Eh I used DUI but I'm fine either way. FO3 was the only UI that annoyed me (selling items svcked).

Your post express the concerns I have too, so there's nothing much for me to add, just to agree with everything.

Think it's confirmed that the inventory uses a vertical list, a horizontal like the one used for stat would also work but waste a lot of space and require a lot of scrolling.

Having to click/ mouse over an item would be far worse in Skyrim than in New Vegas who had a pretty limited number of items.
Skyrim will have self made potions and enchanted items, only way to figure out that it is would be to click each of the +30 different self made potions and 50 scrolls.
Now this would svck duck just as hard on consoles as on pc with the downside that the console users could not download a fix from tes nexus.

Not much on the screen at once is harder to avoid as it require customisation not just not to select a dysfunctional but fancy UI. the font is designed for consoles where you sit far from the screen, it also has to take up just a part of the screen to support lower resolutions.
yes using a smaller font as default on pc is not that hard, as the Skyrim interface is full screen it will probably adjust automatically so it will work better than 7 line inventory in Oblivion.

Selling in FO3 was way better than Oblivion as you added item to a shopping cart then sold bulk instead of confirming selling each of 50 items, without even a key bind to the confirm or a select all of stack function.

This is actually my biggest worry about the game, and pretty much my only worry too That the user interface somehow will feel clunky and annoying with a mouse and keyboard. I really hope that won't be the case but I'm doubtful.

As I recall, in one of the interviews, Todd specifically mentioned the album artwork scroll from iTunes. That's why I mentioned it. While I'm not sure about the inventory, we do know for sure that the skills will be side scrolling. If the screenshot is any indication, we won't be seeing very many of those on screen at a time, either.

I prefer vertical lists to grids. I like seeing item names rather than just pictures. I do hope the UI doesn't revolve around the flashy screen space wasting horizontal lists seen in one o the screenshots though.

This is MY main concern too, and it pretty much decides which I'm going to buy this game or not. Mouse acceleration is the primary issue and after that comes quick binds/hotkeys and UI in general.

Sadly i think bethesda dont care about this (or the pc for that mater). Just take a look at oblivion / FO and you will notice how horribly bad it is and it looks like they will take bad to the next level in skyrim when it come to the UI. You want us to SCROLL SIDEWAYS!? on a PC!? Are they out of their minds? Did they smoke something heavy? Did everyone there skip the class where they get to learn the basics about UI? Hint: How to show information in a good way and after that THEN you can add the useless "bling bling" And yes... its useless.

Anyway what the pc UI should have:
*1 button press to get whereever you want
*No wasted space, lots of information on the screen no "need to scroll" or check another page (this could be optional also if you have some sorting ability)
*Mouse over direct comparison on items / skill informations. Not "press on the skill to get the information"
*ALL UI related things should have a hotkey
*The ui should be LIST based.
*No loading when opening the UI or "animation delay"


I do know some people only care about how pruty it look. (clearly bethesda do) But UI's are made to show information in a good way for the player and lots of information.

Here is another example why i hate the skill scrolling thing... When you make a list of things to buy... Do you make it:
[Item 1] [Item 2] [item 3] [item 4]

or:
[item]
[item]
[item]
[item]

Oh well we wont see a new ui... Sadly i have almost lost interest in the game due to how much of a console game it will be

Games are just games and not "console" and "PC" games. In any case chill out, they've already confirmed the PC version is being attended to. They've only shown the Xbox 360 version so far. Come to think of it, if you've already decided with very little information that you won't get it, why the heck complain here? There's no need to be negative and pessimistic just for the sake of it. Lighten up! :celebration:

I'd disagree. Some things are very definitely designed for one platform or the other, like the UI. Consoles (sitting across the room looking at a TV with controller) and PCs (sitting a foot or two away from a monitor with mouse and keyboard) have different needs. If they only address the needs of one but not the other, then it was quite clearly made for the one and not the other.

As for the PC version being worked on, they've made very few specific comments, such as the PC version getting hotkeys. Other than that, they've said very little beyond vague promises.

None of that justifies the blind pessimism of the post I was responding to.

I personally hate the idea of a horizontal only scrolling skills list. That screenshot shows half the skills off screen, when they could all be listed with a vertical list. Am I going to not buy the game if that's in the PC version though? No, I'm more concerned about the actual game itself than nitpicking the UI.

They promised they are taking care of the PC version. That doesn't mean everyone gets everything they want. I accept that.

I don't really see how the new skill screen could work with a vertical interface. Remember that every skill has a constellation above it, and I don't think that would fit on the screen very well if they were on the side. Anyway we haven't got a single PC screenshot yet, so we can't be completely sure how the PC UI will be.

My guess: The only menu screenshot we've seen is 1280x720 for obvious reasons. What if the PC interface scales up the background with the nebula, but everything else stays the same? That would make room for somewhere between 3-5 more skills as well as a couple more constellations on the screen (looks like the perk trees will move at a different speed than the skill gauges). The only problem is then there's a lot of wasted space, but I don't think it would be enough to bother me, and it's better than having absurdly large skill bars.

Wait, you did not have an issue but you bothered to dl and installed UI!? Your the 2nd person who first said they were fine with past UI and then said that DL a UI mod. You must of cared even if only a little. At least your honest.

