HUD Magic Ambiguity Solved! (image-heavy)
- TacticalTrickery
- Posts: 36
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HUD Magic Ambiguity Solved! (image-heavy)
Completely unstacks the congested and pointless spell-icon associations used by your enemies, all trapped objects, and all found-on-the-ground magic items (whether you've found 'em already, or not!) Re-associates every one of these to a reasonable classic graphic, with strong themes of both color and shape. This enables Icon Override for all categories listed above.
Also affects default icons shown for spells in guilds, at time of purchase.
DOWNLOAD NEWEST Release - See README at Nexus for installation and impact to savegames.
Realtime Slider-Graphic Comparison (loads slowly)
Also affects default icons shown for spells in guilds, at time of purchase.
DOWNLOAD NEWEST Release - See README at Nexus for installation and impact to savegames.
Realtime Slider-Graphic Comparison (loads slowly)
Last edited by TacticalTrickery on Tue Sep 06, 2022 6:30 pm, edited 2 times in total.
- TacticalTrickery
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:22 pm
- Location: Shores of the Iliac
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#2 -- HUD Magic Ambiguity Solved! (image-heavy)
Sept2022:
> Everything updated to reflect v1.0 Icon Arrangement release
> Image hosting moved offsite to unload forum
> All posts edited for clarity and digestibility
==\/== Edited MainPost =\/==/\= PostChangeLog ==/\==
Hello, new here, but DF veteran from the ancient days. Monitored DFU development since ~2016, maybe earlier (best guess). Unfortunately until now, due to serious real-life, I've never been able to participate in this project; only observe. Over the years, I've noticed the way in which many of you have come together to form genuine community... with difficult hurdles overcome, real art created, and success won thru incessantly hard work. All are to be commended. I have benefited; time to give back.
The Goals (rank-ordered)
Key Terms
DF's entire set of m-icons represented (the Atlas):
These symbols have poorly assigned defaults for spells cast by the enemy, for traps, and for all found-on-the-ground magic items that cast cr-spells. Also poor defaults for spells bought from a guild, for potions, and customizable (only) for your cast spells in your own spellbook.
For newbies --> They would appear on the HUD when:
If the default assignment of these icons (to magic) does not follow a solid pattern & consistent theme, the player will be left at best confused and at worst really annoyed!!
Unfortunately, the lack of consistency in the original game's assignment of all these things issss CRAZY
DF's forced defaults (enemy-spells, traps, found magic-items):
Orange differentiates Attribute Boosting spells from the rest. You can see that the yellow block icon is massively overloaded, while the orange block is bad enough on its own, even the light blue one to the right of that is filled w/ four completely unrelated effects! There is virtually no theming whatsoever, and most of the icons are freaking left UNUSED! Just, wow...
We can definitely do better than that...
Did you know, the icon-to-spell associations shown for each cr-spell for sale, from someone like a Mages Guild Academic (spell-seller dude), are also the icon associations used by all enemy spellbooks, by all traps, and all found-on-the-ground magic items? ...if you've played for a while, you may have noticed that.
Did you also know, that if you change the default icon-associations (the associations, NOT the icons), one at a time, for each of the spells shown by the seller-dudes like that Mages Academic, then you've now retroactively changed them in all enemy spellbooks, for all traps, and all found-on-the-ground magic items (whether you own 'em already, or not! ) ...literally, everywhere?!
...and that's entirely controlled by the core gamefile, SPELLS.STD... Let's see what we can do with that knowledge.
Let's go back to the 1st image & break into visual groupings:
We can start to see where they intended to go with these, as-if they designed many of them for a specific purpose.
Years ago, I thought about these visual groupings and came up with themed categories. Back then, using a hexeditor as a teenager, I created entirely new default icon-to-spell assignments in SPELLS.STD for every cr-spell, traps, and all found-on-the-ground magic items. I played multiple DFC characters this way in the old days. Wanting to share it with the community in advance of DFU's v1.0 release, I decided that I can optimize things further and started this project.
Thinking about the visual groupings again for a few weeks while recovering from illness, I came up with categories that are a notch better than my original ones from the old days...
The NEW rough-categories:
Daggerfall is a game best played w/ a strong sense of immagination. Best to apply that to everything that follows... Category Explanation (spoiler):
The NEW DEFAULTS (enemy-spells, traps, found magic-items, guilds):
This is an ACTUAL REASSIGNMENT of spells to new generic Atlas positions; regardless of icon-replacement package used. It affects everything downstream.
Vertical word-order per icon is unimportant. Spell labels in ALL CAPS refer to the entire category of that spell type.
You can play w/ whatever red/greenHP color-version you want, whenever; it's only about theming, and only w/ 4 different spell slots... like matching VampTouch and Sleep to the HUD-bar's color... it doesn't matter otherwise.
