Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Arkeus]

4.) Intuitive radial menu and clear UI panels with full ruleset and breakdown of events reviewable even during combat.

Radial menus are bad. You don't navigate your OS with radial menus. Because doing that would be crazy.


Josh dishin' some red boots-style dirt:

and you can go inside all the houses

there was an executive who was obsessed w/ this and i asked him why it was fun to go inside every house and he would sputter and gesticulate and eventually become furious

 

[Infinitron]

It's strange that somebody who plays Skyrim so much doesn't understand the appeal of exploring a simulated world.

Or is he just mocking the executive for not being able to explain it?

 

[Sensuki]

Agreed about Radial menus, I fucking hate them.

 

[Rake]

It's strange that somebody who plays Skyrim so much doesn't understand the appeal of exploring a simulated world.

Or is he just mocking the executive for not being able to explain it?

We don't know if he realy enjoys skyrim. I'm pretty sure he has played BG2 around 90 hours, and we all know how he liked it. He may plays it to see the world design and mechanics. After all is the most sold RPG if you don't count Diablo 3. It make sense for designers to try to understand and to mimic it.

 

[Broseph]

It's strange that somebody who plays Skyrim so much doesn't understand the appeal of exploring a simulated world.

Or is he just mocking the executive for not being able to explain it?

We don't know if he realy enjoys skyrim. I'm pretty sure he has played BG2 around 90 hours, and we all know how he liked it. He may plays it to see the world design and mechanics. After all is the most sold RPG if you don't count Diablo 3. It make sense for designers to try to understand and to mimic it.

I think he just enjoys modding it and taking cool looking screenshots. I do the same thing every once in a while.

 

[Lilura]

I think the radial menu in PS:T was the only one of which I wasn't particularly fond.

 

[Jasede]

Agreed about Radial menus, I fucking hate them.

That's where NWN2 UI comes in. It is the best one out there for its kind. Including its context sensitive cursor.

Is this a joke? The NWN 2 UI is the worst I've ever had to contend with.
Maybe you meant NWN? NWN had radial menus that worked very well.

 

[Broseph]

Agreed about Radial menus, I fucking hate them.

That's where NWN2 UI comes in. It is the best one out there for its kind. Including its context sensitive cursor.

Is this a joke? The NWN 2 UI is the worst I've ever had to contend with.
Maybe you meant NWN? NWN had radial menus that worked very well.

Everything Shrek posts is a joke.

I do seem to remember the first NWN having a pretty good UI though.

 

[Lancehead]

For P:E UI I'd like something along the lines of BG games, only occupying smaller screen estate, and better spell selection (NWN2 was good here).

 

[tuluse]

There is a silly movement in schools these days where they teach that radial menus are good because all the options are as close as they can be. Totally ignoring that humans don't read in a radial format and that making sure the options are easy to understand is more important than saving 1/1000 of a second of moving the mouse 10 pixels instead of 50. If you want an interface to be fast to use just make tons of hotkeys.

If you ever hear the buzzword "human factors" run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.

 

[Jasede]

Oh, well, because NWN 1 was easy to play multiplayer - I played/play NWN for 8+ years, still do. NWN 2 was unplayable largely because of how hard the UI elements are to see, how difficult it is to select a spell/combat mode in combat without cluttering the screen. Also, the inventory is much less visible and items are hard to identify- this is critical in a game where you fight a lot.

NWN 2 combat boiled down to "let the AI take care of it or let buffed Fighters decimate everything" - because selecting spells, combat modes or anything more strategic than that was too fiddly and clunky with its user-interface. NWN 1 never had this problem; spells were easy to access, the quickbar was easier to see, the inventory was much "cleaner" and items you had in it and in the hotbar were much easier to identify visually.

 

[Jasede]

They are, but I did play them both for a very long time, and that is the feeling I got. There's something wrong with the spell selection. You get that quick-bar, and it does... work. But there are niggling problems and it's hard for me to substantiate them. One is that the spell icons are less intuitive than they used to be- I feel it would have been better to stick with BG or NWN style icons.

