Skyrim - Inside Skyrim's Menu System Overhaul

pibbur said:

And FWIW, I really can't understand what was so horrible with the Oblivion interface.

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I could give you a list but I'd be happy with one, simple thing. If I press "M" and it gives me the map and "J" for the quest journal, I'll be satisfied.

Oh, I would want that, too. But too me that's a minor thing - not enought to call something horrible.

EDIT: Hmm, maybe it was I who first used the word "horrible" here. But my point remain: I consider this a minor issue.

I think the horrible aspect was how incredibly easy it would be to implement those shortcuts - and they didn't even allow you to map keys to those functions.

It's the kind of thing that would take a lazy afternoon to do, but they just couldn't be bothered - I guess.

So, it's not that the game was unplayable or anything - but it was a totally unnecessary annoyance.

I find that kind of thing frustrating.

pibbur said:

Oh, I would want that, too. But too me that's a minor thing - not enought to call something horrible.

EDIT: Hmm, maybe it was I who first used the word "horrible" here. But my point remain: I consider this a minor issue.

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Not for me, it wasn't. I'd press TAB, then forget which pane had the information I wanted and stuff around clicking until I found what I wanted...then repeat it a second later if I realised I'd missed a detail.

Any other game - and I mean *any* other game, I'd just press "J".

It's a minor thing to implement but a major impediment to my enjoyment.

Dhruin said:

Not for me, it wasn't. I'd press TAB, then forget which pane had the information I wanted and stuff around clicking until I found what I wanted…then repeat it a second later if I realised I'd missed a detail.
…

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Ok. I had no problem with that, so it didn't affect me.

To both of you (Dartagnan and Dhruin): I understand the frustration, although it's not mine. But - and I ask out of curiosity - how do you rank this issue compared to other Oblivion issues like level scaling?

OH, In LOTRO you press "L" (but you can change that)

I almost didn't play Gothic because of the UI and that would have been a shame. Your first impression of a game is based on the UI so it counts for a LOT. Level scaling, what level scaling if you give up on the game early due to a PITA UI!!

DArtagnan said:

I think the horrible aspect was how incredibly easy it would be to implement those shortcuts - and they didn't even allow you to map keys to those functions.

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Hotkeys will be present for the PC version of Skyrim, well they are planning on having them from what I read on the official forum.

Dhruin said:

I could give you a list but I'd be happy with one, simple thing. If I press "M" and it gives me the map and "J" for the quest journal, I'll be satisfied.

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Yeah, that was horrible in Oblivion also in menus when you had Ok or Cancel you could only click it with the mouse instead of allowing a quick x or a as confirm/deny.

It was as if they forgot there was a keyboard. Luckily with Fallout 3, that was remedied. And the pip boy could be in adition to tab and clicked into it be reached with the F1-F9 keys (I only discovered this in New Vegas). Ofcourse ideally they would allow us to keymap ourselves.

I just hope they don't regres with Skyrim.

Dasale said:

Your old PC interface is quite easy to beat in fact:
Hit spell hotkey keyboard and you cast the spell, that's it, one click, one action. Your standards perhaps need some revamping and I suppose you never played Torchlight.

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Well I meant if you had to change spells from what was currently equipped, but yes, you make a good point. I'm not sure using 1-0 for instant spell casting in a game like Oblivion would work though, honestly. In Diablo style games it does because you are not constantly keeping your hand on WASD.

DoctorNarrative said:

Well I meant if you had to change spells from what was currently equipped, but yes, you make a good point. I'm not sure using 1-0 for instant spell casting in a game like Oblivion would work though, honestly. In Diablo style games it does because you are not constantly keeping your hand on WASD.

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That's right the free hand without WSAD is a quite important point. But even with WSAD for moving, mouse for aiming only then I could use few other action keys anyway, myself I could perhaps top to 6 or 7 not much more, 5 would be ideal, plus two other mouse bouttons for secondary controls.

It's not a new setup since Doom it's like that because fast switching weapon is a huge plus. In fact that's why ID always tried not go over 8 weapons shortcuts.

Beside Torchlight there's two other games that are also sort of Diablo clones and are interesting for their controls:

• Madballs in… BaboInvasion is an interesting approach, it's Doom controls applied to Diablo like games, they just give up force the players use much more other action keys than the WSAD plus mouse shooting. The result is hugely pleasant in term of controls. The game is fun but not as good all along alas.
• Alien Shooter 2, it's definitely the dual stick approach applied to mouse plus keyboard. The difference with Madballs is that you aim independently of your moving so WSAD that are move forward/backward/strafe left/right in Madballs become move north/sought/east/west in AS2. At first I really believed I will never get used to it but rather fast I enjoyed it quite a lot. In this game beside moving keys and mouse aiming and shooting the game requires 6 more other action keys, and this work very well.

