ACI B6: I'm glad you were able to get rid of the bag, the whole thing looks a lot better without it imo, and I like where you've moved the weight to.
As for this new two-tone color design w/the added texture, I don't personally think that it's adding much. I was doing a side by side comparison, and I think that the background flourishes and the introduction of the lighter tone just make the whole thing a bit too busy for the sake of being busy.
I didn't mind when you had the art backgrounds for the inventory screen early on, but I liked those specifically because it was a sword coast mosaic, etc. Now, the simplicity is really a good thing in the design, and I preferred the earlier concepts to this one.
I do like the X design in the background. The green stands out in a nice, simple way and the shape serves to draw focus to the character. Did you lighten it for this latest concept, or are my eyes just playing tricks on me because of the different background colors? For some reason, it seems like the green was darker in previous shots and I preferred that as well.
Discovered your mod today, installed it and gotta say: awesome work, dude! Keep it up, I will follow this threads for updates. What I like most about it: The brownish color scheme fits much better into the whole game and larger letters make it much easier to follow the story on a full hd screen. :-)
@ShadwoSmuggler - Thank you. It turned out great. Still not a final version yet. I'm going to take my time on this one.
@jayzl659 - Yeah, the bag needed to go. It was pretty difficult getting it to go but I pulled it off. I did make the green color a bit brighter. Everyone seems to have a different opinion. I'm trying to find a middle ground. I will keep playing around with the colors and textures until we get it perfect. I like the X design as well - as you stated it helps to draw focus to the paper doll. I appreciate your insightful feedback.
@DerKuKe - Glad to have you on board. We're in BETA testing right now and I would like to hear your feedback. Please feel free to speak up so you can have a say in the final version. What customization options are you using? Thanks.
@DerKuKe - Glad to have you on board. We're in BETA testing right now and I would like to hear your feedback. Please feel free to speak up so you can have a say in the final version. What customization options are you using? Thanks.
Start Screen - Friendly Arm Inn Ingame - Gold Buttons Inventory - Classic Brown Main Menu - Saverok
Additionally I would like to suggest a small tweak: maybe you could change the order of the buttons in the journal? I prefer 'quests - done quests - journal - user' over 'quests - journal - user - done quests'. I don't know how the community feels about it, maybe it's just my personal taste. ;-) Hope I could help you!
@DerDuke - I actually agree with you about the button arrangement. Its something I'm looking into for BETA 6. The major issue is the size of the buttons due to text length. Having two big buttons then two small buttons looks odd. Hopefully I will find some way to do it. Just a heads up Classic Brown maybe be fazed out for BETA 6. The new necessary changes to B6 have made Enhanced and Classic incompatible. Plus not very many people use these options. What do you think of the Archaic Custom Inventory (ACI) screenshots I featured above? If there is enough of an out cry to keep Classic or Enhanced inventory options I may spend some time making them work for BETA 6. Thanks.
Glad I am not the only one regarding the journal button arrangement. ;-) ACI looks also fine, I just gotta get used to the different arrangement but I guess that won't take too long. So no worries, focus on the more urgent things you have in mind. :-)
Absolutely love B6. The touch of colour really does add an 'organic' feel to the UI that I hadn't realized was lacking before. My only criticism now is that it isn't out yet!
Seriously though, take your time. Every time you improve the UI, I understand a little more what you meant when you said it wasn't ready to come out of Beta yet.
I've made a major discovery today in the design aspects of Archaic GUI. I was able to find a workaround to choose which screens have borders. Before I was forced to have borders on all screens and I wasn't happy with it. Why is this a big deal you may be asking? We'll there are a few screens that just don't need a border or I would like to design a different style border that suits that particular screen. This will also allow me to easily convert classic brown and enhanced 2.1 inventory options without having to get rid of them for BETA 6. This is going to be a lot of tedious work but it will be worth it in the end and give me more flexibility in future designs. Its may be awhile before BETA 6 is released but its going to be a major release with a lot of improvements.
@Kenze - Thanks for the encouragement. I had to re-structure the entire mod and it is taking awhile but its going to allow for more freedom in my design. I don't have any ETA on BETA 6 release at this point.
I wrote a little script to help automate some of the GUI structure conversion process. My goal is to speed up the tedious work so I can focus on the core re-design and get BETA 6 out faster. Hopefully it works the way I think it will. If all goes well it should shave off a few days of work.
My secondary 2TB data hard drive took a dive. This means I lost all the work I've done over the past few days. I do have backups to my dropbox however they're a few days old. This is very discouraging for sure. What a bummer...I'm going to look into a better backup system besides just dropbox. I'm looking at crashplan.com as a viable option because it auto backups all files at set intervals instead of me manually backing up to my dropbox.
I'm also going to look into recovery software to see if there is anyway to recover the files from my bad HDD.
Omg I feel sorry, dude... Shit. But do not let this discourage you! I am sure there are plenty of people looking forward to the new version and your work is always much appreciated! Take a break for one day, gain some new energy and get yourself back into the fight!
