It's been said that Bethesda Game Studios designs their games concurrently for all platforms that will be available upon release; for TES IV: Oblivion, this was I believe, Windows and XBox360. As a side effect of that, from my perspective, is a user interface that is designed around the most limited interface hardware that will be used to control the game, namely a game console controller. They have done a wonderful job making a feature-rich interface based on that necessary limitation; however, for me as a PC gamer that hardware limitation is simply not there, and is only imposed upon me by the software.

For TES V I propose an alternative option. By default the PC version of the game will be set to use the console-based user interface, but there will be an option in the gameplay settings on the PC to use a more robust user interface designed specifically for keyboard and mouse use, perhaps something similar to the user interface for World of Warcraft (please no gameplay comments regarding WoW; I refer only to the interface) where there's a row of numbered slots in which spells, usable items, or equippable items can be placed; and when spells or usable items are placed there, and they are clicked or the associated keybind is pressed, the spell is cast or the item is used; and for equippable items, the item is equipped. There are other quite useful interface styles designed specifically for PC gaming, and I'm sure the Bethesda Game Studios folks can come up with something fitting the game.

If nothing else, it would be nice if there was, programmed in, a way to totally rewrite the interface via mods, thus allowing modders to create whatever interface they wish.

...or a fully customizable interface. I know many MMOs have this feature.

Rather than having the option to use a more robust interface on the PC version, I would be fine if Bethesda just redesigned the interface in the PC version to take advantage of the less limited hardware of a personal computer and have such an interface in use by default, there's no need for the PC version to have the limited interface of the console version at all, if an alternative has been made.

Unfortunately, Bethesda seems to have decided to focus on the console versions of their games first, and do not seem to care about the PC version enough to bother creating a different interface for it, and I have seen no sign to indicate that there is any intention to change this, so we'll probably just have to deal with a limited interface designed with consoles in mind until some modder decides to fix this, as best as can be done with what we have to work with.

Something like the Dragon Age interface would be nice. For the hotkeys, I'm thinking of a single "hotkey" button that will open a hotkey menu as long as the button is held down, with different icons (hotkeys) as set by the player.

Personally I would like the interface to be a lot like Morrowind's interface, it was quite easy to get an overview of and the inventory menus was quite customizable concerning the size. I also liked the Morrowind journal.

The Oblivion hotkey system was quite good in my opinion, except for having too few slots. You should be able to bind spells and items to every unused key on the keyboard (that would be awesome), or the number keys from 1 to 0 instead of 1 to 8 should be used (this could be extended by having an alternate option for each of these keys available by pressing "alt" in addition to the chosen hotkey. That's a total of 20).

...or my two hotkey ideas could be combined. Hotkey MADNESS!!!!!!

This might work, it was buried quite a few suggestion threads ago.

This goes along with adding hotkeys to the pc. Otherwise I think that functionality is pretty close.

Well, since PC users have a mouse, there's no reason to limit hotkeys to only keyboard buttons... See my above idea

Nevermind.

Did that freeze the game on PC? It did on the xbox and I don't think I'd like that.

Well, I do like big fonts and icons, and I do not like to search the screen for anything, so the console screen was good enough for me in my pc, but I use a self-modified version of BT mod to make the map and the menus cover the whole screen, and changed the inventory to WZ's version and a few small cosmetic changes and that was all.

But for the topic, I think that interface, controls, and actions should integrate better, so I started to write my ideas about them, and it became big and bigger.

In the end, I concluded that it would not look great if I posted such a lengthy text here and decided to post it in a separate http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1109511-how-to-have-streamlined-but-effective-user-interface/.

Sorry guys.

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I have been thinking about the user interface and controls and I thought of a system that IMHO would make a quite streamlined but effective control scheme, and please note that in this post I might refer to perks, which I have suggested in another thread, so taking a look at that http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1107940-perks-they-can-make-each-play-through-a-unique-experience would not be a bad idea.

For controls, it would be great if all the interaction keys and buttons were smart and context sensitive, so depending on the current situation and the item held in the hand, and the confronting entity, the interaction key or button should result to the best possible action, and there should be an icon somewhere on the screen that would show the current selected action.

First of all, you should be able to use any two items that you hold in your hands independently and interchangeably, so you could take a sword in your left hand and a shield in your right hand and be able to use them (or even a weapon in each hand).

There are five interaction keys or buttons:

• Default right hand action
  
• Default left hand action
  
• Alternate selectable action
  
• Passive/defensive action
  
• Foot related action

IMHO the best choice of keys and buttons for those actions is:

• Right hand action: Left mouse button
  
• Left hand action: Right mouse button
  
• Alternate action: Middle mouse button
  
• Passive action: The key that you would normally use to open a door or start a conversation
  
• Foot action: The key that you would normally use to jump or dodge an attack

So if you are in front of an enemy, and holding a sword in your right hand and a shield in your left hand, then you would attack with right hand action key and block with your left hand action key, but if you are left handed and placed a sword in your left hand and a shield in your right hand and you have taken the mouse in your left hand, then for instance you would attack with the right mouse button and block with the left mouse button.

