Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Beta UI Wishlist (Menus, Controls, Etc.)

A hotbar (toolbar, quickbar - make up your minds already sheesh) that stretches across all of the screen is something rather obvious. But im presuming Larian really wanted to keep it smaller.

Thats why i mentioned having atleast two rows visible - at all times.

LordCrash, my suggestion is radically :P different then yours because yours requires constant clicking to expand and minimize (even if it minimizes automatically) while mine is always visible without clicking. Or, just one when you want to see the third row.
- Its better then the current setup.

That requires two clicks to see all three rows and two clicks more to return to the first. (if youre correct with each click)

Obviously, having three rows visible in the space as it is currently would make icons really, really small... which is another reason why i suggested two.

Its the best possible compromise between having the hotbar remain the same size as it is now and seeing more icons - all the time.


-edit-

I actually went and photoshoped this so i can see how it would really look. I just made a few layers out of the hotbar and the icons and adjusted the sizes and numbers.

If you minimize the icons a little, make two rows of them and increase the size of the hotbar only enough for all of it to fit, it is easy to actually see all the spaces in those two rows.

There is ten slots per one row in the hotbar currently.
If i reduce the icons sizes i can get 15 in a single row, so 30 alltogether, in two rows that are both visible.

And i dont like how it looks.
It makes the icons too small, too numerous and hotbar feels too cramped because of it.

If anything, it would be better if there was one row but with 15 icon slots instead of 10 as now, while flipping the rows up and down.

(not any ind of big thing - just thinking out loud)

The problem I have with this approach is that it wastes space. Screens are already less high than they used (1600x1200 vs 1920x1080...) to be before someone figured that nobody wants to do actual work on their computers so switching everything to widescreen was a great idea.

Effetively wasting the extra width (now that we're stuck with it anyway) seems like a rather bad idea to me, especially if you then go adding extra bars on top of eachother (wasting even more space to the sides *and* shrinking the visible gameplay area in one go).

One solution would be to allow extra hotbars to be freely placed, however, this would only work if they can be snapped to the "main" hotbar and/or resised (my laptop has a 1366x768 resolution, not enough space to place anything useful to the side of the default hotbar).

The ideal solution (as I see it) would be similar to how DA:O with the ability to map a keybinding to every hitbar slot (with as default 1-0 for the first 10, shift1-0 for the next 10, ctrl 1-0 for the 10 after or something)

It seems my edit and further explanations exist in some other dimension.

All my suggestions basically keep the Ui as it is - as it is designed by devs.
Thats the point. Because thats the most anyone can expect now - theoretically and realistically. Anything else is your misunderstanding.

and fantasies about completely changing Ui by throwing additional stuff all around the screen and then calling that a "better solution" - while all that work would be presumably done by Ui gnomes.
DA:O of all things... 1-0,then shift-0 to 10...and ctrl... what the...?
And that would be... ideal?


Not to mention that you come in, completely disregard what i wrote about it myself - just so you can grab onto some sort of counter "argument" - which completely misses the point and has nothing to do with what i wrote.

Which is just a general "thinking out loud" suggestion. An idea.
Not a demand or declaration of One and Holy truth.

/


- anyway,

it seems to me that the small portrait on the left side of the hotbar doesnt have any use, except showing you whose hotbar you are looking at. Which is pretty much clear by itself anyway.

Maybe some utility can be added to it?
right-click to open inventory?

something?

Maybe remove that and enlarge some of those utility icons or arrows/keys for listing the hotbar slots? So we dont have to pixel hunt them everytime?

Revisiting this whole hotbar (that's what I'm calling it from now on ) issue, the two basic things that bother me are:

1) Skills can't be used during combat unless they're in the hotbar, which forces the player to either clutter the hotbar with every skill, or do without (especially a problem for me during my Lone Wolf/Raistlin run, when I was using all my AP to spam several spells/skills every turn) - but this should be a very easy fix;

2) Changing between the three hotbars using those little icons is an annoying mini-pixel hunt, as others have said.

I'm not sure taking up more of the screen space with more hotbar slots is the best solution (just my opinion), but hopefully the devs will at least fix 1) by making the skills within the skill menu usable during combat, and fix 2) by making the hotbar switching icons bigger. Not groundbreaking ideas, but they would at least improve on the current system without requiring much extra work on Larian's part.

Well said Mikus. Agreed on all that.

But still on the hotbar issue, this whole thing is getting too confusing already. I'd like to try and think this straight. So here's my thoughts...