For now, I'm not well (Jan. of '22), so I'm about to go back to mostly resting.
Before being critical, I ask that you load the mod and look at the changes in-game. Go to a fav guild, with the music playing, and don't think about it too hard... just, see how it feels. Slow-scroll thru the list of spells for sale, as you look at their names next to the associated "how they work" icons, all on screen at once. Play the game with this for a while to learn how you really feel.
I expect this project to make life easier in the direct development of DFU, especially when making system-comparisons to DFC in DOSbox. More so, I would like everyone to have some frickin' joy in knowing their buffs & debuffs!! ...consider this fine polish, to a system that needed a grinding wheel.
TT
> Everything updated to reflect v1.0 Icon Arrangement release
> Image hosting moved offsite to unload forum
> All posts edited for clarity and digestibility
==\/== Edited MainPost =\/==/\= PostChangeLog ==/\==
Hello, new here, but DF veteran from the ancient days. Monitored DFU development since ~2016, maybe earlier (best guess). Unfortunately until now, due to serious real-life, I've never been able to participate in this project; only observe. Over the years, I've noticed the way in which many of you have come together to form genuine community... with difficult hurdles overcome, real art created, and success won thru incessantly hard work. All are to be commended. I have benefited; time to give back.
The Goals (rank-ordered)
- Unstack all of the overused icon Atlas-slots (spells sharing icons!)
- Create new intuitive effect-symbology-relationship, easily learned by the player's subconscious
- Fully respect the atmosphere of the original game (duh)
- Avoid re-stacking unrelated spells on new selections
- Create an arrangement for RedHP, and a lightly modified one for GreenHP
- Still account for any malformed or broken cr-spells; w/ the full intent that they will be repaired eventually by the community
Key Terms
- Atlas --> which this does NOT change: The ordered arrangement of magic icons in a single graphics file (defaults to ICON00I0.IMG in both DFU & DFC)
- Circinate (cr-): Standard guild-spells that are always the same. Each one is capitalized; proper noun.
- DFC: Daggerfall classic (the original DOS game)
- Icon Override: Modifying the order of the icons in the Atlas, or replacing them; NOT what this does.
- Retroactive: A change that takes place later in time, but affects things from the past, as-if that change had been made in the past.
- SPELLS.STD: The DFC file that controls which cr-spell is assigned to each icon-slot in the Atlas, for all magic cast, by anything!
DF's entire set of m-icons represented (the Atlas):
These symbols have poorly assigned defaults for spells cast by the enemy, for traps, and for all found-on-the-ground magic items that cast cr-spells. Also poor defaults for spells bought from a guild, for potions, and customizable (only) for your cast spells in your own spellbook.
For newbies --> They would appear on the HUD when:
- You cast a positive spell on yourself
- ...or use a magic item to do the same.
- When a debuff is cast upon you by another character
- ...or by a trap.
- One of them appears for each currently active potion.
- Another use is to see which spell you have just been directly damaged by
- ...or that you recently resisted
If the default assignment of these icons (to magic) does not follow a solid pattern & consistent theme, the player will be left at best confused and at worst really annoyed!!
Unfortunately, the lack of consistency in the original game's assignment of all these things issss CRAZY
DF's forced defaults (enemy-spells, traps, found magic-items):
Orange differentiates Attribute Boosting spells from the rest. You can see that the yellow block icon is massively overloaded, while the orange block is bad enough on its own, even the light blue one to the right of that is filled w/ four completely unrelated effects! There is virtually no theming whatsoever, and most of the icons are freaking left UNUSED! Just, wow...
We can definitely do better than that...
Did you know, the icon-to-spell associations shown for each cr-spell for sale, from someone like a Mages Guild Academic (spell-seller dude), are also the icon associations used by all enemy spellbooks, by all traps, and all found-on-the-ground magic items? ...if you've played for a while, you may have noticed that.
Did you also know, that if you change the default icon-associations (the associations, NOT the icons), one at a time, for each of the spells shown by the seller-dudes like that Mages Academic, then you've now retroactively changed them in all enemy spellbooks, for all traps, and all found-on-the-ground magic items (whether you own 'em already, or not! ) ...literally, everywhere?!
...and that's entirely controlled by the core gamefile, SPELLS.STD... Let's see what we can do with that knowledge.
Let's go back to the 1st image & break into visual groupings:
We can start to see where they intended to go with these, as-if they designed many of them for a specific purpose.
Years ago, I thought about these visual groupings and came up with themed categories. Back then, using a hexeditor as a teenager, I created entirely new default icon-to-spell assignments in SPELLS.STD for every cr-spell, traps, and all found-on-the-ground magic items. I played multiple DFC characters this way in the old days. Wanting to share it with the community in advance of DFU's v1.0 release, I decided that I can optimize things further and started this project.
