I may be mistaken but didn't they say something about there being a seperate UI for PC? Maybe in the podcast/interview thing but I could swear I recall hearing/reading it somewhere.

I'm pretty sure they're not going to make all these "flashy graphics". When you open the menu it's not going to flash with the Bethesda logo and a pleasant little noise. They're making it easier to navigate, which is a good thing. They're taking the accessability from Apple's menus, not the overall style and flashy graphics and crap. Plus, Oblivion's menu svcked. It'd really piss me off when I've just scrolled past 100+ keys, and then accidentally hit left on the thumbstick so it takes me back to the top of the menu. The statistics and skills pages were simply awful too.

I don't remember where I heard this
might have been the podcast, might have been a GI article, but I remember Tom saying that the PC interface was different than the console one.

edit:


oh cool, I'm not crazy :thumbsup:

The idea behind it is kinda dumb "What if Apple made a UI?" Uh, hu. Maybe ask "Why are Apple and etc. Ui's good?" That stupid picture/album view is not a good UI, Far Cry 2 and Windows Phone 7 are good Ui's. "Give me what I want as quickly and easily as possible" not "it looks pretty!"

But ohwell. It's just the UI, as long as it works I'm far more concerned about the gameplay.

Mods prevent me from worries of this kind.

They said that they would have a difffrent layout for the PC, so i don't think there is much of a point in getting worried just yet.

Which will be sweet the first two times you look at it. And tedious every time afterward. Same goes with the 3d selecting and rotating while in the menu screen. When you pick up an item for the first time, sweet. Every time after?

There is no "Apple" design in that screenshot. It still needs a lot of fine tuning.

_____note the following is a rant, not directed towards the person I quoted...

At first glance it looks like the purpose of that screen is to look at constellations and a nebula while the actual skills are second seat. You design for function first, looks after. If you don't you end up with the clunky morass that Oblivion was saddled with. What is the purpose of the skill tree screen? The purpose of that screen is to look at your skill levels. In that screenshot you have 10-15% of the screen devoted to it's purpose. Why? It isn't necessarily a bad thing if that 10-15% is utilized wisely and the remainder is set up in such a way as to assist the eyes with focusing but that is not the case here. The colors of the skill bars get lost in the glaring background requiring one to spend more effort on to focus on the bar itself.

The designers should also ask, how can we maximize information and functionality while minimizing the background noise and still have a pretty sweet interface? Again, what is the purpose of the skill screen?

That one page can be fixed with changing from side scrolling skills to up/down and changing the colors of the fonts and level bars to keep them from blending into the background. You could even have the sweet skill trees as constellations cycling left to right but have them flow under an opaque menu block where the skill info is...

I didn't really have a problem with them. The skills that my current character was using were listed above those he was not. I was not one of the players who tried to get +5 on every level up. It worked well for me when I went there. Improvements can always (well almost) be made though. I would like to hear if any of that information will still exist. With four directions we know at least 3 of them: Skills, Map, and Inventory. Unless Magic is combined into one of those we have all the pages now. Where will we go for faction information, or for the general statistics (quests completed, murders, arrests, bounties, fame/infamy) some of which are useful and others which are simply fun to know?

And one request, please remember where the mouse was. If I am going to be stealing a library I do not want to have to move the pointer from the center of the screen (where it always appeared) down to the take button every time I open a new book. For repetative actions Oblivions UI did get tiresome at times.

You know virtually nothing about it yet because you haven't seen it. I can explain what an elephant looks to someone who has never seen even a picture of an elephant, and I'm 100% sure my description wont do justice to what an elephant really looks like.
Just wait.

I certainly hope so. I don't want to be shuffling through silly slow moving tabs again with huge icons.

Im sorry, but there is NO argument here.

And I dont get where you got the idea that in other games you could see item info simultaneously. You always have to highlight objects to get the info on what they do. Your point that it is getting "worse than Oblivion" makes no sense, since in Oblivion you could see some basic info simultaneously. In Morrowind, you had to toggle through stuff. So you really have no point here,

Its not an extra second, its alot of extra time when you play a game for hundreds of hours, OB vanilla interface was terrible, once you have a lot of items it takes 4 or 5 time longer to look for stuff compared to grid based UI mods.

