is itself formatted for that screen width? Is it possible that the original is not word-wrapped to accommodate different window sizes? Resizing the window is easy; reformatting every line of dialogue is less so.

5. Isn't that where those buttons have always been?

I actually like that they eliminated the border from the portraits: it maximizes screen real estate for actual, you know, game.

Fake_Sketch

Im srsly not trolling: I liked everything of the UI.

Awong124

I agree completely on 2 and 3. I agree on 4 as well, but that seems to be something really minor and easy to fix.

Laflamme

Concerning portraits, they wouldn't need that much work in order for them to be consistent with the others:
1. Rasaad yn Bashir's is ok imho.
2. Dorn Il-Khan's is too monochromatic : just change its background for something colourful.
3. Neera's is too light compared to the others : just darken it a bit.

Sceptenar

Knee-jerk reaction aside, the UI is growing on me. I do like the new colors. This will probably be just fine with a few minor tweaks.

Hadriel

I had no choice but to change a lot of my write up as asked by the mod. To those who want to read everything I originally wrote (I flipped yes), there is a closed thread with exact same topic further down on the general discussion.

On topic though: I am quite dissapointed with what they managed to do. I'm all for they adding new, hopefully good stuff. But why the need to mess with things that WORK GREAT? Taking that chat window as example again. By making it smaller, you achieve nothing but wasted space on the screen in my opinion. Is there ANYONE here who can honestly say they liked that change?

I really don't want to hate on the work they put in, and I do appreciate the effort, but Beamdog... you guys are setting yourself up for a lot of unnecessary post-fixing. I hope these last 10 days will not prove to be counter productive.

bigdogchris

@Hadriel

In BG original UI you could make the chat window that small. How do you know it can't be resized to be bigger? I think that the large button next to the chat window will allow you to click and drag the window larger or smaller, which also increases or decreases the stone UI under it. I think the UI is going to work out just fine.

As for the portraits, the reason they are standing out to people is because they are new, not because there is something wrong with their color tone or design.

Hadriel

I'm not talking about the height of the chat window, I'm talking about the width. Good luck resizing that.

bigdogchris

@Hadriel

I guess I just disagree. The game does not have enough text content to completely fill that. If you extended it out, entire conversations would be one or two lines long. In original BG the text box was as wide as the action icons, the new UI respects that.

Tanthalas

To be honest I only noticed the dialogue box not extending fully horizontally when you guys mentioned it. To me a bigger issue is the font being a bit larger than it was in vBG1, but other people might prefer that the text is more legible now.

Lemernis

Well, it certainly doesn't look bad or anything, lol. I can't honestly say that I'm wowed, though.

It's been so long since I've played that I can't quite see what's changed. it would be helpful if someone can please post a screenshot from the latest version of a mod that's the best out there. At the gnoll fortress would be great but anywhere else will do.

BG2

I just posted in the screenshot thread but wanted to say that I totally agree about the dialog box not being big enough. If they can't/don't want to make it as wide as the screen then I think it should at least be bigger than one and two-thirds lines of text.

FuzzyPuffin

Hadriel said:

I'm not talking about the height of the chat window, I'm talking about the width. Good luck resizing that.

It's the same size as BG1. It just looks smaller because it's now widescreen, so there's space on the sides.
I agree that it should extend to the sides, or at the very least, shed the blue on its sides so it looked something like this: http://ylilammi.com/misc/bgee_ui_changes.png. Right now there's too much wasted space.

I agree with points 4 and 5 (except I think I prefer the borderless portraits). Everything else looks fine to me.

eainterplay

Personally I love the new interface other than the crammed right side (borders around the potraits would be awesome).

Jean_Luc

FuzzyPuffin said:

I agree that it should extend to the sides, or at the very least, shed the blue on its sides so it looked something like this: http://ylilammi.com/misc/bgee_ui_changes.png. Right now there's too much wasted space.

Not bad. All the blue on the bottom bar gives off an impression of wasted space. I'd either like to see the various bottom buttons reshuffled to make room for a spacier dialogue box or just cut the "fat" as in the above screenshot. Do we know for sure if the dialogue box can the stretched out vertically?

Just a bit less saturation on the gold parts would go a long was as well imo. I know that higher contrast/saturation makes things look more neat and polished but it's not necessarily aesthetically superior.

Tanthalas

Jean_Luc said:

Do we know for sure if the dialogue box can the stretched out vertically?

Yeah it can.

agris

it is interesting that they didn't extend the width of the dialogue box to fit in the given space- this is a staple of the current weidu widescreen mod in all iterations of the infinity engine. it must have been a design decision, not a technical limitation.

I wonder why they decided that?

Schneidend

BG2 said:

I just posted in the screenshot thread but wanted to say that I totally agree about the dialog box not being big enough. If they can't/don't want to make it as wide as the screen then I think it should at least be bigger than one and two-thirds lines of text.

That's something you'll be able to do in-game. You could do the same in BG2, where the height of the box had three sizes, the smallest you see in the screenshot, a middleground, and a large size.

kilroy_was_here

So much criticism over just one picture? I wonder what will happen when the next 10 drop. Is that still on schedule for today?

Maybe the UI can be customized extensively in-game so everyone can adjust it to their liking? ...Maybe?

GoForTheEyesBoo

I read your less polite version. What are you 12? A UI is changed and it equates to nonconsentual sex? It is astonishing the negativity one screenshot can create.

kilroy_was_here

@GoForTheEyesBoo ...and then we see your forum avatar and all is right with the world.

Bjjorick

one thing, the chat window is too small, it only shows one line of text, and it doesn't show a long line of text. so if you want to keep up with combat and stuff, you'll either have to scroll alot or make the text window bigger, getting rid of alot of the game field. I think it should have been expanded further

kilroy_was_here

I think they made the chat window as small as possible in that screenshot in order to show as much as possible of the rest of the screen. I wouldn't be surprised if the window is dynamically scalable in the final version so you can have it as tall or short as you want.