To be fair, I am _used_ to those, so I'd have been able to "read" them much easier. It's a very biased point, granted.

 

[Jasede]

Possibly, but I do want to reiterate these points:

A) Having to have an UI element constantly on screen (quick cast bar) takes away screen real estate
B) The hotbars were small and the icons on them hard to identify (granted, partly an artistic problem, and maybe there was a scaling/resizing option I was ignorant of)
C) The inventory boxes were much too small

Maybe I could have fixed these problems by scaling the UI but to be frank, I don't like UIs you have to customize. That's just a preference.

 

[Infinitron]

NWN1's UI is definitely more responsive than NWN2's, though I don't know if that's necessarily because it is radial.

 

[Jaesun]

http://www.formspring.me/GZiets/q/4...ce=twitter&utm_campaign=shareanswer&_sg=&_sk=

gendregazon
So the humans in P:E are more in a Renaissance/early modern period than a High/Late Medieval one? Is there still some place for knights (vassal system...), Gothic Architecture, Medieval weaponry and other characteristics associated with the Middle Ages

GZiets 40m
Most of those elements will vary a lot by culture and region. For example, the Aedyran Empire (which colonized the Dyrwood) still maintains a feudal social structure, while the Vailian Republics are rooted in what we would call a Renaissance culture, closely resembling the Italian city-states.

It’s important to note that only the most advanced civilizations in PE have reached a level of technology that resembles our early modern period. Most civilizations are still in the equivalent of our Late or High Middle Ages. That means that you will see medieval arms and armor, though probably at a relatively high level of sophistication. On the other hand, some remote cultures have not progressed beyond the Stone Age or Bronze Age, so you may encounter technology appropriate to those periods, as well.

GZiets 2m
The native people of the deep Glanfathan forests have a lower level of technology than their neighbors, and they are likely to appear in the game. You could also see representatives of more distant cultures in the form of companions and other NPCs.

 

[Cynic]

Which is better, BG2 or 1? I think it's really a matter of personal taste. I personally liked BG1 more. I liked the feeling of the adventure, it felt more classic lowish level DnD and they are always the best campaigns. Everything is just tighter and more simple. Sure BG2 is MOAR EPIKKK but personally I feel that shit gets a bit tiresome after a while. I also think that for a first game in a series where they wanted to establish an ongoing increasingly epic story arc, BG1 was a perfect first game. This ties in to quests as well. I think BG2 had a tonne of quests but did anyone get them all or even know about all of them on a first play through? BG1 had more than enough to do. It was cool in BG2 to just have a journal full of shit to do, but I can live with less of this in favour of a tighter story arc.

 

[Jasede]

I like them both. BG 1 has that rustic low level charm with huge maps and 2 is just a better-made game overall. Love 'em all, I say.

 

[Jaesun]

(via Twitter).

 

[Cursed Beaver]

(via Twitter).

They must be doing some concept for wasteland 2?

I know sometime devs do that, taking pictures of themselves to work on for their characters.

 

[Anthony Davis]

Nuka Break.

 

[Murk]

I will explode with glee if it gets out that MCA is an uber-larper.

 

[Kirtai]

There is a silly movement in schools these days where they teach that radial menus are good because all the options are as close as they can be.

Really? I thought the advantage of radial menus was that the target areas are vastly bigger than with normal menus. You just need to sweep the pointer in vaguely the right direction instead of needing to precisely hit a small target. Fitt's Law in action.

Of course, that assumes that they're competently implemented which is a whole other question.

 

[DeepOcean]

This!!! Codex, is for those wolves!!!

 

[Azrael the cat]

Explain why. Please. We will talk.

I get where both of you are coming from, but I think a large part of the problem with NWN2 was just the atrocious camera. It's hard for any UI to shine when you're fighting with the camera to try and get a decent tactical overview (making it more likely for the UI to get in your way). Plus that instant camera frustration simply makes one ill-disposed towards a game's combat mechanics in general.

 

[Brayko]

I think George Zeits means the colonial period, which was after the High-middle ages right up to the Napoleonic wars, after which then took us into the modern era.

Arcanum is a better example of "Early modern period" aka Victorian period.