People who reply with good ideas, I'll edit this post to include them
UI
Shop Info: Couldn't the data be listed right by the icon without having the hover over it? It's not like there are 500 items..Shop Color Coding: Commonly used bonuses should have an associated color(IE: +armor in green, +health in red, +mana in blue, +attack speed in purple, +damage in orange or whatever. It would make browsing and comparing easier for new players I think.)Rearranging/resizing: There should be something in options that brings up the ui elements hwere it allows you to drag them around and increase/decrease their size. Then when ally portraits are added (if theyare, i guess) we can move where they are, make them horizontal or verticle, move debuff icons, so on.SHOP BLACKSMITH UPGRADES: http://forums.demigodthegame.com/323546 needed its own thread.
(ADDED 8:13 PM sept06)Chat "beep": Need it when someone says a message. Also, text needs to scale with resolution. And the chat beep needs to only trigger the first time someone sends a message every 10 seconds(so spamming doesn't spam beeps.-Their first message would make the beep, and then additional messages wouldn't until 10 seconds later. Maybe 5, i don't know. Chatbeep when people spam is annoying, but not knowing people have said anything is annoying too. (ADDED 1:48 AM sept05)Health bars: Holding alt or something should show everythings health bars. People with low health should have their bars automatically show(maybe start fading in at 30%, being solid at 20%). The health bars ideally should offset so they don't overlap, and you could click the healthbars to attack. (ADDED 2:44 AM sept05) The tilde settings need to be saved.. i keep ahving to cycle at the start of every match. (ADDED 3:59 PM april25)Target Highlight: Whoever you're targeting with a DD spell (if engine permits.. aoe spells too would be nice to see who they'll hit like in wc3..) should have like a white outline or glow around them, or something. (ADDED 3:56 AM sept05)-This one has been partially added.. It works for single targetting, but not aoe's.Teamate status: On the bottom left, beside your center bar (starting near the middle[as close to without overlapping the current ui there, of course] then going towards the left[not from the left corner inwards. The more teamates, the more number of icons going left]. Clicking on them should select that teamate(selection detailed below in controls). It should show Demigod portrait, health, there should also be "Attacking: ... minotaur/player name/archer/healer/giant/angel/etc with an arrow, clicking the words or arrow would select the same target as your teamate. (ADDED 3:56 AM sept05)DoT damage numbers: The numbers should add together. IE when UB uses his DoT the number should stay there going from 40, to 80, to 120, to 160, and so on, not show 40 over and over. (ADDED 9:26 PM March17)Mana until castable: There should be a timer like the cooldown timer showing how long it'll be until you'll naturally regen enough mana to use a skill that is "blued-out". (ADDED 10:04 PM sept07)Debuff/Buff timers: Overtop of or above debuff/buff icons it should have a timer showing when it'll end. (ADDED 9:17 PM april26)
Controls
Select target: Right click is attack, obviously. But left click should select buildings, units, other Demigods. This should bring up their portrait, a bigger spell bar positioned above your own(smaller of course). Left clicking the ground would clear your selection.Attack selected target: Then hit space.(Camera rotate can be moved.. dont need it on space) In this way you can keep something selected like say, an enemy Demigod. You can right click on enemy creeps to kill them, and then when you want to attack the Demigod(say, they came in range) you hit space and there is no miss-clicking. Would be used on towers, stronghold, ALLIES TOO.Use spell on selected target: Simply hitting the hotkey for a single-target skills with something/someone selected would use the skill on them.(with nothing selected the normal target selection currently in use would be used). direct-target as in mines, aoe attacks, rooks hammer slam(seeing as how it targets the ground) wouldn't apply and would be targetting how they are now. Snipe is an example of what would be used on what you have selected.Or say for Sedna. You can keep a nearby ally selected to heal them very quickly, while you right click to attack peopleQueuing: Shift+click should cue skill orders, and pretty much anything that you could queue. (ADDED 5:10 PM sept05)ESC to close menus: Pressing ESC should close menus(shops, skills, ETC). Only bringing up the esc menu when you have no menus open. This one annoys me sooo much. I keep hitting esc to close the shop and skills screen. (ADDED 2:09 PM sept08)Rearrange skill hotkeys: Should be able to drag the skills into the order you want and the game remember that order. (ADDED 2:59 AM sept09)
Ally portrait targetting: You should be able to click on your own characters portrait, or an allies, to use a skill on them more easily. (ADDED 3:59 PM april25)INTERRUPTED! float text instead of STUNNED! on interrupts: This really should of be added a long time ago after it was shown how good interupts work for the gameplay. (ADDED 3:51 PM may01)
Misc
Shopping while dead: We should be able to view the list of items at the shop while dead and purchase when we rez. (ADDED 3:16 AM sept05)Speccing while dead: ^ Same thing. (ADDED 3:16 AM sept05)Pinging: Ctrl+clicking onthe ground should make a ping for allies. It should have some piller of light kind of effect or something. Right now all this does is ping the minimap. It should make an effect on the ground like god rays and "move here" text!-People who's screens can't see it should have an arrow on their screen pointing to it.-When your health is low the healing crystal should be pinged which only you can view. (new players sometimes haven't figured out they can heal there.) (ADDED 5:28 PM sept05)Range: MEASURE IN METERS! Still here because AoE sizes aren't listed (edited 3:59 PM april25)- This has partially been added. Ranges show this, but aoe's are still a mystery.