Archaic, you could use "Testdisk" to try and recover some files from your HDD. If it is running and the Bios recognize the disc you should get some data back with that tool. http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
@Archaic Sorry for the data loss. Take a look at http://www.sugarsync.com. Their software will backup your files in realtime to your online account. No chance of losing anything. And they offer a large free account as well. It can even sync multiple computers to your account, so you could always have your home and office computers with the latest version of your files.
My secondary 2TB data hard drive took a dive. This means I lost all the work work I've done over the past few days. I do have backups to my dropbox however they're a few days old. This is very discouraging for sure. What a bummer...I'm going to look into a better backup system besides just dropbox.
Sorry to hear you've lost a few days of effort, but don't let it get you down - you're doing amazing work that is much appreciated. Just be glad that you've been backing up regularly, or it could have been worse.
HDD crashes always suck, encountered not too long ago myself.
On a bright side, the new BG:EE patch vastly enlarges the unreadable tiny item numbers, inventory weight numbers and useable spell-like ability numbers. Don't know about others, but that's definitive my favourite patch feature as of yet!
Give the guy a break. Recovery or not I'm sure he will pick it up sooner or later. I'm as eager as the next person to see this released but we just gotta wait.
I appreciate everyone's patients while I sort a out a few things. I have not updated because I was looking into solutions and had nothing to report. The data recovery did not work. I've put in too much time trying to get the data back. It's time to move on and just deal with the lose. Unfortunately the lose was more than I thought at first glance. I've lost a good amount of PSD files that I had updated with the new structure for BETA 6 including my script file to fix them. So now I've got to re-write the script file and start from scratch with a few PSD files. This is going to be a big setback but I will not abandon this mod. If for some reason I decided to stop working on the mod I would let you all know. I'm going to take a day to regroup and write out a list of what needs to be done. I will then continue development one step at a time.
Alpha Design of the Inventory for BETA 6: I'm still in the very early design stages but I'm trying to bring a more fantasy D&D feel to BETA 6. I plan to bring all the elements together with the background. Please keep in mind this is a work in progress. I'd like to hear your feedback. Thanks.
Comments
ACI B6: I'm glad you were able to get rid of the bag, the whole thing looks a lot better without it imo, and I like where you've moved the weight to.
As for this new two-tone color design w/the added texture, I don't personally think that it's adding much. I was doing a side by side comparison, and I think that the background flourishes and the introduction of the lighter tone just make the whole thing a bit too busy for the sake of being busy.
I didn't mind when you had the art backgrounds for the inventory screen early on, but I liked those specifically because it was a sword coast mosaic, etc. Now, the simplicity is really a good thing in the design, and I preferred the earlier concepts to this one.
I do like the X design in the background. The green stands out in a nice, simple way and the shape serves to draw focus to the character. Did you lighten it for this latest concept, or are my eyes just playing tricks on me because of the different background colors? For some reason, it seems like the green was darker in previous shots and I preferred that as well.
Discovered your mod today, installed it and gotta say: awesome work, dude! Keep it up, I will follow this threads for updates. What I like most about it: The brownish color scheme fits much better into the whole game and larger letters make it much easier to follow the story on a full hd screen. :-)
@jayzl659 - Yeah, the bag needed to go. It was pretty difficult getting it to go but I pulled it off. I did make the green color a bit brighter. Everyone seems to have a different opinion. I'm trying to find a middle ground. I will keep playing around with the colors and textures until we get it perfect. I like the X design as well - as you stated it helps to draw focus to the paper doll. I appreciate your insightful feedback.
I am using the following customization options:
Start Screen - Friendly Arm Inn
Ingame - Gold Buttons
Inventory - Classic Brown
Main Menu - Saverok
Additionally I would like to suggest a small tweak: maybe you could change the order of the buttons in the journal? I prefer 'quests - done quests - journal - user' over 'quests - journal - user - done quests'. I don't know how the community feels about it, maybe it's just my personal taste. ;-) Hope I could help you!
Glad I am not the only one regarding the journal button arrangement. ;-)
ACI looks also fine, I just gotta get used to the different arrangement but I guess that won't take too long. So no worries, focus on the more urgent things you have in mind. :-)
Seriously though, take your time. Every time you improve the UI, I understand a little more what you meant when you said it wasn't ready to come out of Beta yet.
I'm looking forward to this!
/offerEncouragment
I'm also going to look into recovery software to see if there is anyway to recover the files from my bad HDD.
Omg I feel sorry, dude... Shit. But do not let this discourage you! I am sure there are plenty of people looking forward to the new version and your work is always much appreciated! Take a break for one day, gain some new energy and get yourself back into the fight!
On a bright side, the new BG:EE patch vastly enlarges the unreadable tiny item numbers, inventory weight numbers and useable spell-like ability numbers. Don't know about others, but that's definitive my favourite patch feature as of yet!
I'm still in the very early design stages but I'm trying to bring a more fantasy D&D feel to BETA 6. I plan to bring all the elements together with the background. Please keep in mind this is a work in progress. I'd like to hear your feedback. Thanks.