ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I really like ToME's interface and Shockbolt's artwork is fantastic. I have a few suggestions that I'd like to see implemented in the interest of making the game just a bit more intuitive and accessible.

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It would be great if there was some art that's displayed when actors are under certain status effects so you don't have to mouse over an actor to see if they're still stunned or are regenerating, etc. I really like how frozen actually encases actors in a block of ice and it would be very helpful to have some kind of artwork displayed whenever an actor is under the other types of effects.

Please implement an option that prevents the game from automatically assigning points to talents upon character creation? It's a minor thing, but it's a little bit of a hassle to find and unspec the talents the game has chosen for me. I sometimes forget to unspec which often results in wasted talent points if I realize my error too late in the game (which can be as early as level 1-4).

The health bar drawn under actors' icons is not as useful as it could be because of the way it's currently drawn. Especially in the case of the player icons, it is extremely difficult to see because it is drawn behind the gold square that surrounds the player and the player's feet. Is there any way to make this more visible and easier to read? After a couple of days of playing, I didn't even notice there was a health bar for players (on-field) until my current game. Could they be made top-most and be drawn under the square or otherwise redesigned to be read more easily? The environment and other images can also completely obscure health bars, which would be rectified by having them draw on top of everything. Also, it'd be nice to have the option to display the actual numbers on the bar (i.e. "491/500 (+0.25)"), but that might require a larger bar. If it doesn't already, could the bar change color as the actor's health decreases?

Could we have an option to squelch all run feedback aside from when the player stops due to an item/creature/trap being nearby (and whatever other really important things that I may be forgetting about)? There are times when I travel almost exclusively by running which results in a ton of useless text in the game log.

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That's all I have for now. I'll bump this thread with more thoughts as they come.

To illustrate what I think you mean:

Would be nice, though there are a great many effects and it's hard to even come up with concepts to show them (how do you visualise stun?) Having several on a creature would be messy. It would be useful for the main ones like stun and blind though.

Stun is usually several concentric circles above the head area Or you could use a spikey type of thought bubble with a small exclamation mark.

I would go for floating cartoonish stars for stun. Circles (or spirals) are more for confusion.

Would be neat. Could also do it by subtype to cover ground more easily and apply it like that. Daze and Stun would both be lumped together. Every subtype blind or subtype slow could give the same icon. Diseases could all use the same effect. Etc. etc.

Flameshock could show burning with circles over the head or whatever

I would have gone with a bunch of question marks at angles for confusion , A big red blood drop for bleed, a bright green one for poison, a dark, grey green one for disease (blight colour) and if they can be animated popping bubbles for <25% oxygen remaining

marvalis wrote:To illustrate what I think you mean:

The attachment dazedoverlay.jpg is no longer available

Yeah, exactly. The status effect art doesn't even need to be that big - just something that's clear and informative at a glance. Nice job. Come to think of it, the art could be as large as you have it but rather than showing all status effects at once, the game could loop through each status effect the creature is suffering from every .5 seconds or so (an option to set the interval would be nice) and draw the current effect in the list. I attached an image that illustrates what I'm talking about.

I like everyone's ideas for the icons. Thanks guys.

Hmm, that could work well. I'd personally prefer it if all the status icons were the same size and in the same location (say the top-right of the tactical display). Collating some ideas, and adding some of my own:

Bleed - red blood-drop
Poison - green skull & bones
Stun, flameshock - red exclamation mark
Daze - blue exclamation
Disease - grey-green blood-drop
Bane - white skull
Hex - red skull
Blind - eye with cross over it
Silence - musical note with cross over it
Confusion - white question mark
Slow - clock icon
Pin - foot with a spike through it

What other major statuses are there? We don't have to include them all, but the most common ones inflicted by the player should be there.

These statuses may not work at lower resolutions/tilesizes, so obviously they'd have to be optional.

Grappled - two interlocked hands pushing against each
Continuum destabilization - A clock face with one half fading away into nothing

Wild infusion - Leaves floating upwards
Regenerating rapdidly - Lots of red crosses moving upwards

Stalked - bulls-eye type cross hair

Static icons are harder to see and less noticeable than flashing indicators. I'd rather the icons be larger but flash intermittently (and cycle through the active effects). Otherwise they'll either be lost or clash horribly with Shockbolt tiles.

I agree. And hopefully Shockbolt will draw them so they don't clash :)

I'll avoid starting a new thread for this, since I do feel it's interface related - when you're frozen, the game should disable/greyout runes and talents which teleport or heal(since they do nothing).

Maybe add a tooltip/extra info to the talent too, so it directly reminds the player how these things (don't)work while frozen.

I think DarkGod has already done that in SVN.