I'd like to tell you we don't need to worry about this, but given Bethesda's recent games and what we know of the interface in Skyrim, I wouldn't be able to say that with any confidence, Bethesda has talked about how much effort they put into making the interface look good, and I certainly have nothing against interfaces that look good, however, I do not want Bethesda to be so focused on the looks of the interface that they neglect its' function. I certainly don't want them to sacrifice the functionality of the interface so they can make it look like it was designed by Apple. The first thing a video game interface should aim to do is give you all the information it's supposed to give you when you need it with as little hassle as possible, once you've ensured you can do that, then you can stop to ask how you can make it look good. It also seems like the interfaces for Oblivion and Fallout 3 were designed for consoles in mind, which is also a problem for PC users. Now, maybe the interface was fine for console users, though I wouldn't know for certain because I've never had any desire to play Oblivion on a console, but on the PC version, it was just a waste of space, a problem that could have been fixed if Bethesda simply took the effort to design a more appropriate interface for the PC version, it wouldn't even necessarily need to be significantly different, just enough that it takes advantage of the higher resolutions PC monitors are capable of and takes advantage of the mouse and keyboard.

The screenshot of the skill list we've seen is a good example of the issue, I think, I mean, the stars are pretty and all that, but it looks to me like it really could display a lot more information at onw time if some of the space used for stars were instead used to show additional information, I can't even see where the perks are listed, I'd assume that one has to either mouse over the individual stars (Which as far as I know give know indication of which perk they represent." or click on a skill to bring up a list of perks under it, either one seems like more annoyance than is necessary to me. Now compare that to Morrowind's interface, it's pretty basic in terms of design, but it works. By pressing one button, you can bring up menus showing information about your character, your inventory, your spell list, and your map, and each of these windows can be resized or closed individually. Now, theres still some scrolling involved since the space in each window is still limited, but overall, I find myself going through less trouble to work with it than Oblivion's interface, or Fallout 3's.

But in morrowind you had to hover over your inventory items to see any of their stats, and unless you make the attribute/skill window take up a huge portion of the screen you still had to scroll to see all of your skills.

Anyway there was something where I think Todd was saying that in the skill screen, you see it like that screenshot when you first go into the menu, but then you can zoom in and reveal more detail, probably meaning indications of what each star/perk is. My guess is that on PC you will click on a skill and it will zoom in and show you a detailed view of the perk tree. Not really that big of an annoyance imo. But I really don't want a return to a single menu screen that shows you everything in multiple windows. If I want to see a full screen map, I just want to press one button and have the full screen map come up, without having to resize a window. And that's how it sounds like they're doing it.

Also they said that there wont be that much of a difference between the console and PC version (except graphics) in a interview somewhere. So one can only assume that they take the lazy way out and copy paste the console ui over to the PC version (seeing as in general console gamers have a harder time with a pc interface due to limited controls.

Tbh there is a clear difference in how a game made for the PC should be and how one made for a console should be. The PC have other needs compared to the console and some PC ui's would be way to annoying for a console to use.

In the end even if you dont agree it dont change the fact that when they designed the current UI they thought "How can we make it look nice" instead of "How can we give the player alot of information?
Its kinda like how the Oblivion UI is made for a console. Lots of button presses to get where you want. Lots of wasted space. Huge text, buttons / icons. Few things on the screen.

This is true, I just didn't like seeing so few items. I did like that FO3 returned to the Morrowind system of letting you sell all of your stuff and then settle on a final transaction. It just should have displayed more items. I got good at double clicking Oblivion items and I just found that easier than FO3 scrolling.

Nah it just looked cool when I was flipping through the hundreds of other mods I looked at. Also I liked colored maps more than the default map, but I felt the default map and UI was perfectly fine.

Nah it just looked cool when I was flipping through the hundreds of other mods I looked at. Also I liked colored maps more than the default map, but I felt the default map and UI was perfectly fine.

I know however I’m pretty sure I read that the inventory was horizontal however I’m not sure about source so I might be mistaken.

The stats interface uses side scrolling and it makes some sense mainly because of the perk tree/ star sign over the stat. They show 7 items at once, this is comparable with Oblivion because Skyrim uses full screen while Oblivion used a tiny box for stats.
With a horizontal list you would have to click on a stat to get the perk tree, for the inventory a vertical list sorting like in Oblivion/ fallout and it would be clunky
This is not only a PC problem; I guess consoles would suffer just as much for a two minute scroll to get to the end of the item list.

Sidescrolling? Where?

Ironically the only sidescrolling I'm remembering was from Morrowind's UI...


Just because we changed, that doesn't mean that the original UI was unforgivably horrible, just that DarnUI is better.

Hell, it doesn't even fix most of the problems all of you tend to bring up.

Not, then have fun trying to port Starcraft 2 to PS3. Yes it’s a muse driven real time strategy game, pretty hard to port well so hard Blizzard has not managed it.

I say it’s a huge difference and lots of games has seriously bad controls, Oblivion on pc is a bad example as it was just clunky, some other games has managed to become basically unplayable even the original version not a port.

Well it was a total joke how in oblivion they limited you to 8 hotkeys

http://preorderskyrim.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/skyrim-skill-tree-screen.jpg?w=640