Thinking about the visual groupings again for a few weeks while recovering from illness, I came up with categories that are a notch better than my original ones from the old days...
The NEW rough-categories:
Daggerfall is a game best played w/ a strong sense of immagination. Best to apply that to everything that follows... Category Explanation (spoiler):
Spoiler!
The NEW DEFAULTS (enemy-spells, traps, found magic-items, guilds):
This is an ACTUAL REASSIGNMENT of spells to new generic Atlas positions; regardless of icon-replacement package used. It affects everything downstream.
Vertical word-order per icon is unimportant. Spell labels in ALL CAPS refer to the entire category of that spell type.
You can play w/ whatever red/greenHP color-version you want, whenever; it's only about theming, and only w/ 4 different spell slots... like matching VampTouch and Sleep to the HUD-bar's color... it doesn't matter otherwise.
For now, I'm not well (Jan. of '22), so I'm about to go back to mostly resting.
Before being critical, I ask that you load the mod and look at the changes in-game. Go to a fav guild, with the music playing, and don't think about it too hard... just, see how it feels. Slow-scroll thru the list of spells for sale, as you look at their names next to the associated "how they work" icons, all on screen at once. Play the game with this for a while to learn how you really feel.
I expect this project to make life easier in the direct development of DFU, especially when making system-comparisons to DFC in DOSbox. More so, I would like everyone to have some frickin' joy in knowing their buffs & debuffs!! ...consider this fine polish, to a system that needed a grinding wheel.
TT
Last edited by TacticalTrickery on Tue Sep 06, 2022 6:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
ENEMY SPELLBOOK @Nexus: Yellow-square spam, be gone!!
Ancient African proverb: To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together. ~ Humanity's greatest strength is in each other... don't waste it.
Ancient African proverb: To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together. ~ Humanity's greatest strength is in each other... don't waste it.
- TacticalTrickery
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:22 pm
- Location: Shores of the Iliac
- Contact:
#3 -- HUD Magic Ambiguity Solved! (image-heavy)
A few non-obvious color-theme examples: Light-green for nature, and for returning to nature (disintegration). Poisons come from nature, and Endurance is the attribute that is the natural resistance to poison; how convenient that it is also green... Yellow for movement, or lack there-of (your own movement, or that of something else). Purple for the undead, because it's mysterious and kind of different. And Purple for advanced magic when it doesn't require being tightly themed w/ another color (think: reflecting a spell, vs just resisting it; or invis vs its lesser cousins). The ability to practically cast very expensive advanced spells comes from high Willpower; what color should that be then? Light blue is agile, open like a clear sky, like a bird able to freely go in any direction; hence levitate and slowfall. Red signifies power, and strength is truly powerful. Physical strength comes from blood; w/o blood there can be no strength. Dark blue for water, and spell points; the ability to cast magic, shield from magic, or stop the casting of it... more basic and direct spells than purple. Lastly, white/grey when something can apply to an array of diverse things, colorless, like vastly differing creatures, or luck.
If red is strong, and blue is magic; red+blue = strong magic. ...think about it.
The SPOILER that follows is a freakin' wall of text about technical communication, original goals, direction (going forward), requests for assistance, the original release-file, and other works-in-progress. (EDIT-Sept2022: As they generally were in Jan2022)
If red is strong, and blue is magic; red+blue = strong magic. ...think about it.
The SPOILER that follows is a freakin' wall of text about technical communication, original goals, direction (going forward), requests for assistance, the original release-file, and other works-in-progress. (EDIT-Sept2022: As they generally were in Jan2022)
Spoiler!
Last edited by TacticalTrickery on Tue Sep 06, 2022 6:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.
- TacticalTrickery
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:22 pm
- Location: Shores of the Iliac
- Contact:
#4 -- Mastery of Magic Icons in both DFU & DFC
(reserved-1)
- TacticalTrickery
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:22 pm
- Location: Shores of the Iliac
- Contact:
#5 -- Mastery of Magic Icons in both DFU & DFC
(reserved-2)
- Tuntain
- Posts: 3
- Joined: Tue Jun 07, 2022 5:18 pm
Re: [WIP] HUD Magic Ambiguity -- Solved!
TacticalTrickery - Thanks for all this info! It pointed me in the right direction for the 'Icon Overhaul' mod I'm working on.
I've gone in a different direction than you were thinking - Completely replacing the 'mystery meat' classic icons with more visual and easily recognisable icons. I bought a license to use an existing icon pack in the game then filtered them to remove detail and make them fit into the retro Daggerfall aesthetic.
I've found ways to skip modifying the original game files and instead do everything in a single dfmod file so it's clean and easy to install. Managed to fix the MageLight icon issues as well.
It's fully working, testing in game right now to see how the icons feel on screen so might be some changes. I'm enjoying knowing my characters buffs/debuffs at a glance!