But if you have taken a sword in right hand and an axe in the left hand, then you would attack with both action keys, independently, or in predefined classy patterns and moves.

If you have taken a two handed melee weapon or bow in both of your hands, then you would do primary attack with right hand action key and secondary attack mode with left hand action key, which would be exchangeable in the options menu, for left handed persons.

The alternate action key is selectable by for instance scrolling the middle button, and is the place where spells go, so you can have a spell or another perk ready in the alternate action key and use it whenever needed.

The foot action would usually cause you to jump, but in some situations it might result in dodge, a kicking move, or anything that designers thought of and designed the animation for, like jumping over a barrier, or pushing a fallen tree trunk with a foot, and so on...

The passive action key would always do the best passive/defensive action in current situation that is not directly related to the current items held in hands, and would always adjusts to the current situation and is not selectable, just like active actions for each hand and the foot action, and after a while of playing the game, you would know what to expect in any situation.

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In all the situations, there should be five clear and visible icons in a corner of the screen that would show the current default actions of each interaction key or button, so that with a glance at them you know what they would do, and for instance with scrolling the scroll button in a direction and icon for the alternate action changes, until the desired alternative action is selected.

A simple but good visualization for the current selected interactions would be a wheel that is divided to four parts by a diagonal cross but with a clear center, in a way that we have separate left, right, top, bottom, and center sections.

In that wheel, we can show right hand action in the right-most part of the wheel, and left hand action in the left-most part of that wheel, and alternate action in the top section, and foot action in the bottom section, and the passive/defensive action in the center of that wheel.

Another fine visualization can be the back-side of a torso, and five icon slots on his hands, head, and upper and lower back.

There can be an option to switch the visualization of the left and right hand actions so that they match better with mouse buttons, or let the torso have his front side to us.

The Icons showing the action for each interaction key should be clear and efficient in showing the current action, but the whole GUI section should be unobtrusive and toggle-able.

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Other examples for other situations and the context sensitive actions:

If you are holding a shield in your left hand and you have the shield bash perk, you could select it for alternate action, (for instance middle button) and use that, so you could block with right mouse button, and bash the opponent with your shield, with middle mouse button.

If you are holding a weapon in front of a character who is not your enemy and is not attacking you, if you use the weapon hand in front of him, a dialog box would open and would ask you if you are really sure that you want to attack this person, but this question could be disabled in the options menu and you could attack anyway.

If you click on a friendly person by a defensive hand key, or by passive action key, then you would start a conversation, unless he is currently fighting another character.

If you are holding a weapon in your hand and you use it on a container or door, and you are not in a civilized area and not sneaking then you would start to bash the container or door, but otherwise you would do nothing, using a hand holding a defensive object or using the passive action key on the locked item would result in picking the lock, and using the shield bash perk on the locked item would result in bashing the item with the shield.

If you are holding a lockpick in your hand it would do its job in front of a locked item and would act as passive action in any other situation.

In some class rooms, there can be mannequins that while you stand facing them, when you press the foot action key, you would start performing kicking moves, instead of jumping.

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All the interactions have two sides, "Originator" and "Recipient", and all those interactions could be defined and proposed in the editor on each pair of entities that try to interact.

For each object, skill and perk that we create in the editor, we could define their interaction with any number of other entities, so:

When you define the interactions of skills, perks, spells or the objects that you could hold in your hands, you define their interaction as the originator side and define the default action for any type of recipient.

But for objects that could only be the recipient of an interaction, then you define their interaction as the recipient party and define the default action for any type of originator for interactions.

If we want this method to work efficiently, we have to have a hierarchy of definitions for all the items in the editor, so that we could select the generic lockpick to define its interactions, or select the generic animal or human to define their interactions, and so on...

When we press an interaction key/button, the engine checks to see if an object is in front of us, and if so, it would start the interaction defined for that object for the type of interaction that we want to initiate, but if there is no object in front of us, or there is no interaction defined for the object regarding the type of interaction that we want to initiate, then the default interaction defined in the item that we are holding, or the spell or perk that we are using will initiate.

When we are defining the interaction for an item that would be the recipient of interactions, we could define no interactions, like statics, or we could define one or more styles of interactions, for instance in generic humans we could define interactions like this:

• Generic weapons: if in combat with the holder, then "attack", else "conditional attack".
  
• Generic shields: if in combat with holder, then "block", else "converse".
  
• Passive action: if in combat with initiator, then "yield", else "converse".
  
• Foot action: if in combat with initiator, then "combat foot", else "jump".
  
• Offensive spell: if in combat with initiator, then "cast", else "conditional cast".
  
• ...

Conditional attack, and conditional cast mean normal attack or cast if defined in the options menu otherwise open a dialog box to confirm if to initiate an attack or cast.

Combat foot action would be a type of dodge, kick, or jumping attack motion depending on other conditions.