Now I am not really concerned too much about Skyrim UI as I will just used a mod if its bad, but to call people lazy is absurd. UI should present information in an efficient manner, this is a part of the game that will constantly be used, it not a minor thing. Its like combat, if its bad it can hinder the entire game experience. MW had a fantastic UI, grid system is the best way of presenting the info in an efficient manner, that's what the good UI mods for OB did. And they came out soon after OB release, one person, a modder took way less than a month to do.

I cant believe the new debate about dumbed down "consolification" is about how much do we like lists.....and people wonder why the devs dont come here.

That rule fails badly with me. I simply can't memorize all those symbols - I'm probably getting too old. Even the symbols in the Oblivion GUI was messy for me, I'd trade them in for text any day. Keep in mind we're talking about tons of data to be symbolized.

At least Oblivions "Excel lists" were grouped (i.e. Apparel had stones, books, keys etc). Compare that to the sheer horror of FONV in hardcoe mode, living off the land using survival skill. The list contains everything in alphabetical order (foodstuffs, ingredients, books, magazines etc), and there is nothing we can do about it (haven't looked for mods). It's a nightmare come true. Excel lists in excel are awesome because we can sort and filter as we like.

And it seems we're getting a repeat of that; "will be sorted alphabetically". So I'm not only worried, I'm scared [censored]less if the game has so much more to do. Give me a list format containing text and numbers, maybe with symbols as an option or addition, where I can click the tabs and sort in many ways, and write in a filterbox.

Btw, I don't think a grid based system is particularly good either, as it limits the amount of visible information about each item. Lists are better, but screen space was horribly utilized. I wouldn't mind a toggle for it though if some prefer grids and symbols over lists and text.

That almost immediately bothered me too, straight away I realised that the skills do really want to be viewable in a complete list. Only seeing sections of the skills list at a time is just extra scrolling around. Just have it on screen in the skill menu. It doesn't need to be fancy, it does need to be easy to get the whole instant picture of ALL the skills at the same time.

no, icons for very item is an error, but in skyrim you will have a image from each item that actually you can zoom, rotate etc. That was what I applauded not Oblivions UI

no, icons for very item is an error, but in skyrim you will have a image from each item that actually you can zoom, rotate etc. That was what I applauded not Oblivions UI

I don't see how "finding a symbol/image you memorized" is superior to "finding the word you memorized." If that were great design we should invent an English version of kanji and start using it because memorizing over a thousand symbols is better than using a phonetic alphabet. I don't buy that concept for a second. It may help teach art and memorization skills but it certainly doesn't make looking things up in a dictionary easier, etc.

I'll echo what was said, if this UI revolves around horizontal lists that you need to scroll through I can't imagine that in any way being superior to well organized vertical lists (which can show far more information at once). If you can toggle between a vertical and horizontal list with large 3d icons that's another thing entirely because options are a good thing.

The new menu is good for consoles, but in theory is awful and clunky on the pc.

If I'm sitting on the couch playing Skyrim on my PS3 with my standard definition TV, then yes, this new menu will be a godsend.

On PC? Not so much!

(Oh, and Hoblak? You can hit those triangles at the top of the screen in New Vegas to separate your items into stuff like skillbooks/healing/etc. I only realised on my second playthrough, myself. It might be in Fallout 3 too, now that I think about it...)

Not offended mate don't worry. But do you think console players play on some old 1980's TV set still or something? It is 1080P mate, ok not as high a resolution as PC but you can read any sized text crystal clear. The interface isn't aimed at making it easier for console users, its for everyone. They are not going to make a new system that is worse than the previous. I'm sure they tried many, many different systems and came to this one as the best one for the job. And they would't have implemented it if it was worse than the previous.

If it works on the PC like you describe OP it will absolutely svck. I hate the line of stuff, going left and right fable approach, it's terrible for PC. I must admit this is one of my biggest fears for this game.

True, but all you can see is the amount of perks you chose for a certain skill. Which, in the end, is more or less useless information. To me it's important that I get a quick overview over my skills when I look at the skills screen. Even though people claim we know nothing about the UI yet there is a screenshot that obviously shows the skill menu and it obviously shows what they mean when they say 'the way Apple would do'.



