Looking at the Inventory UI bb301

This is for beta players who know how the inventory works. I came up with a new version that I worked on last night, ultimately shuffling things around to where they are most logical and flow best. I want some feedback.

The inventory is divided into three chunks:
the left-most gives you combat-oriented information and your portrait,
the middle portion is mainly dedicated to individual inventory
the right-most portion is the party inventory, stash, and party-specific information like crafting,enchanting, camping supplies, and party gold.

So I took that idea and ran with it.

The new inventory screen

On the left:
1- I added a few more combat-oriented information so that equipping any item should immediately give you feedback on changes.
2- I changed the names to be either three or two letter abbreviations except for the defenses.
3- I changed Stamina to Endurance, added in damage reduction, changed the icon for accuracy to a targeting reticule (which should show a melee accuracy or a ranged accuracy depending on what weapon set you're holding. Made the RH (Right hand) show damage ranges and attack speed as well as the LH (left hand) with a corresponding accuracy for each hand. These LH/RH values update immediately based on the weapon set that you choose.
4- Introduced interrupt and concentration if they are implemented in game.
5- Left the defenses as is.

In the middle:
I continued with the idea that this was supposed to represent an individual's inventory. The paperdoll, weapon sets, quick items all correspond as such. So I went further and:
1- put each character's portrait in this section (as opposed to the right-section, the party inventory).
2- Placed a singular "top of stash/belt" of 16 slots for each character. Thus, when you select each character, their corresponding 16-slot inventory will show up.
3- Added two new buttons: one is the "send to stash" (which looks like a finger point to the right) and the other is a "use item" or "drop item" (whichever one they want to use it for). I used the images of the hands of god from the sisteen chapel to represent these because I wanted it to continue with the theme of renaissance fantasy. The send to stash can send all items to the stash by for a particular character (perhaps by double-clicking?), or selecting an item and clicking that button would send individual items to stash.
4- This middle portion also has another version where the party portraits are to the left of the paperdoll, etc and closer to the left-most portion of the inventory.

The right-most section:
...is really a "party inventory" section. So I made it actually act that way:
1- There is now one singular grid for which you click on one of the top three buttons (STASH, CRAFTING INGREDIENTS, QUEST) to show those items.
2- The left-sided sorting buttons now would highlight those specific items in the whichever inventory type you are in.
3- There is now a "sorting" series of buttons at the top, similar to those on the right. These actually sort your items based on three algorithms: alphabetically (A), cost (the cent image), and number of items in stash (123).
4- I created an "ingredients button" that looks like an anvil. This would show all the ingredients you have collected in the main grid.
5- I placed a scrollbar next to the grid for increased stash space.
6- Camping supplies are now shown on the top right along with party gold since these are all related to the TOTAL that the PARTY has.
7- I moved over the crafting and enchant buttons here, because crafting and enchanting are not really based on individual skill. This way a quick look at the stash and you can start craft with stash items or you an drag and drop an item to be enchanted.

There are a few things that Obsidian still needs to implement, even with their current inventory system.

• Currently, players are unable to change the color of their characters. The colors are shown (in the paperdoll section), but clicking on those does nothing.
• There is no way to actually "use" an item while in the inventory screen. It is quite a hassle to use items, as you have to first place it in your quick items before you can use it. My inventory system sort of fixes this.
•  It is impossible to "split" stacked items like potions. The only way I have currently found to do so is to go to a shopkeeper and to start selling items. It will then ask you how many items you want to sell and you can then split them that way.
• The ingredients list is a sort of nebulous stash that is near impossible to find. You first have to go to "Crafting" and then you can see a list of items you can make and you can sort of figure out what ingredient items you have based on those lists. My inventory systems hopefully fixes this.
• The stash inventory is also a pain in the butt to get to: you first have to get into the inventory system and then click on another button that you bring up another window which is the stash. Furthermore, the current way of getting items into and out of the stash is not intuitive.
• I have a suggestion with regards to how the inventory and character sheets show the values for health, endurance, DT, accuracy, etc. It would be really nice if mousing over the icosn would show how each value was calculated (including one-handed or two-handed bonuses, bonuses from eqpt, and other bonuses). I'm hoping that the extra information I placed in my inventory UI also helps towards getting the most information to the player.
• It has been mentioned multiple times before but the abbreviations system for the combat information is a little weird. I can't explain it. Anyway, I took a shot at fixing it, but something still doesn't feel right.