You could define special interaction definitions for a special recipient or special initiator, like a special opponent that you could not block his attacks unless you had a special shield, or special type of locks that required us to have special lockpicks or special security perks to be able to open them and so on...

These specific interactions can be defined with more conditions in the definitions and selecting the recipient or initiator parts from non-generic items.

So you can't block with the axe and swing with the sword?

Parry is another good alternative for block, so we can have block, dodge, parry, counter attack, and so on...

I read this over a few times, and while I am not the biggest fan, it looks thorough and adaptive. What bothers me is the lag time that I have seen with contextual actions, and accidental actions caused by just a few degrees or fractions of a second. Also, though it does still have a good deal of potential in your system, casting and magic looks to have taken a backseat.

I like the alternate button.

Those accidental actions can be minimized with well designed interactions, for instance the default interaction for a weapon against an enemy is attack, but the default action for a weapon with nothing in front is attack anyway, and those checks should consider the reach of the weapon as well, thus the problems could be minimized.

We can have an option that when in fight do not start an attack move on friendly characters, thus preventing accidental hits on friends, and so on...

As for lag time, this is just a design and development short-coming and is not a rule for the games with context-sensitive interactions, so I hope that it would not be a problem.

The magic and spell casting is just as prominent as Oblivion, because in there you could attack, block, cast, yield, and dodge, now you can use right hand, left hand, alternate action(magic spell?), passive action, and foot action.

So I see no back seat for magic, it is set on alternate action slot, but that slot can also be useful for non-magic characters as well, who could not be good casters, but could be good at using perks like shield bash, head chop, charging attack, parry, and so on...

Edit:

By the way, via this method we can have staffs that throw file balls if the target is far, and swing if near, or staffs that swing as primary attack, and throw fireballs as secondary attacks, or wands that zap electrical bolts as you swing them toward enemies, and so on...

In the end, we can have a generic "Other Actions" that could be selected for "Alternate Action" that would open a menu with other interactions designed for the current target recipient regarding the initiator.

I agree, all of what I said comes down to implementation of the system. And magic could be expanded beyond a single cast function. An enchanted staff, for instance, could have a primary function to cast. Or a wand. With a secondary function to cast the enchantment attached to a ring, etc.
I just wanted to add some caution into the mix.

Heheh, we were typing the same thing in the same time. How interesting. :violin:

How about they just make one interface and make it super awesome for both platforms? Make some thing innovative and extremely creative? With player animations too eh?

Um, no. In order to maximize the usability of the interface, it has to be custom-tailored to the hardware. The deficiencies in the Oblivion and Fallout 3 interfaces are a direct result of trying to make an awesome "one size fits all" interface for all three platforms.

Mouse is a user interface that can not be simulated quite well in other platforms and would help a lot if a game specially took advantage of it's versatility.

Console interface should be made with gamepad in mind. PC interface should be made with keyboard and mouse in mind. As long as the differentiation is in and I won't have to suffer because of the fact that the game is available on consoles, I will be happy.

I don't get this. I play Morrowind with my xbox pad on my PC all the time. I use certain "mouse" utilities all the time with ease. It's not hard at all. Move the anologue stick and press A. Am I missing something? Because I've been doing this for years...

I like the existing interface (assuming we're talking about the UI in general gameplay). It always annoyed me in games like Dragon Age and WoW that I can't actually see the environments and characters through the drag-and-drop boxes, windows, and so on. That kind of system works well for those types of games, you can scroll the camera back and see for almost literally miles around you. I don't really think it would work as well in a first-person RPG. That said, one MAJOR improvement they could make is having separate shortcuts for different parts of the menu (I for Inventory, M for Map, and so on, you know, the way EVERY RPG DOES IT). The current one-click setup was fine in Morrowind where all the info was on the same screen, but it was a lot clunkier in Oblivion. If they added that single feature, I'd otherwise be fine with the return of the existing setup.

Also, while I don't really like the console-centric view that games have headed towards, it's hard to blame the developers. Every console player is playing a legitimate copy of the game, even if it's used, Bethesda has seen money for it at some point. On the PC, piracy is a major, major issue, so it doesn't matter how many fans they have who play on PC, because many (if not most) of those fans stole the game to begin with. The console is where a lot of ta game's sales come from nowadays, just look at http://kotaku.com/5607962/report-dragon-age-ii-on-pc-loses-mod-tools-strategy-camera Can't say I blame him. :shrug:

You can't get the responsiveness or level of control with an anologue stick that you can with a mouse. There is, necessarily, a speed cap on the use of an anologue stick that is neither present nor necessary in a mouse, so while you can move the cursor at different speeds, you can't necessarily move it as fast as possible without the physical mouse.

I like Oblivion's interface on my PS3 and I like Morrowind's interface on a PC. Bethesda, have separate UIs for consoles and PCs, but keep the ones you already made, please. An interface like Morrowind's works very well as a PC interface and Oblivion's works very well as a console interface, in my opinion.