There is a whole article and a screenshot about the UI. And a good amount of tidbits from other sources such as interviews. I agree that we certainly don't know everything there is to know yet, but I think it's enough information to discuss it without speculating all the time.



In Oblivion I could see up to 20 items on screen at once along with their stats like gold value, weight, damage/armor rating and health. All that without pressing a single extra button. If I wanted more information I could simply use the mouse to point at the item I wanted info about and a popup would appear telling me about enchantments and possibly lots of other stuff (with mods). Which is much faster and convenient than browsing through a horizontal list of items and gives much more information at once.



Poor devs, they want to sell a game and make millions of dollars with it and now the evil fans who will buy the game for sure anyway discuss things they may not like that much. We scared them away!



And exactly how often will you look at the fancy 3D view of an item? There may be some quests (like mentioned in one of the articles) where you have to examine an item closely to find clues, but other than that it's a completely useless feature that looks cool and eats a lot of screen space.



Complex console games run on 720p, even if your TV supports 1080p. And maybe some people sit half a meter away from their TV while playing, but when I had a console I sat about 2-3 meters away from the screen. And I think most people do. And whether they're not going to make a new system that is worse than the previous? In Oblivion they had level scaling. 99% of the players I've talked to thought this was a system much worse than Morrowind's. To me their UI stuff sounds like 'Hey, Apple is hot! Everyone loves Apple, so let's make a slick interface that looks like it's from Apple!'. In my opinion Bethesda has often proven that they have ideas and once they're convinced they like the idea they stop thinking about it and do it, whether it turns out to be a brain fart afterwards or not.

Anyway, I still hope this will not be the case here. Maybe there will be a different interface for PC users like some people mentioned. I just hope I won't have to scroll through horizontal lists in my inventory with a big 3D view of each item that I don't care about. And I hope the skill screenshot is just some kind of funky test that doesn't make it into the game.

People are better at recognizing things they have previously experienced than recalling those things from memory. It is easier to recognize things than recall them because recognition tasks provide memory cues that facilitate searching through memory.

Recognition memory is much easier to develop than recall memory. Recognition memory is attained through exposure, and does not necessarily involve any memory about origin, context or relevance. It is simply memory that something (sight, smell, touch) has been experienced before. Recall memory is attained through learning usually involving some combination of memorizing, practice, and application. Recognition memory is also retained for longer period of time than recall.

Early computers used command-line interface, which used recall memory for hundreds of commands. GUI eliminated the need to recall the commands by presenting them in menus.

maybe oblivion icons was confuse but in the skyrim UI we will v'got the 3d image

well if you still dont get it maybe this guy can teach you one or two things: http://gizmovil.com/files/2011/01/steve-jobs-ipad-660x455-400x275.jpg

Speaking from a console perspective, I am a little worried by what we've heard of the new interface. Oblivion and Morrowind both used a perfectly satisfactory console menu UI - a set of submenus that were opened and closed with one button, were divided into relevant topics, were cycled through with the triggers, and always opened to the last submenu you used. It's a time-honored interface that dates back to at least Ocarina of Time, if not further, and it's worked quite well.

Admittedly, we don't know that much about the interface yet, but it sounds like it has serious problems. The compass radial menu, at the very least, sounds like a significant step down from the old system, always requiring two button pushes to reach the menu you're looking for (the old system could theoretically require three, but most of the time required one or two at most). The items-arranged-in-a-row system also sounds pretty damn tiresome, especially if you have a large inventory. If Bethesda wants to show-off their cool 3D models, they'd probably be best off having the option to view a highlighted inventory item in 3D.

Of course, I also find Apple's interfaces frustratingly obtuse and difficult to work with, so maybe I'm just a freak.

The new UI might work well for PCs, I guess, but it's a definite step down for consoles.*

* I'm only joking a little.

Mmmm... 2 things...

1) In that screenshot you could see a third of all your skills on one screen. I would expect that the shoulder buttons quickly change to the other two thirds. That's far from a small selection of your skills, in fact taht's approximately equal to what you see in Oblivion IIRC.

2) Hopefully they have a"zoom out" button that arranges all the skills in a circle with their stats. Would be entertaining.

Honestly, the interface looks simple and easily navigated. Why does everyone complain about it?