Should upload to Nexus in a couple of weeks.
I've gone in a different direction than you were thinking - Completely replacing the 'mystery meat' classic icons with more visual and easily recognisable icons. I bought a license to use an existing icon pack in the game then filtered them to remove detail and make them fit into the retro Daggerfall aesthetic.
I've found ways to skip modifying the original game files and instead do everything in a single dfmod file so it's clean and easy to install. Managed to fix the MageLight icon issues as well.
It's fully working, testing in game right now to see how the icons feel on screen so might be some changes. I'm enjoying knowing my characters buffs/debuffs at a glance!
Should upload to Nexus in a couple of weeks.
- Alderwood
- Posts: 24
- Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2022 3:48 am
Re: [WIP] HUD Magic Ambiguity -- Solved!
I like the logical grouping of spells. Not so much for casting but for understanding what I've been hit with
It would be nice if there was an option to show the name of the spell next to the icon like in the image with the PC hit with Toxic Cloud, though it might be complicated when there's more than one effect.
It would be nice if there was an option to show the name of the spell next to the icon like in the image with the PC hit with Toxic Cloud, though it might be complicated when there's more than one effect.
- billyloist
- Posts: 48
- Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2020 2:07 am
Re: [WIP] HUD Magic Ambiguity -- Solved!
You can sort of do that already if you press Enter (default bind) and hover your cursor over the icon.Alderwood wrote: ↑Tue Aug 23, 2022 12:08 am I like the logical grouping of spells. Not so much for casting but for understanding what I've been hit with
It would be nice if there was an option to show the name of the spell next to the icon like in the image with the PC hit with Toxic Cloud, though it might be complicated when there's more than one effect.
- TacticalTrickery
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Re: HUD Magic Ambiguity Solved! (image-heavy)
You're welcome. I'm glad it helped someone! This is a unique art-style; I think you did a great job putting a 1st-version together. I'd be interested to see the whole icon-pack you paid for, and am down w/ recoloring some of these w/ you, if your license allows it & you're interested. I also couldn't help but appreciate the way you created a layout-legend in a similar vein to my things... smooth
Actually, this is exactly what I started this project for... I was hoping quite a few ppl would do precisely this, but w/o needing mod-creation experience. The whole idea was for artist-types, who are shy of coding, to be able to just build a graphic and go. I always wanted to get away from the mystery meat nature of the built-ins, as a solid alternative option (for everyone, and for myself).Tuntain wrote: I've gone in a different direction than you were thinking - Completely replacing the 'mystery meat' classic icons with more visual and easily recognisable icons...
I'm extremely interested in this... I sent you a PM a while back asking if you could share the way you did all of that, so I could duplicate the process w/o modifying DFC built-in files. Let me know if you're still around!I've found ways to skip modifying the original game files and instead do everything in a single dfmod file so it's clean and easy to install. Managed to fix the MageLight icon issues as well.
Totally down w/ working together and helping you test this, if you'd like. I searched Nexus for username-derivatives of yours, but couldn't find you... Is the mod published there??It's fully working, testing in game right now to see how the icons feel on screen so might be some changes...
Should upload to Nexus in a couple of weeks.
I know, right... nooo freaking joke...I'm enjoying knowing my characters buffs/debuffs at a glance!
====================================================
Thank you first thing I wanted this for, personally.
You know, you gave me a really good idea... While billyloist is right that the tooltips are a few quick moves away, it's pretty annoying to be checking that way if you're doing it routinely, and would be optimal (by far) for it to be entirely seamless, and 100% intuitive. A new user isn't likely going to know about the tooltip availability for spell icons (whether they're a DFC-pro, or rookie; either way).Alderwood wrote: It would be nice if there was an option to show the name of the spell next to the icon like in the image with the PC hit with Toxic Cloud...
One of the things I just finished is creation of an "EasyMode" layout, kinda geared to new DF players, but for others as well.
I wonder, as a compliment to all this... if I can get some legible shorthand text -- high contrast -- literally right on the icon itself? Would allow ppl time to get used to new arrangements, with words attached to each icon on-HUD, and would obviously be a godsend for noobs! Required only on a small fraction of the total spells, too; hostile ones you're targeted by being the only priority for text, I think.
Wanna help me test this Alderwood / billyloist
Last edited by TacticalTrickery on Tue Sep 06, 2022 7:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ENEMY SPELLBOOK @Nexus: Yellow-square spam, be gone!!
Ancient African proverb: To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together. ~ Humanity's greatest strength is in each other... don't waste it.
Ancient African proverb: To go fast, go alone. To go far, go together. ~ Humanity's greatest strength is in each other... don't waste it.
- TacticalTrickery
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:22 pm
- Location: Shores of the Iliac
- Contact: