"Enhanced Edition" UI
Archaic
Member Posts: 924
First off, I want to say how much I love the BG series. I've played them for endless hours. I pre-ordered BGEE and I must stay my biggest disappointment is the UI. I was really hoping to see a better UI like we saw in Icewind Dale 2. The game overall is awesome. I've only experienced a few bugs that were mostly taken care of with the first patch. I really think that the UI will be a big deciding factor for me on whether I purchase BG2EE.
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Not saying I hate the new GUI, it could use some improvement but IWD II had some of the worst GUI that I have ever seen for an infinity game. I was on another forum (Project eternity:Kickstarter) and we had this discussion and many do not like the IWD II GUI vs the BG series. Even the developer on the kickstarter "Project Eternity" mentioned something about how the IWD II GUI could have been better. One of them played through Icewind Dale II and he kept missing buttons.
http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/2002/pc/rpg/icewinddale2/dale2_screen001.jpg
My whole problem with it is the bottom right hand corner. All those little buttons crammed togeather in a circle like that. I constantly hit the wrong button when playing IWD II compared to the Baldurs gate series.
Fair enough. Even if the UI was like IWD II, I would get use to it eventually. I do like the current one, I think it would look better in the traditional brown. Also the issues you mentioned I hope they fix. For someone reason I always was able to use the PST GUI easier then IWD II, even though they are similar. Maybe it's the colour difference?
I rarely use the buttons on the UI anyways. I use all keyboard shortcuts. So for me the the IWD UI was streamlined and perfect.
Complete difference of opinion I guess. Oh well. I use some keyboard shortcuts but not all.
UI is passable enough.
Never Said I hated the UI, just that it needs improvements. A good UI makes playing the game more of a natural experience which is linked to game play. I think that part is there mostly. Most of the stuff is cosmetic in nature that people want changed. Someone just recently changed the GUI to brown, I think it looks great.
http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/comment/170803/#Comment_170803
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I think the IWD2 UI is better than the BG:EE UI as well, however, the currently provided UI was on of the big hold up with the game. The game was delayed over 2 months for the UI we have. If they would of implemented a fully fleshed UI imagine how much longer it would of been delayed. Plus, the developer wanted to maintain the look and feel of BG. Using a IDW2 UI would of been a big change for some people, angering just as many than it pleases.
That said, improvements will come. Once the game breaking issues are taken care of then they may release updated UI. Maybe a modder will improve the UI, who knows.
but actually, they should have thrown most of the original UI down the drain. keep the hotkey bar, but make it function differently, with actual, bindable hotkeys, and... add a nice radial menu to right click, y'know, like ones in NWN or Temple of Elemental Evil. also, add a radius display to spells, because it's fucking ridiculous that the player dearest has to guess whether their fireball will fry half of the team. (hint: it will. it always will.) actually, shamelessly copy a shitloads of things from ToEE (well, not the handling of turn based combat, BG is fine as it is), because they basically showed how the tactical combat in a crpg should look and feel like, and set the bar pretty damn high.
sadly, currently the game is basically bgtutu + a few extra characters + BUGS, lots and lots of bugs. oh, and unchangeable FPS, which makes it downright unplayable for many people.
Sadly this Tablet related fixed zoom level has also entered the PC Version, but do not mistake that with the user controlled zoom, this are 2 seperate things
But comes time, comes patches hopefully soon
When this game was developed it was developed with "multi-platform" in mind. Not Multi-platform in the case of "multiple code bases supporting multiple platforms" but "a single code base we can port to multiple platforms".
This is a design decision intended to save development time and money. With decisions like this there are tradeoffs.
Those radial menus you all are talking about with right clicks and all that? Those aren't re-producible on a tablet. Put that kind of IWD2 radial menu on a 10.7" screen and you'd be tapping the wrong button every single time.
YES you are playing the iPad version of this game on the PC. That's what you should have expected. It's pretty logical that one of the reasons (if not THE reason) they created BG:EE is to grab the tablet market...BG already exists from GOG (for something like $10) for the PC...you didn't need a re-release by another company to play BG on your computer.
You DID need a re-release to play it on the Tablet. It further follows, then, that the interface they've put into the game is an interface built for the Tablet, NOT for the PC.
And before you get all up in arms about any of this you need to take a step back and step into Beamdog's shoes for a second. How else were they going to get the rights to re-release this game? The original content holders are getting a cut from GOG's sales already so there was no need to allow anyone to re-release a 20 year old game for the PC. Tablet HAD to be included and it HAD to be the focus of the market share or there'd never be a BG:EE to release.
The budget for this being what it was, and the development staff being what it was, there was NO WAY you were getting two separate development tracks (one for the PC/MAC and one for the iPad/Tablets). Particularly in Apple's case with development for the iPad and the Mac OS X being similar, it only made sense to go this direction. The game isn't being sold for enough money and there wasn't enough development staff to take the game down two different directions. It had to be one code base for all the platforms...and in doing so that limits your UI to be something usable on the smallest screen you're going to support...that being the Tablet PC.
And, unless this thing sells a metric s**tton of copies, you're going to see the same thing for BG2:EE as well.
Even Microsoft understands this as a trend in the computer industry. Why do you think Windows 8 looks more like a Tablet interface than a PC interface? It's much cleaner and easier to maintain one code base that works on all the various devices (Phones, Tablets, Laptops and Desktops) than it is to try to develop a separate software code base for each device.
