Daggerfall Workshop Forums

This is a mockup of a modernized Daggerfall UI I've been working on in photoshop. The order of things is generally the same, but many changes have been made for usability and aesthetics. (Sorry for the Dark Souls portrait, it's a good placeholder.)

1. The inventory is windowed so as to not fully obstruct the game world and HUD. This mostly means you can see HUD stuff while in your inventory, so the decision to use a potion can now come while browsing your inventory. This will also allow hovering the cursor over buff/debuff icons the way you can in the Esc screen.

2. Inventory and stats screens are combined into one screen. This allows the following:
-one hotkey for both, no toggling.
-no need to put encumbrance above the inventory slots anymore.
-you can see attributes change after equipping/removing magic items.
-remove the "Inventory" button from the character sheet.

3. The graphics are new, allowing the following changes:
-"Fatigue" corrected to "Stamina".
-Magicka points shown.
-Advantages and Disadvantages are separate selections instead of being shoehorned into the biography.
-"History" renamed to "Biography" because "History" can be misconstrued as an event log.
-"Logbook" and "Spellbook" buttons removed from the character sheet because they have their own hotkey.
-Category buttons removed in favor of list that is directly above corresponding slots.
-Number of inventory categories doubled to find things easier.
--magic items are no longer given their own category, but are filtered to the top.
--Gold is reified in its own "Gold" category. The gold counter from the charsheet and the gold button from the inventory are thus removed.
--Ground and cart are categories on the rightmost slots. The wagon button is thus removed.
-The "info/remove/equip/use" buttons are removed. Instead, left clicking moves items left, right clicking moves items right, and middle click uses items. Hovering over items shows their attributes.
-The UI can be easily "themed" by replacing a single background texture. So far I have wood, stone, and pattern themes.

This is very impressive, I did not know things like this are even possible atm!

King of Worms wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2019 3:55 pm This is very impressive, I did not know things like this are even possible atm!

They're almost certainly not, unfortunately. I'm just an artist, so I can't tell you what kind of changes would have to happen under the hood, but... it's a fixed size design that's meant to display at this size only not be scaled, which means it will work between 600p and 1440p. Also, the two fonts are TTF.

Here's a far less detailed dark glass & Tahoma theme that fits better with classic's somewhat cartoony original art. This is a very neutral mod in comparison, there's basically no texture art, just undithered lines, colors, and a font.

Right click > View image to see full res, the forum squishes it.

Looks and fits better indeed. At least IMO.
Nice!

Just to be clear, this is concept art; A proposal for what the inventory screen should look like.

I really really like this design. Very clean, modern, and approachable. Displays a lot of relevant information without being overwhelming.

I see...
Anyway, I would remove the character background... let him stay on a transparent dark glass as well...

You could add a little blur/distortion behind the glass. This was one of the things I really liked when they hired actual artists to help design MS Windows. Then some nitwit thought we'll scrap that and make everything colored boxes like the partridge family. UGGGh! Windows 8 still gives me shivers and is the only version of windows (apart from 1&2) I never owned.

I like most of the proposed changes, lots of sensible ideas!

Now for the issues or potential issues I see...

BansheeXYZ wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2019 1:18 pm -no need to put encumbrance above the inventory slots anymore.

The wagon encumbrance is missing though

-Number of inventory categories doubled to find things easier.

Well it depends on the use case, if you're looking for say heavy objects, or things you could sell, then multiplying categories actually get in the way.
Maybe there should be an "all" choice that disables filtering, for example. I could also imagine other filters than only categories, if that's not overkill.
Also, it will be needed to either hide currently empty categories, or highlight categories that are not-empty

--The wagon button is removed.

Talking of the rightmost list, I miss the ground/chest/body/wagon icon though, I think it was a very intuitive clue about what was going on.
Also, I'm not sure reducing its surface to one column is a good idea, the wagon can be much more crowded than your character inventory... its capacity is 750kg after all

Good feedback, I think I can add more slots and wagon encumbrance.

Well it depends on the use case, if you're looking for say heavy objects, or things you could sell, then multiplying categories actually get in the way.

It depends. It's slightly slower for weapons/armor, but avoiding the "misc" hodgepodge makes selling those items faster. Classic combined provisions (torches, bandages, potions), clothing, jewelry, books, letters, parchment, maps, recipes, and relics in one category. That's a lot of stuff, especially now that people have a reason to carry torches. And jewels went into ingredients even though they're not (ok diamonds are used in some potions).