Our problem:
- lots and lots of options to choose from (skills, scrolls, arrows, weapons, consumables and so on);
- limited hotbar and screen space;
- sorting through our options and doing what we want is somewhat harder and more time consuming than it should.

What we need:
- Some way to quickly view/sort through all ours options and easily select/activate them.

So, what Larian could do to solve that problem and provide what we need while consuming as few as possible of their precious resources?

Both Mikus's and Hiver's points seem plausible and helpful. But IMHO that's still not completely enough. Other than that, increasing the number of slots in the hotbar would be the most obvious solution, as most people seem to think. But is it really the best solution? I mean, stretching the hotbar, decreasing icon size, multiple hotbars... seriously guys?? Think about it... would it really be that great to have 30 or so slots appearing at once on screen all the time? To my eyes it would just make everything look cluttered and, honestly, quite a mess.

Well, while I respect all these suggestions, I can't help but think that doing this sort of UI redesign wouldn't be very elegant. More important than that, the original problem still wouldn't be solved completely. We don't simply need extra skill slots. What we need is a faster and easier way to sort through our options! Right?



That said, I'm really sorry to come up with this suggestion once again, but I can't help but think that I didn't make myself clear enough the other times. So, guys, what about something like this:



And this:




Please, don't get me wrong. I'm not asking for a complete UI rework. Just to leave everything absolutely clear my suggestion is:

1) Leave the current UI as is, appearance wise. It's beautiful like that!
&
2) Implement additional functionality over the existing UI, e.g. Divine Divinity style stacks.

Here's how it could work:

1) Right click over an empty hotbar slot. A stack of all learnt skills show up. Left click over any skill, e.g. Flare, to occupy that slot.

2) Right click over Flare in the hotbar. A stack of fire elemental skills show up. Left click to select. Do the same with other schools of magic or warrior/ranger/survivor skills.

3) Drag an arrow to the hotbar. Right click over it. A stack of all your arrows show up. Left click to select. Do the same with scrolls, weapons, armor, potions, consumables, whatever...

4) Fill the hotbar slots with a choice of each category. Have EVERYTHING beautifully sorted and just too clicks away. Enjoy!


So, other than the trouble to implement it, what else do you think is wrong with it? Any thoughts?

Pitheco: sorry, this didn't quite click with me when you first brought it up, but your DD-style hotbar idea would be great - and Larian's obviously had experience implementing it before. I was sort of going in that direction when I said a few posts earlier that clicking on a single hotbar slot should bring up the related skill category within the main skill menu, but your idea is less redundant with the existing skill menu, and also more elegant IMO. Nice one!

Hey, i was just brainstorming.

DD Stacks seem like they would be the best fit. Very functional, easy, fast. Solves all the currently smaller nagging issues with the hotbar in the best way, without changing how it actually looks on screen.

Great idea as far as im concerned.

I see a problem with skills stacking - unlike DD, there are more than 10 skills in each category, so stacking them up like that would cover most of the screen. DD UI is not really an option that way and stacking is done in skills menu anyway, there just gotta be an option to use them in combat as well, instead of dragging them into a hotbar.
I still believe that hotbar is the best way, but it needs to be elongated to fit more skills. And good call from Mikus for suggesting larger icons for hotbar switching.
As for the key mapping, I don't think that all skills are in need of mapping, just most frequently used. Meaning 1-0 keys should be manually mappable to the preferred skill.

Nobody meant that the stacks would be visible all the time.

Doesn't matter, it would still be too clunky - it will pop up through the roof with the amount of skills we have now in each school aka. stack.

Just saying something will be clunky isnt really enough to make it so. Especially when reality doesnt agree.

All this would require is one right-click and then one left click, until nest time you want to change any skill or item in the hotbar. While all of it would be categorized for ease of use, very much like it is now in the skill list, only you wouldnt be opening a whole separate window by clicking a very small icon well away from the hotbar, but instead have the categorized list pop-up available directly from the hotbar.

Of course you may still think this is "clunky" but thats as much same thing as i can think i can fly.


/

If this idea isnt acceptable to Larian for some reason, i would suggest to at least move the "open inventory" and "open skill list" away from the portraits on the left and move those two icons somewhere inside and on the side of the hotbar.

And also to make them a bit better then just simple white forms on black. And a bit bigger too.

Mikus and Hiver, thanks for your support and feedback. Aramintai, thanks for your considerations.




