ui feedback thread

[dyze]

i recently started playing tome4 and this has quickly become my favorite roguelike, due to many factors. excellent skillsystem being one of them, the item system another.
also the ui, which is better than that of most roguelikes ive tried. it shows that there's been a lot of work done to make it approachable to new players.
even if i have played many roguelike, and i'm used to the not-so-user-friendly ui's of most roguelikes, i will try to take the position of a player new to roguelike games, and leave feedback to further ease new players into the game.
at first i was gonna make one giant post with feedback on the whole ui, that just felt like too much work . instead i'll continue post replies on different aspects of the interface as i keep playing the game.
first up:

tooltips:
i'm playing on a 24" 1920x1200 monitor which is by no means exceptionally large these days. one of the few things i find tedious with the current tooltips is that they require you to move your eyes a lot back and forth over the screen.
for example the skill hot bar, if the skill tooltip was displayed by the mouse cursor when hovering over a skill icon you wouldnt have to move your gaze to read it. same could go for enemies.
in the inventory screen its also quite annoying that the tooltips stay visible even when moving the cursor out of the 'item area'.
trying to view the paper doll in full can also be hard since the tooltips of items in your inventory are displayed directly over it. why not displaying them below and to the right of the cursor?

beeing a total loot whore, i love the item system and having items with loads of stats. i do think readability of these tooltips could be enhanced a lot tho.
here's an idea of how it could look (new on the right):



my point here is sorting and grouping stats on importance and shorten unnecessarily long names, conforming to standard rpg naming ('damage' instead of 'base power')
like 'it must be held with two hands' shortened to 2h etc. another example, displaying damage type when it is physical damage feels superfluous, this being the 'default' and most common damage type, which i think most players also know.
instead just type out the damage/crit type if its NOT physical.
i've left some of the stats out in my version of the tooltip. 'uses stat: 120% strength', is this not the same as 'requies: strength 11'?
lastly on the topic of items, the one thing i'd love to see are set items. havent played that far so not sure if they might already be in the game? (edit: found one, yay!)

[Marson]

You might want to check out my UI Mod (link in my sig). There's an option to put the inventory tooltip in a dedicated location between the ragdoll and the list.

I like how the grouping looks. I'll have to see if that's feasible.

I've been wanting to do something with the scrolling, too. There are times when it moves too slow for where I want to read, and sometimes I want it to not move. You can use Shift-L to lock it and then unlock it, but I want to find a way to tie it into the scrollwheel without having to hit the keyboard.

--
BTW, here's how stat % comes into play: http://te4.org/wiki/Combat_Damage

[Zireael]

I like the improved tooltip.

[dyze]

You might want to check out my UI Mod (link in my sig).
...
BTW, here's how stat % comes into play: http://te4.org/wiki/Combat_Damage

thanks! your mod looks like it'll fix a few issues i've had, like hotbar blocking view etc. i have additional feedback on this, will write something up later..

[dyze]

inventory/character screen

i propose to fuse the character screen with the inventory screen. this way you could instantly check any stat changes when wearing new gear.
i know of the item compare, but this way you could view your new stat totals in a simple and fast way.
you should ofc be able to wield/wear/remove gear when not on the paper doll screen.

other smaller changes i propose is opening the item actions popup at mouse cursor as opposed to center of screen.
and also moving the character graphic up to the center of the paper doll element. he looked so small and tiny there at the bottom
lastly replacing the weapon switch buttons with something smaller. like diablo2 (or photoshop front/bg color)

when transmogrifying between level changes, a "done" button at the bottom would be nice. quite a cryptic feature having to click outside the window.

edit: i'm also having trouble taking screenshots of items from inventory, is this not possible? when a tooltip isnt displayed it works fine.

edit2: its kinda annoying that the key you bind to opening the inventory doesnt also exit the same screen. e.g i have kb_enter to activate inv screen, pushing the same key again opens the item options popup.

[dyze]

main interface

once again, taking the "stupid new player approach" here..
as a new player, clicking outside different screens (skill screen, messages etc) is highly confusing. why not have a done button? same goes for transmog screen..

for screen messages, why not just click anywhere to dismiss? the first thing you try when you dont see any kind of exit button is to click the actual message, currently nothing at all happens when that is done...
having several messages pop up on top of another also doesnt look very good.

you can tell this game was designed with smaller screen resolutions in mind, centering the main menu would look alot nicer imo though.

i love the fact that the game has a "proper", resizable movable skillbar(s). i do however wish for a secondary 'physical' skillbar. would be nice if it was resizable, and that the icons were resized with it. would be nice to have for skills used less often. as it is now the current skillbar gets very crowded. i know that you can 'switch' between bars, but this is just not as effective as having a 'real' secondary skillbar.
on the topic of the skillbar, player and monsters hiding behind it is highly annoying. marson have taken steps to improve this with his mod, please incorporate into the main game.

i like how all interface elements are resizable and movable, however its not without its problems.
this is the current layout i use:


it works pretty ok, tho i'd much rather have the health/stamina/mana bars above the skillbar, in the same horizontal layout. afaik this is not possible?
same goes for buff/debuff icons..

on the skills screen, when moving mouse between the same skill and stat several times, the tooltip doesn't change. eg. dex-shield pummel several times.
also on the topic of tooltips, replacing "the target" with "you" if a debuff is applied to yourself would be more user friendly.

when using the save&exit menu options, it would look nicer if the savegame screenshot was taken before the "save and exit" popup appears.

levelup message could have some more bling to reward and motivate the player, its kinda discreet atm.

combat log fades a bit too quickly.

my largest complaint is definitely the character frames. these are just waaay to intrusive, and makes the player and monsters/npc look like icons on a board, instead of an actual part of the world.
complete immersion killer. had to mod this, nothing fancy but does the job:


might sound as i come off very negative here, but as stated in op, i still do think this game has a better interface than most roguelikes

[hyprformnce]

re: your last concern, there is an addon called corner-only threat brackets that was recently uploaded that only retains the upper left portion of the border. It also draws the healthbar vertically and above the character sprits to prevent it from being obscured by character sprites and walls 1 block south.

I agree with all of your input concerning UI elements. Usability is something that could greatly improve the gameplay experience without any changes to content or balance.

[Zireael]

This thread is full of good ideas.

[rexorcorum]

Tactical Frames Rework in progress - looky here. Cheers!

[Suslik]

While I do like the first proposal, Uses stat: 120% strength and strength requirement are both vital and absolutely unrelated stats. First one means the way your damage scales with strength, second one is how much strength it take to use the item. So both of them are absolutely vital to display.

On the other side, I dislike proposals about character frames(being able to easily tell rare from a normal foe is vital) and UI placement(most things can be moved already, hit the lock button, and 10 resource bars on a solipsist/shadowblade just won't fit under the skill bar).