That's all I can think of for now. Feel free to comment here or on the Obsidian forums about what you think. I have the photoshop documents if people are interested in playing around with the inventory. 

Taking a stab at engagement UI bb301

So the newest backer beta update boasts an updated engagement UI. This allows players to better understand who is currently "engaged" against each character. Engagement means that if that character which is engaged travels outside of the engagement area, they will have to roll a save or suffer a "free hit" from the enemy who has engaged them.

Image taken by Uomoz. Found here

Some classes, such as the fighter, or talents, such as "Hold the Line", allow multiple targets to be engaged. Currently, the engagement UI shows an arrow which points to the character which is engaged: green for allies and red for enemies.

The arrow is currently slightly difficult to see especially in battles where there is a lot going on (spell effects , explosions, etc) as well as when an ally is highlighted (completely blocking out the green engagement UI arrow).




There was some discussion on the Obsidian forums about other methods of showing this UI. I have taken a shot at it and have made a mock up for the UI here.

Initially I came up with engagement UIs that would be parallel to the selection circles. Forgive the very rough animation, but the point was to show how an animation would look.


  I then went further and worked on what it would look like with multiple allies and enemies. I did "static" versions which were versions without animation and "dynamic" ones which included animation. I tried to implement several cases such as enemies with multiple engagement, large, small, and medium sized enemies (different selection circle sizes), allies with multiple engagements, allies who were being flanked, and ranged allies who were not engaged.

Furthermore, I tried to add in both mouse-over and non-mouseover functionality to see the differences. Mouseover is indicated by a lighter color. Again, these were not in isometric angles because it is difficult to do in Photoshop, but it hopefully gets the idea across.

"Static" Engagement UI or "Attacks of Opportunity"with and without mouse-overs

"Dynamic" Engagement UI without mouse-over functionality, version 1.

"Dynamic" Engagement UI without mouse-over functionality, version 2.

"Dynamic" Engagement UI with mouse-over functionality. Only did the one version.

The goal was to see the varied options available for engagement UIs. I'm sure improved UI designs can be come up by the dev team over time. Hopefully, this is useful to them.

BB 301 - Reactions to character creation and options

So it's been a while since I've updated my blog. Here are the reactions to the character creation and options for BB 301.

Options:
Starting off from the top, I looked through the options menu: everything looks great there. I'm loving that they continue to add the options in as more features are added. Great job.

Issues with Options:
The one issue I continue to have is the font scaling option. It really throws off a lot of the description texts at the lowest and highest settings. At 130%, for example, I can't read the description of Trial of Iron when creating a new game. Furthermore, at least in character creation, the font size adjustment doesn't necessarily adjust font sizes globally. There may be other locations where this is also the case.

Character Creation:
Heavily improved. Still need to consider changing the order of categories during creation: perhaps sex, race, culture, class, attributes, appearance, and voice is a better order? I also really like the new icons that pop up for each race, sex, class. One thing I haven't talked about before is the sub-race advantages. They are extremely cool and are mechanically interesting. Great job for putting that in. Attributes have changed dramatically, and I believe for the better. I'm sure there will be other larger discussions about attributes so I will hold off on commenting too much, but suffice it to say that I like both the shift to negative effects (I caught myself wanting to make less drastic changes to my min/maxing) and the new changes to what the attributes effect. It was much harder to make proper choices and both resolve and perception has good reasons for picking them.

My favorite icons

Issues with Character Creation:
1- Starting abilities are still not well-aligned and difficult to read through because of the mess of words. I am thinking indentations might help; perhaps placing the icons in front of each ability might also be useful?
2- The description box sizes also continue to be too small and increasing their sizes might be helpful.
3- Along the same lines as above, the spells with extremely long names continue to print in indecipherably small font sizes. Chanter spell names have more of a tendency to do this. Font size adjustments don't fix this problem.
4- The cultures also continue to only adjust a small subset of the attributes, foregoing constitution and perception. Both Old vailia and Rautai correspond to intellect while the White that Wends and Deadfire Archipelago correspond to dexterity.
5- A few bugs that were described in the forums already.