Making it Work: Record

Dee

The discussion here yielded some great conversation about how to improve the Record screen to make it fit more in line with the original design for that screen. @Pecca took many of those ideas and crystallized them into a mock-up for what the final design might look like.

The general thrust of it:

• The character's portrait and name should be in the center, in a column together with the character's Gender, Race, Class, and Alignment.
  
• The character's ability scores and other critical elements should be on the left, since the number of lines will never change for these things; no scrollbar is necessary, which makes the left side of the screen ideal for this.
  
• The rest of the character's information, organized by visible headings, should be on the right, with one scrollbar. A trio of buttons at the bottom of this column changes the text that's displayed in this column, from the basic overview to the character's Biography or their Statistical information within the party.
  
• The remaining buttons are arranged at the bottom of the other two columns.
  

I'll let @Pecca post the latest mock-up. Be aware that all designs in this thread are suggestive only; nothing here is a promise or guarantee of future implementation. We're just discussing and honing the ideas.

Pecca

Okay, here is the latest design:

Dee

One thing that needs clarification here, @Pecca - when you click on "Class Description", what happens? Does it open a new window with the class description, or does it just change the text in the right-most column?

Pecca

It opens another window. The point was made, that the button should contain both class and kit description (if any), in which case the right column might be too small to navigate through conveniently.

Pecca

Another problem of the mockup is on the left. I created a gap between the text and numbers because it looks pretty well, but you can notice that I use text from my mod that shortens "Paralysis / Poison / Death" and "Petrification / Polymorph" lines to fill in nicely. These lines are always too damn long, but since the left area is static they would need to be resized to fit.

Mr2150

That's a good point - if they are too long in English, I hate to see what they look like in German or Polish

Dee

It's not ideal, but you could also do what most item descriptions do and shorten it to just one, i.e.:

Save vs. Wand
Save vs. Spell
Save vs. Death
Save vs. Polymorph
Save vs. Breath

Mr2150

Since it's the Saving Throws section could that be just shortened to avoid repeating the 'Save' ...

vs. Wand
vs. Spell
vs. Death
vs. Polymorph
vs. Breath

Dee

Sure--you don't even really need the "vs." part, either.

Mr2150

I kind of like that bit, and kept it because you might say 'What is your vs. Wand?' ... but you wouldn't say 'What is your Wand?'

Mr2150

I'm not sure I like the formatting on the right-hand side - it's not so bad it would drive me crazy - but I think that some of the items there could be better arranged (much like the left-hand side) to aid comprehension...

sparkleav

Mr2150 said:

I'm not sure I like the formatting on the right-hand side - it's not so bad it would drive me crazy - but I think that some of the items there could be better arranged (much like the left-hand side) to aid comprehension...

I agree the left looks so neat and tidy, the right not so much. Perhaps some spacing required there as well

Pecca

I don't think it would. All information on the left have numerical values, that's why the unified separation works well. You can't do that on the right as some words would not fit into the number column and some info simply can't be divided like that. Plus the text is now also nicely symmetrical (on the right, left aligned, and on the left right aligned).

sparkleav

On closer inspection of the above screenshot, you're right @Pecca

Cahir

Just to show how much longer the text would be in Polish thn English, here are the translations of saving throws from @Dee's post:

Rzut obronny przeciw różdżkom
Rzut obronny przeciw czarom
Rzut obronny przeciw śmierci
Rzut obronny przeciw polimorfii
Rzut obronny przeciw zionięciom

A bit longer than in English, right?

Mr2150

@Cahir would this be work / be acceptable ?

Przeciw różdżkom
Przeciw czarom
Przeciw śmierci
Przeciw polimorfii
Przeciw zionięciom

Cahir

Well, I just looked at the mock-up and since "saving throw" is in the title of the window and only names of saves are listed below, that would do. I just wanted to show how much longer the text in Polish is compared to English, to help designing Record Screen. Like 20-30% longer.

Mr2150

OK - but shortening like that does help from a space perspective.

And I think from a 'look and feel' perspective it avoids repetitive text...

Cahir

Agreed, in this case shortening will help, but that's not always possible.

Aedan

Exactly.
When you design the UI screen, you must always keep in mind that any boxes with text inside should be bigger for foreign languages. You cannot pretend to cut the translation. Most of the time the result is not great at all.
The UI translations are available, so any future work on the UI can and should be done doing some test with other languages as well. At least if you want to do things right and with quality.

Mr2150

I was just checking other languages from a text length perspective - and it's all very similar... although I was alarmed to see that the French have Save vs Souffles

Also surprising is that I know my way around the UI without being able to speak all the languages. That suggests, on one level at least, that the UI design works well enough.

Pecca

We should also not forget about BG2EE screen, that should also keep some of its iconic look (like this):

Mr2150

Wow, that looks even better... Great job again @Pecca !

That style works for SOD and BG2EE ...

lefreut

***

Mr2150

With the progressbar I would say that these days it is expected. I can't think of many games that don't have use a bar to represent XP and level. That said, the current implementation of it is bad, however. @AncientCowboy 's version is a lot more useful.

Pecca

Buttons on the right side change the information (tabs) displayed on the right side column, so the overview is what is displayed at the picture. I don't see the 9 buttons as too much personally, it is more convenient and functional then hiding them to another screen (like in v1.3). The important thing is that they are nicely arranged at the bottom and not all over the place like in current v2.3.

lefreut

***

Mr2150

Actually, @Pecca , I'm not sure the brown colour works for the text headings in the BG2 picture. For me, that's a brown on a darker brown... they are very similar, and so it makes the text harder to read.

I'd suggest to pick an orangey-gold colour from the background image instead of the brown colour for BG2. The same for the XP progressbar. That way it would be lighter so easier to read and carries the theme of the UI through.

Pecca

The text looks a bit worse than it actually would due to the lazy way I did the mockup. It would be lighter.

Mr2150

OK - fair enough...

00zim00

Wow I seemed to have missed alot of awesome discussions about the UI :O! Looking good so far !

Edit: There seems to be a big main post i missed but i was wondering has it been suggested if we could get a "hover" tool-tip over each of the things in the record screen? Even with things like status effects where it might show you what the effect does and how long it has left? This could also be for things like dex where if its red you hover over it and it says eg: Dex 18- 3(Curse of X). .. then maybe include to say AC Bonus + X.

Just a thought. More helpful for new players.