Preview KotOR E2 stuff at IGN

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

<a href="http://pc.ign.com/articles/402/402689p1.html">Fun preview</a> over at <a href="http://pc.ign.com/">PC.IGN</a>, discussing the upcoming <a href="http://www.swkotor.com">Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic</a>. It's fairly shameless and gushy, but you might enjoy things like this:
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<blockquote>First of all, the interface for the PC version hasn't even been implemented yet. It's still straight from Xbox and right now the only way to play is by controlling your character with the keyboard. This is clearly not going to be how it's done in the end. I queried BioWare reps about this very thing and they mentioned that they're still trying to figure out just what they're going to be doing. Point and click will be there and it's supposed to be "very, very intuitive." Obviously, if anyone knows what they're doing when it comes to interfaces and RPG games, it's BioWare. These kids have it down cold. Which, ironically, may be why some PC RPG fanatics could be a little depressed by Knights of the Old Republic... I mean, will it be as deep, fulfilling, and approachable as Baldur's? </blockquote>
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Do they? Then why did it take <i>six inputs</i> from the player to manually cast a spell in the real time <a href="http://nwn.bioware.com">NeverWinter Nights</a> with their poorly done radial menu when it only took <i>four inputs</i> in the turn based <A href="http://www.poolofradiance.com">Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor</a>? If you force the player do so something in <i>six inputs</i> when someone else can do the same exact thing in <i>four</i>, then it's hard to claim they have it down cold.
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But, that's hype for you.
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Spotted this at <a href="http://www.ve3d.com">VoodooExtreme</a>.

 

[Section8]

Radial Menus for Dummies:

The purpose of radial menus is to provide a system where all sub-options are equidistance from their parent. This helps to reduce interface latency, and also keeps interface interaction time fairly uniform.

In a nutshell, every series of child buttons should "radiate" from their parent, so that no matter how deeply nested a button is, the mouse movements required are completely uniform. The player is quick to become familiar with the interface, and since all child buttons are equidistant, there are no gameplay elements favoured due to the player attempting to minimise interface latency.

And guess what? Like most things they do, Bioware managed to utterly fuck it up, and implement a system that is even clunkier than a standard linear menu.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yeah, that's another thing about NWN that was so awful, dealing with those radial menus absolutely sucked ass. It took a good long time to set up hot keys for things, just because of how FUBAR the radial menus worked. Anyone that thinks BioWare knows intefaces, given how klunky the Infinity Engine's interface was in BG and BG2 as well as NWN needs to be shot.