Well, the stacks would definitely pop through the roof if they were just a single vertical line. But this situation could easily be avoided by simply making horizontal stack lines. That way each row could easily fit about 30 skills with the current icon size in a 1920x1080 resolution monitor. Multiply that by a vertical limit of 10 lines, just like DD, and we would get a theoretical maximum of 300 skills showing up at once, and still it wouldn't cover much more than half the screen. Most of the the times though I believe there wouldn't be more than 20 or 30 icons for each category at once, even though I don't really know how many skills there will be in total for each school.

Besides, when we open the inventory or the skills window almost half the screen already gets covered up anyway. So... what are we worrying about again?

Ok, here's a mock-up of what you guys are suggesting with all stacks expanded, in whooping 2560x1440 resolution no less:


-Warrior skills went through the roof, I imagine others will as well in final release when we will get a full set of them
-Icons obscure the view, can be quite annoying in combat even with only one stack expanded

So, I dunno, looks clunky to me. I still think that hotbar expansion is better, but this mock-up is better than using those skills from skills window.

I'm going to weigh in and support "rotatable skillbars". shift-uparrow/shift-downarrow to rotate through skillbars.

Points in it's favor:
1. You get to choose what you put on which skillbar, so you can group skills in a fashion that makes sense to you
2. Low screen real-estate requirements- you can put some clickable arrows to change the active skillbar, and that's all the additional screen space you take.
3. It's very easy to demonstrate this to new players during the tutorial or whenever, and it's simple to understand.


This arrangement with per-skill family pop-ups is a massive over-design, solving a non-problem, because most/no characters are not going to have all or most of the skills from all the trees.

That's what hotbar is for. It just needs to be elongated and have more layers, 9 maybe.

A good thing is a good thing. Its just true.


Exactly.



Exactly. So they would not cover half of the screen or whatever.

The point is it would be quicker and easier to handle the skills and equipable items this way - and it would provide a better and clearer overview of these usable things.



I figured that this kind of concept would not show all of the available skills and items from all categories at once, but rather - only those that are in the category you clicked on. (after the first time)

So for example, once you put a fire spell in the hotbar - the next time you would right click on it - only the fire spells would appear above it, once you put a potion in the slot - only potions would appear above it. etc.

- this would require a more broad list of all skills and items for the first usage, but the inventory and skill list as they are can be used for that initial choices and placement -

After that initial setup when you right click on any specific spell or item - only spells and items of that specific category would show up stacked above. So you would see only fire spells, or only Air spells, or only potions, or only weapons... etc.

Arranged whichever way is better, of course.
At least, thats how i imagined it.


Well of course thats clunky, when you imagined it and designed it in that specific way.
But thats not what any of us were imagining it like. Besides, those icons would only pop up shortly, so you can choose one - its not like they would remain on the screen like that.

I think its safe to say that we dont want something actually worse then the current setup, you know.
We are trying to suggest something actually better - not just different for the sake of being different. And especially not something worse.

I'm not sure where you're going with this, but it sounds similar to what's going on on the screenshot only through hotbar. How's it gonna look like? Vertically all the way doesn't quite work as can be seen on screenshot, making several smaller columns of them would still unnessesarily obscure part of the screen. Horizontaly would be like a second hotbar, which is pointless because there are hotbar layers already.
I don't think any of this would be a good design, because the less UI gets in the way of gameplay the better. Meaning, there's gotta be a way to see and use as many of the skills as possible all at once, without UI's dangling ears all over the place. So the best candididate is still an elongated layered hotbar, which, unsurprisingly, is used in so many rpgs.

There is no obscuring the screen when these stacks only appear momentarily and then disappear once youve chosen a specific spell, item or a skill.
If only specific categories are shown then its even less icons on the screen at once.
- That simply isnt an argument that can be used as objection against this kind of setup.


Expanding the hotbar is an obvious way to go about this but im figuring that since it isnt already expanded, that Larian wants to keep it smaller. As it is. And im just trying to work with whats there now.


None of this means that a specific suggestion must be or that it will be accepted.
We are making different suggestions here and devs will look it over and eventually do something about it. Or not.
Thats all.

A 10-section hotbar is convenient in some ways because it lets you use the 0-9 number keys to select things instantly. Not as important in a turn-based game certainly, but it is a convenience.

I do think that at least that switching hotbars should be improved, I have the urge to use the mousewheel to do it, but that doesn't do anything. The tiny little arrows are not ideal.

The mouse wheel does scroll though the hotbars when the mouse cursor is above it.