ADDED 2:44AM sept09:
Just a photoshop mockup.. not really how i think it should actually look except for the death messages and chat, but it puts the point across.
Things that need clearifying:
Have been added:
Remappable keys: I assume this is a given, but just in case not, i'll throw it in here. (ADDED 5:10 PM sept05)Skills: 1-2-3-4 for skills.. Why are these for control groups like an RTS when you'll only control your one hero? In the Assassins case you can't select anything else to control(which is GREAT!! Omg it frustrates me so much in DotA how i accidently click off my hero!)Crits numbers: The crits should be adjusted some so that when you get a critical hit it says "Critical Hit - #!" instead of just "Critical Hit!" over your Demigod. It's easier to see then than with seeing the crit over your demigod while the damage number is over what you hit. (ADDED 9:26 PM sept05)Minimap: Something very very light weight. Like a translucent outline of the map that shows just the Demigods.Shop Tabs: Couldn't we just have one shop with tabs for each set of items? (I heard this is coming, wasn't sure)Life Leach numbers: When you leach life you should get a red +# over your head, like the green +# you get from being healed. (ADDED 9:26 PM sept05)
What happened to edit? Whatever.
For the Teammate Status you can make a little bar that has a little arrow pointing outward (->)
and when you click it it moves out into the screen and shows you the boxes you have in your UI picture.
Thats something that bothers me alot. I want to see at least the stats of MY character, the screen is nice but im not playing an RPG, a simple window - maybe we should be able to toggle it off/on - which shows armor (at best in %), dmg and maybe attack/movement speed would be veeeeeeery useful.
So long, Aspartem
That is already in the game.
It's the button opposite of the skills window.
I think i said something about howevering over their portrait when they are selected would show the same exact tool-tip pop-up type thing with their equip.
I don't think you should see enemies mana, dps, armor, etc though. But you could sort of guess it by their items.
I'm a big fan of transparency in some ways, but not in others.
No its not. Its an additonal Window i've to click for. Seems i didnt wrote it clearly. I want the stats somewhere on the normal standart screen - i personally want such informations. Right now, its just not handy imo.
Well, i'd like to see Mana/Hp and the Items. Yes, i know in Dota you can see everything, but an expirienced players looks in your inventory at lv 5 and knows what you wil buy in the next 15 lvls - so thats to much information imo.
But Mana/Hp - We can see hp already - and the items would be nice. Specially if he wears some artifacts, which can be devastating for the outcoming of a teamup sometimes.
I don't want the stats to always be visable myself... I like small UI's.
I'd like the enemy and ally HP/MP/DPS to be visible. When stun lock and other op'd skills are revised, it would be nice to know what you're fighting or it will just become a guessing game.
I think it should be partially a guessing game..
That's why i think you should be able to see their equip, but not their exact attack speed and damage. You could make an educated guess, but not really an exact one since you don't know if they have the stats enhancer skill and other passive skills and such.
For generals, there are some things in the LUA files that suggest that the state of affairs with the build beta 1 is based off of is thus: you can order your creeps to move somewhere, or you can recall them to you.
I'd prefer a guessing game over the information dumping in Dota. One look, you know what the opponent will play for the entire game, know how to counter it, even can guess how good he plays. It just throws ALL informations you need at you.
I dont want that again. So if you want to know, what your opponent is up to - for exp. - his skillbuild. You'll have to look what skill he uses etc. etc. So remove the tactical blabla denying etc. but add something more strategical like : What will my enemy do? What will he buy? Where will he go to?
Then, we're on the right way. But that just my 2 cents, ya know.
It would be nice to see skill/items graphically represented so that a mouse over/select is not needed every time.
You could have items shown when you select someone, like under their name and information, but then you're having the selection thing take up more screen space which is to me bad. I like UI to not take up much of the screens space.
I have traditional RTS UI's where they take up 1/4th of your screens. I love how lightweight Demigod's is. I love World in Conflicts.
Hover-over tooltips are good.
Excellent post.
I have just a suggestion : to have a slightly different cursor(colour, shape...) when you are selecting a creep, a Demigod or a building.
I think that could be useful when you want to snipe a small Demigod like Regulus in a group of minotaurs.
Just my 2 cents .
I'd be better if what you have selected has a sort of glowing outline around them.
Target Highlight: Whoever you're targeting with a DD spell (if engine permits.. aoe spells too would be nice to see who they'll hit like in wc3..) should have like a white outline or glow around them, or something. (ADDED 3:56 AM sept05)
I have that there already in the list.