But in doing so, you make tradeoffs. UI is one of those tradeoffs.
--Illydth
In that Case, Beamdog already has forseen all that negative kind of reaction for the pc version and as you do imply - more or less... because "we" the pc gamers as you said should have known that negative side of that trade-off Multi-Platform game, so the Devs will also not care even if we ask them to change something..
I just hope they are not acting the way like that conclusion does imply, i seriously hope, they listen.
In all cases you would make a PC port, because there are some people who do not own Tablet PC's...if your code base allows port to a platform why WOULDN'T you port to that platform? Obviously the original game was PC based so there's ABSOLUTELY no reason why you wouldn't produce the game for the PC...it's sort of a "for free" platform to produce for. If they'd had to go through a whole bunch of extra steps and code and time to produce a PC release, I would argue they might not have done so...but the fact is, there's no reason for them to have had to have gone through hoops to produce for the PC so the PC is one of the platforms released.
The next part i'm having trouble understanding. I don't own the PC version so I don't know if you're suggesting that they SHOULD HAVE developed 1080p with an optimized GUI or asking why they did if my statements are correct...by what I read I'm assuming you're statement is that they DO NOT have an optimized GUI for current PC hardware.
My point being exactly that developing an optimized GUI for 1080p monitors is not going to get you anything from an iPad/Tablet release perspective...the tablet can't use an interface designed for that level of graphical capability. A GUI designed for a 24" monitor is NOT going to be a viable GUI on a 10.7" screen. While the iPad DOES SUPPORT 1080p graphics, with such a small screen size, you can't have a small button on the screen...that button has to be large enough to tap on on the iPad, which means expanded to a 24" monitor that button becomes huge. Resolution supported does not dictate interface size...
It's not about devs Caring or not Caring Ikon. I'm CERTAIN the devs care enough to create whatever we, their customers, want. It's about money and limitations of design decisions. The design decision for this game is based on the financial outlay they are capable of producing, and that financial outlay is limited.
You can't create 2 different GUI's without splitting the software base, and you can't design a GUI for a 24" monitor that works on a 10.7" screen. This is why they're not releasing an iPhone version of BG:EE...you can't create a GUI that works on a 10.7" Screen that ALSO works on a 5" screen that ALSO works on a 24" screen...
A GUI interface is limited to what works on the smallest supported screen. That's what they developed for and that's what you're playing with, even on your 24" PC monitor.
suffice it to say that we're committed to on-going development for BG:EE. One of the nice things about a unified code base is that improvements we make going forward, can be pushed backwards to BG:EE itself (and the tablet versions, too).
The feedback for the GUI has been, in general, positive - but that doesn't mean we're ignoring the criticisms and won't keep looking at it when changes make sense to implement (barring the "but it's not 100% identical to BG1" and "but it's not brown like BG2" feedback... seriously, people! You gotta save all the brown-scale for BG2!).
Especially not sure what everyone's complaint about the zooming is, though - you zoom in and out. In general, after playing with it, I enjoyed zooming in and out so much that going back to the other old versions for reference was painful. I missed it, a lot.
@DinsdalePiranha funny story - we originally wanted to implement a radius, but the public outcry was... considerable. I think you can find the thread if you look for it in the feature request forum, somewhere.
There's been a lot of back and forth on the UI, and the end result is what you've got - it makes some changes while toe-ing the line between what many felt was changing too much vs. changing too little. The end result would be the same regardless: you can't please everyone.
As I said, though, we're working on it and will continue working on it to make it the best game it can be - this goes for all aspects of the game.
With all due respect
With that i can agree, why not making the zoom fully user controlled? If a person wants to play without hardcoded zoom, would that be technically not possible in the EE?
If perhaps a button could be made in the graphic menu with the option to switch hardcoded zoom off - that would be great, because as i said and i and quite a lot of other people would love to see the zoom really fully user controlled!
And the GUI.. it is not really sharp on Resolutions like 1920x1080 - in ohther words, the buttons on the left are so blurry at that kind of resolutions.
Anyway, i go and ask for a refund, i am out here forever, Bye!
My problem is I cant stand to look at the game with the UI taking up the whole dang screen. He says it was painful switching back to the original BG. Well I tell you what the original BG with widecreen mod looks awesome so im not sure what hes looking at.
edit: to specify a little more clearly - all I mean is Zoom is present. The amount of zoom is up to the user?
r.e. pain, was talking about NOT having the zoom in the original games. Playing in the original games without it (the zoom) makes me miss it (the zoom). Not sure what you got out of that sentence before.
With regards to the UI scaling, as I said, we're taking ongoing feedback with regards to this. We have an option that is largely untested, but can turn off the UI scaling in the game. It doesn't look pretty right now, as the game's modified UI was designed with the scaling in mind, but that's something we can look at making work a little better going forward if it's what people want.
It's annoying, but, it's not game breaking so the other bigger monsters need to be crushed first. @Cerevant if THAT's the case, then... I guess I still don't understand the proportion of hate for that? Seems pretty minor to me, but yes - we will be fixing that.
@Nathan Best thing I've heard all day. Maybe I will start a thread/poll to see how many people would be interested in this option. Having an option to turn it off would make me VERY happy. With turning scaling off this would mean true resolution aspects then right?
So are there chances for true FULL HD GUI?