@kilroy_was_here nah, i'm referring to horizontal, not vertical control. there's alot of empty space on both sides of it, kinda disappointing that they made it so small
1. Well, you think wrong. This *is* higher resolution. I think you should have a good look at the BG1 texture... I personally prefer the BG2 UI because of the little details. This UI is just a flat stone texture. Maybe the golden bars should be replaced by silver. I think silver goes better with blue stone.
2. I think it's more pleasant to read this way. I just finished BG Tutu with widescreen mod and I didn't like the fact that every conversation fits on 1 really long line.
3. Are you talking about the portraits vs the UI, or the 3 new portraits vs the vanilla portraits? I do think that the new portraits are a bit cold. The vanilla portraits use a warmer color palette.
5. Those buttons duplicate the functionality of mouse/keyboard (select NPCS, reveal chests, pause game? and select entire party), and thus are mainly for the non-pc versions, where your 2 hands can control both sides of the screen. So it makes sense to have buttons on both sides of the screen.
@Bjjorick Making the chat window wider isn't going to help with that, since each combat statement is on its own line. You'd still have to increase the height, at the cost of the game field.
@alkalurops i know, but i'm always more comfortable with a longer style left to right rather then stuck in the center window. i know it's more flashy and chic being in the center, when i look down to the text window, i always look to the left. it's a little aggravation, but if there are too many little aggravation changes, then i won't enjoy the game.
game = fun game + aggravation = less fun game + too much aggravation = this isn't worth it anymore
I usually dont have those side bars open at all so those are a minor thing to me(they stil llook better than in BG2), only complain i could think of is that i was hoping more spell quickslots but thats not a game breaker.
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?
I saw the screenie as well, but I pretty much like everything about it that you seem to dislike hehe =P.
I kinda like the new buttons on the right. I dunno what they are, what they do, but i dont care cause there was nothing there before and that annoyed me
I want to add that this new GUI may be really nice. It's not a bad thing that it simply tweaks and polishes what the original game provided. It's all a matter of how it will feel in-game which a screenshot cannot always convey.
The higher res to the background art does appear to be noticeable, at least to my eye. It looks like some respectable tweaking was done with the filters. Still a bit hard to tell with just a screenshot, though. And the real test will be with the zoom feature.
I would still love to see a comparison of this new official screenshot and a screenshot in the same area with BGT + Widerscreen mod.
It's been so long now since I've played, but I'm dimly remembering that in the original game (or was it Ladejarl's GUI mod for tutu and BGT?) the size of dialog box can be adjusted to several (three?) different widths, as others have said. Can anyone confirm this?
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.
If someone can make a MOD that only changes the UI to be like that, then I will be pretty happy. I also do agree about the Op's opinions regarding the new character portraits too.
I disagree that the portraits don't fit only because they are new. The shading on the half-orc and Neera are not consistent with the style of the others. It does and will make them stand out and look more like 'mod' than 'new content'. No escaping that.
As for the interface itself, I think it looks fine. I was hoping the buttons would shrink, but maybe the viewing window is hard coded. Either works for me.
I'm not sure what I think about the text window. If it was screen width, you would have to look off-center to read text, so I think it's appropriately sized. My guess is that, when I'm playing, I won't notice it so much.
I think the REAL work went into re-writing the code for the UI, making it FAR more likely that Modders will be pounding out a plethora of UI configurations to please anyone's tastes. THE CODE is the important thing not the layout. In my opinion.
I'd rather have borders on the portraits and less buttons under the portraits but if that comes in combination with the inside gold border all the way around the play screen I'd rather not have it.
Personally I think the gold bar piping all the way around the internal edge of the UI is unnecessary, it frames the play screen too much and is too shiny.
@bjjorick I think Trent's twitter backlog is full of comments saying such stuff. Though maybe the rewrite of the UI only helped the developers on the backend.
Well obviously the time on UI was spent on rewriting the code. The UI graphics in that screenshot can be produced in less than a day by anybody competent with Photoshop.
I don't see a problem with the criticism. We are presented a screenshot 12 days before release that looks like the very first working prototype they've made.
Guys, what we really need is not 10 more screenshots .... but a VIDEO of in-game action of someone manipulating and explaining the changes and additions to the GUI.
Maybe then we can understand this ... this ... this change.
Comments
nah, i'm referring to horizontal, not vertical control. there's alot of empty space on both sides of it, kinda disappointing that they made it so small
I personally prefer the BG2 UI because of the little details. This UI is just a flat stone texture.
Maybe the golden bars should be replaced by silver. I think silver goes better with blue stone.
2. I think it's more pleasant to read this way. I just finished BG Tutu with widescreen mod and I didn't like the fact that every conversation fits on 1 really long line.
3. Are you talking about the portraits vs the UI, or the 3 new portraits vs the vanilla portraits?
I do think that the new portraits are a bit cold. The vanilla portraits use a warmer color palette.
5. Those buttons duplicate the functionality of mouse/keyboard (select NPCS, reveal chests, pause game? and select entire party), and thus are mainly for the non-pc versions, where your 2 hands can control both sides of the screen. So it makes sense to have buttons on both sides of the screen.
@Bjjorick Making the chat window wider isn't going to help with that, since each combat statement is on its own line. You'd still have to increase the height, at the cost of the game field.
i know, but i'm always more comfortable with a longer style left to right rather then stuck in the center window. i know it's more flashy and chic being in the center, when i look down to the text window, i always look to the left. it's a little aggravation, but if there are too many little aggravation changes, then i won't enjoy the game.
game = fun
game + aggravation = less fun
game + too much aggravation = this isn't worth it anymore
*shrughs* that's just me though
BTW Who is Andrew the Great? Archenemy of Abdel the Awful?
I say the dev team should roll on and ignore the naysayers!
The higher res to the background art does appear to be noticeable, at least to my eye. It looks like some respectable tweaking was done with the filters. Still a bit hard to tell with just a screenshot, though. And the real test will be with the zoom feature.
I would still love to see a comparison of this new official screenshot and a screenshot in the same area with BGT + Widerscreen mod.
I'm digging the new interface. If I wanted the old one I'd play BG1 or Tutu.
As for the interface itself, I think it looks fine. I was hoping the buttons would shrink, but maybe the viewing window is hard coded. Either works for me.
I'm not sure what I think about the text window. If it was screen width, you would have to look off-center to read text, so I think it's appropriately sized. My guess is that, when I'm playing, I won't notice it so much.
Personally I think the gold bar piping all the way around the internal edge of the UI is unnecessary, it frames the play screen too much and is too shiny.
any source on that theory?
I don't see a problem with the criticism. We are presented a screenshot 12 days before release that looks like the very first working prototype they've made.
Maybe then we can understand this ... this ... this change.