In fact I totally agree that often game design team try invent where they should better look at what's been done and try pick the best and bring few improvements if possible. But well sometimes it's good when design teams try have a bit more ambition even if this could make them fail the goal.

What they should do is combine the new quick action menu in Skyrim with standard hotkeys. What it would be is that each hotkey (1 for example) could be assigned several (or as many as you want) items and a quick press of the hotkey uses the active item and holding the button in pauses the game and brings up the quick item menu for that hotkey and you can select another item which uses it and makes it the active item. Maybe also have an option to have the selected item in the menu either only be used or activated depending on what the person wants. This would solve the problems of usability of hotkeys and removes many limitations of having only a few hotkeys.

PS. I think a good system for game consoles would be to have any key that you don't normally hold be it's own hotkey menu where you hold the button in and a menu that you have assigned items to comes up where you can select one and use it. Also have at least one button (or more) dedicated as hotkeys with the same functionality as the above hotkeys on the PC version.

EDIT: I just thought of one more thing which is the options on whether to activate, activate & use, or just use could be a per hotkey option. Say you have one key for switching weapons you would probably want it to be activate & use or just use but say you have a button for rarely used potions you would probably just want it to be set to use. If you have a button for healing items you probably want it set to either activate or activate and use.

I do hope they design a sensible interface for PC users which is distinct from the one for console users. If only because every PC (pretty much) has a mouse and keyboard, but the same is not true for a gamepad or other controller. I don't have a controller, and I don't want to have to buy a one to be able to use the interface 'as intended'

I certainly do think the Oblivion interface could do with an overhaul though. Fortunately, there's a well established branch of computer science which addresses just such issues: HCI. There is *NO* excuse for having a crap interface in this day and age, especially if its a big budget title where they can (and pay!) HCI experts.

Some more summaries:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=3869172&postcount=224

"-the UI is really user freindly but it's not intended to be mouse-used (HUH!?)"

"Huh?" indeed.

bemushroomed said:

Some more summaries:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=3869172&postcount=224

"-the UI is really user freindly but it's not intended to be mouse-used (HUH!?)"

"Huh?" indeed.

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A few line below it you have: "- there is a separate control system for the pc (hmmm)"

Considering that most of the mag "translations" for Skyrim contains lots of interpretation (aka feature X was removed, because it's not mentioned). I would take everything with a grain of salt.

I think what they're really working on is an impressive and immersive interface.

What I usually prefer is an efficient interface. Once that's in place, it's a bonus to have a beautiful and immersive interface.

However, my experience - sadly - is that if you focus on making an impression before efficiency, you'll have a hard time doing both.

That seems to have been the case with many big-name titles, but there ARE exceptions but they're very rare. Even when it works OK - like in Dead Space - there are quirks like illogical keys for certain functions. Because they're designing the interface with a console controller in mind, but don't take the time to fully translate the logic of layouts to the PC.

I'll try to think of a truly beautiful and immersive interface that also worked really well for PC…..

Hmm…..

Amnesia was pretty good, and very immersive - but I suppose you could say that's because there wasn't much of an interface at all.

Fallout 3 was close, except for the lack of shortcut keys - and the end-result was only "ok" - but certainly very immersive for the game.

MYST was so simple that you could hardly call it an interface, but they handled it very nicely.

Hmm, it's actually harder to think of a good example than I thought.

But ultimately, if they pull this off - that's great, and it will help the game. But if it turns out it won't be efficient - it'll do nothing but annoy me.

To both of you (Dartagnan and Dhruin): I understand the frustration, although it's not mine. But - and I ask out of curiosity - how do you rank this issue compared to other Oblivion issues like level scaling?

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I'd say the level scaling issue was much bigger.

The interface thing is merely an annoyance. Unmodded, I'd call it frustrating - but if the game had been better overall - I probably wouldn't be so annoyed.

To me, it's more the fact that it would be so easy to rectify. I have a hard time accepting the issue as one of incompetence, so I have to conclude that such an annoyance wasn't big enough to spend a few hours implementing shortcut keys for the PC. That's what I consider a slap in the face.

I don't think Oblivion UI was wrong on PC, unlike FO3 and FNV but nothing major. The trouble or at least the team concern seems to be for the console version. Now the point is they should care to keep right the PC version. One of the biggest UI trouble in FO3/FNV is obviously coming from console.

In many panels you have something to select and then confirm on another part of the panel. The stupid trouble is that if you click to select, you do nothing, if the mouse cursor wanderer above another selectable item it is automatically selected.

So often you try select something and when you move the cursor to confirm you select something else, quite a crap but not a major problem.

If they just adopted a shortcut key for every menu and submenu like the NWN radial menu, that would go a long way. TAB 1, 1 would go to the the first submenu in the first menu, for example. That way they wouldn't have to worry so much about the issue of deep menus and lots of filters.

And for God's sake implement the up and down arrows for selecting through lists!

I wonder what button will show me atributes of my character…?