ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I think the new level up screen is a great improvement. It definitely makes leveling up less of a chore since the tabs are gone, and the wall of text is gone which is sweet. I think there are a few things that could be addressed though:

1. Two columns of talents. Class on one side, generic on the other. Put available points above each column respectively, in a larger colored font. Maybe new icons for Class points / Generic points.

2. Do the same on the other side with the stat points. Available stat points in large text above, 6 icons below. Maybe arrange the icons vertically to create a full third column at less horizontal space. Now you have three columns with the available stat points above each column!

3. Grey out unavailable talent icons. Maybe just a 10-20% black overlay. This will help with the cluttering factor.

4. List the missing requirements on greyed-out talents in a tiny red font overlayed with an outline (or even below) the icon. Something simple like Lv5,+Str. If a requirement is met, just remove it from the list. When all requirements are met, just make it un-greyed out of course.

5. Trim down the text for the talent categories. Just list the - talent name (x1.00). Center it above the icons. Move the +/- collapse image to the left of the talent icons. Center everything by column. The +/- image will stay in place straight down the coulmn since it's based on 4 64x64 icons instead of text length. It will jut out a little bit with weapon mastery with 5 icons, but the emphasis is now on the icon as opposed to the text anyway so it won't be a big deal.

6. List talent trees by unlocked first, then locked tier 1, locked tier 2 (clvl10 req), then locked tier 3 (clvl20), and finally utility. Maybe among the unlocked, list racial first, then combat training, then primary stat based skill trees, then secondary stat based skill trees, then utility. The lists won't be long with 3 columns instead of just two, and most classes should be able to fit almost all of their talents in the 800x800 window without scrolling.

7. Allow mouse scrolling by column for the generic / class columns.

Phew! I think that's all. This will make for a much more streamlined window with most of the important stuff visible at a glance, hopefully! Please add any ideas you guys have to the thread, and i'll start working on a mock-up to show exactly what I'm talking about here.

edit -just thought of one more thing. with all of these changes, the window size will now be directly tied to the icon size. You could easily scale the entire level up window based on the user's screen resolution. For example, 800x600 could use a 32x32 icon size for the talents and still fit quite easlily. At something like 2880x1800, use 64x64 icons to prevent squinting!

Most of these sounds pretty good to me, though a few are dependent on previous conditions being met.

1. I think two tabs might be easier in this case, but splitting up class and generic sounds good to me. Seems like the idea was to get rid of tabs though...
5. Disagree on this one-- either keep the current structure, or go with it as listed, except keep the button on the same like as the category (offset to the right I have in my mental image, for some reason).
6. Not sure if this is an improvement, or if I'm just misunderstanding the implications of it...

And two points of my own:
How do you remove a point with the keyboard?
Can we PLEASE have an option to go back to the old mode with three tabs and the text? I have no idea what any of these icons are, and I liked the ability to see just how all my values were changing when I put a point in my stats. Or if not the tabs, at least the text?

Aoi wrote:Can we PLEASE have an option to go back to the old mode with three tabs and the text? I have no idea what any of these icons are, and I liked the ability to see just how all my values were changing when I put a point in my stats. Or if not the tabs, at least the text?

Seconded. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one that uses the text options instead of icons. I love the Minimalist interface, but don't use it because of statuses being displayed as icons, and now it feels like I am stuck with icons for the levelup window as well. Please let us have a text mode for those of us that don't want icons!

But icons are the future, man! And seriously, they look so much better, and aren't that hard to get used to. Whilst supporting an old style might make some sense, it also introduces compatibility problems between updates and creates more maintenance work. Consider giving the new style more of a chance instead of knee-jerking against it. Otherwise DarkGod will have the problem of maintaining 20 different styles from every tweak to the interface.

Text is actually a preference of mine, rather than this just being a knee-jerk reaction against icons, but I can respect that it might increase maintenance and compatibility problems. Heck, I already had an issue a few betas ago that Darkgod had a difficult time tracking down, and the culprit was that I wasn't using the icon interface (for skills) and he was. What I'm asking for is just the ability to use the old interface, since it has already been coded. If it turns out to be an insane amount of work for him to do then perhaps I'll look into creating an addon to restore the functionality, but it is something that I feel rather strongly about.

I'd prefer it to be an addon yes, which you can probably create in 10 minutes, it just needs to overload mod.class.dialogs.LevelupDialog with the one from b40

If that's all it takes then I'll look into doing that. Thanks for the suggestion and the means to go about implementing it.

So, after a bit of cajoling, I finally got a friend of mine, a vet of Nethack and DoomRL, to give ToME4r41 a shot.

Long story short:
He found the new skill screen to be impenetrable-- couldn't click and drag to scroll and the mouse-overs were obstructing the buttons preventing them from being clicked. (I'm guessing that was caused by a low resolution?)
Eventually, he went to using the keyboard and, when I mentioned you could respec the last four points, couldn't figure out how to remove allocated points.

It looks really clean, but I don't see why the talent screen has to be so tiny. I've got like 3/4ths of a monitor that could be utilized. The text was nice for quickly seeing what my options are, now I need to rub the mouse all over the screen. The icons are difficult enough to recognize when they are on my talent bar; I'm probably not going to know what they are when I'm first putting points into them, especially the passive talents.

What I'd prefer: a closed talent category only shows the icons, like they currently show up when open. Clicking on it will expand it to the explicit view, where talents are stacked vertically with names beside them. This way I could open up a few categories and look (read) my options at the same time.

Here's that mockup i was talking about...

all mindslayer trees plus antimagic expanded, at an even smaller overall size than the standard window.

sorry about the skin and icons, it's what i had enabled when i took the screenshots. but you can see how effective greying out the icons can be. i also recolored the text slightly here, and added some buttons at the top for the class/generic/stat points. you can see easily that there are 2 generic points availble:

That looks really slick Daftigod

If i ignore the fact that it also has no talent names my only problem with it would be that there should be a third kind of icon state for talents you can learn but have no point invested.

Please make it so we can see the unmodified as well as modified stat points. Thank you,

That is sick, daftigod.

love it!