Also I just added that ranges should be measured in meters (like the +range, +splash damage. How big is +1.5 splash damage? If it says meters it's easier to judge.) Right now it just sys + number. +1 is +1 mile for all I know.
And I want support for my 3d motion controller (spaceball) That way I can program all its buttons and can just use my mouse to click and kill
Boy life would be perfect if we get what we want but it isn't and we are not writing the game but all good suggestions here.
Now give me 3d motion controller support!!!
Can't you program it like a joystick?
Like on my joystick i can say the hat buttons are WASD, W+A, A+S, S+D, D+W and the 6 button is tab, etc.
A lot of cool suggestions something I'd like to add:
The way innocivs latest photoshop UI looks like is cool and reminds me of wow UI add-ons. (God Tyo you must really suck )
For example, instead of forcing all that on the player take a hint from MMORPGS (which you guys said you were doing anyways). And have a ton of pre made dialogs that one can open and move around arrange depending on their pleasure, that way you can have all these cool UI ideas with out information overload on newbes, and have lots of choices for people who want diffrent stuff (you could have a bunch of options for each dialog (for example the teammates dialogs: show life numbers, show mana, show mana numbers, show attacker, show attackee))
And it would make it easier for ui modders if there is a 'ui' section of the mods dialog box, as well as providing a good framework for building new ones.
A few suggestions from a long time dota player:
1) HP Bars should turn red as they get lower.
2) Enemys should have their HP bars visible once they're no longer on 100% life. I can understand not wanting to show them for perfectly healthy units (Keeps the screen pretty!) but its very important tactical info in group multiplayer battles.
3) Please allow us at least the OPTION to pan the camera with the mouse edges. I can't currently even figure out what you guys intended - feels ass backwards trying to use the keyboard for camera, mouse wheel for camera, mouse for aiming?
4) Attack Move! Holding down (not just clicking) the right mouse button on the ground should cause the demigod to move towards that point, autoattacking anything that comes within range. If thats not feasible, at least just tread a held-down right mouse button as though its being clicked every frame.. save me some RSI.
Color changing HP bars would be good! I was thinking of that too in teh begin but i kept forgetting to add it!
And i already put that health bars should show up.. though i think it should be when health is low, not when someone has 99.999% health.
On the 3rd, i'm sure they're adding that.. or tilt/rotating with wasd to pan.
Holding down right mouse button would be nice for attack-move instead of needing to press a hotkey also.I've never been a fan of zillions of hotkeys. I like being able to do most with the mouse. Like there doesn't need to be a hotkey to show your own health numbers on your bar.. as it's not something you need to do in 1/4th a second. Much cleaner to click bars to make the numbers show up. But you do need a hotkey to make all units health bars show up like alt in wc3.
I wasn't saying it wasn't there, i was giving an example of what sort of things are nessisary to have a keyboard hotkey for.
/edit
RTS games tend to have overly bloated numbers hotkeys in my opinion.. typical RTS is at least like 60 hotkeys, while in an FPS you'll have 7-15.
I typically find that newer FPS games have more...
>.>
Unless you count shift+1 and shift+2 as seperate hotkeys in an rts then they have a ton more. Plus unlike an fps, a lot of those keys are useable with the mouse.
A newer fps (CoD4) has me using evrey key on the left side of the keyboard:
move, tilt camera, use, gernade, special gernade, reload, jump, crouch(hold/toggle), prone(hold/toggle), weapons, sprint(hold/toggle), scores, inventroy, night vision, airstrike, quick switch, steady sniper rifle, alt fire (for those of you without 2 click mouses >.>), voice chat, team chat, all chat, vote yes/no.
thats about 27 (I counted move keys and the like as one block because they follow a pattern, tougle crouch and hold crouch type keys are on diffrent ends of the keyboard)
RTS:
force move, force attack, hold posistion, patrol, control group hot keys (create/call) , move camera, rotate camera, select like, select all, last warning, rotate building, cancel, unit hotkeys (which is where the balk are, but tend to be semi-logical even so lets just say evrey key on the keyboard minus the ones already used) x16.
thats about 30 (and the fact that evrey one of those are typically clickable, where as in fps 95% of the hotkeys are unclickable)
So your really exagerating there.
WiC has tons of hotkeys.. like move backwards, activate abilities, cycle abilities, move, cancle, attack movie, plus you have your hotgroups.. there is so many.. like tripple CoD4's.
FPS is typically scoreboard, console, class/team menu*, weapon keys, lean left/right*, wasd, sprint, crouch, jump, between 1-6 and 1-0 for weapons.
*depending on type of game.
bleh yeah i forgot walk, teamchat, all chat, voice chat hotkey, voice bind menu, vote.
But anyways, FPS never use ctrl or shift + key pretty much. RTS do, because they need that many keys. In FPS ctrl is usually used for crouch and shift for walk or sprint or something often used.
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