Legend of Grimrock 2 suggestions

[Isaac]

It would be nice to have abilty to change HUD, there would be couple of themes :
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r233 ... 0G_054.png - upper

http://eager.back2roots.org/SSHOT/I/ishar3.png - lower

Those HUD's worked for static turn-based RPG's. For real-time games like LoG who life from things happening on screen they would be very bad.

I don't understand that... there is no appreciable difference between Grimrock and "Eye of the Beholder" aside from animation detail (and memory usage ).

As I understand it, it may well be possible to paint a custom HUD like that or anything else with the new GUI code. Gameplay-wise, I don't see any detrimental effect by doing that... aside from the almost certain chance that LoG won't support an offset depiction of the main 3D view; which would make it pointless to implement such a HUD.

Right now the LoG HUD is pretty fine, hard to think about improvements without forced needs to reduce the size of the view point as a whole.

I have a few improvements I'd like to try for LoG specific... but If I could copy the EoB GUI for the EOB mod, I would.
(One improvement would be spellcaster summoning spells that fill out the party with additional fighters... like Zombies or summoned animals or magical creations/ golems and such). The UI would have the creature's portrait in ¼ scale along side the spell caster's, and optionally allow the player to swap the creature out for a fallen PC [front rank].

Fortunately the age of slow computers where innovative games like Ultima Underworld were forced to display their action in an awefully tiny rectangle while most of the screen was cluttered with boring static HUD info are long past. With the entire screen as your playing field you don't want to have the HUD clutter it and long mouse paths are to be avoid as much as possible.

I never looked at it as a bad thing, and did not consider the static (sometimes not so static) UI as boring or cluttered, nor did I have any issue with long mouse paths; (Nor am I suggesting those for Log). My suggestion for LoG 2, is simply to have no 'All Attack' button. that really cheapened EoB3 IMO.

[Dr.Disaster]

It would be nice to have abilty to change HUD, there would be couple of themes :
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r233 ... 0G_054.png - upper

http://eager.back2roots.org/SSHOT/I/ishar3.png - lower

Those HUD's worked for static turn-based RPG's. For real-time games like LoG who life from things happening on screen they would be very bad.

I don't understand that... there is no appreciable difference between Grimrock and "Eye of the Beholder" aside from animation detail (and memory usage ).

Oh i can think of a few more like a less restricted magic system and better handling of timed things i.e. puzzles or evading stuff

Right now the LoG HUD is pretty fine, hard to think about improvements without forced needs to reduce the size of the view point as a whole.

I have a few improvements I'd like to try for LoG specific... but If I could copy the EoB GUI for the EOB mod, I would.
(One improvement would be spellcaster summoning spells that fill out the party with additional fighters... like Zombies or summoned animals or magical creations/ golems and such). The UI would have the creature's portrait in ¼ scale along side the spell caster's, and optionally allow the player to swap the creature out for a fallen PC [front rank].

Why not raise the dead character itself as an undead, with some trade-off's of course?

Fortunately the age of slow computers where innovative games like Ultima Underworld were forced to display their action in an awefully tiny rectangle while most of the screen was cluttered with boring static HUD info are long past. With the entire screen as your playing field you don't want to have the HUD clutter it and long mouse paths are to be avoid as much as possible.

I never looked at it as a bad thing, and did not consider the static (sometimes not so static) UI as boring or cluttered, nor did I have any issue with long mouse paths; (Nor am I suggesting those for Log). My suggestion for LoG 2, is simply to have no 'All Attack' button. that really cheapened EoB3 IMO.

Oh i DO recall how dearly i wished those tiny view screens be larger so one could identify things without crawling inside your monitor ...

What i can think off are additional portrait-sized icons on screen, working similar to those player/party buff displays in Diablo 3. This would work nice for anything time-limited like shield/invisibility spells or speed/sulphurous potions. Even the compass (when you got one) could be placed on screen this way. Also i would like to see a change to the invisibility indicator from the current izzy bizzy small shape icon to a translucent or blanked-out portrait.

[Isaac]

Even the compass (when you got one) could be placed on screen this way.

That's how Lands of Lore did it... and in the case of Eye of the Beholder... the party starts off with an onscreen compass. Funny thing though... I thought it could be cool if some monsters could steal from the party... including stealing their compass. Could be cool (I think). Another option would be to allow the map designer to hand place a North marker on the map and have the compass reflect the marker as North; perhaps even [optionally] have traps that can tinker with the compass readings.

Also i would like to see a change to the invisibility indicator from the current izzy bizzy small shape icon to a translucent or blanked-out portrait.

That sounds like it would be good; (I've never had an air specialized mage that could cast that spell ~so I don't really know what the UI for it looks like).

[sprawler]

Dr.Disaster you didnt understand so i will make this more clear :

1. i made this topic to discuss legend of grimrock 2 and features that i would like to see
so dont point things like : grimrock dosent have this or that , beacuse were are talking not about grimrock 1 but grimrock 2

2. As said before i would like to see many things that dont exist in grimrock 1 . You asked what is purpose of big hud i gave you some ideas what game makers could have make : potion mixingg , talking to npc etc. so dont point grimrock 1 dosent have it , beacuse im not talking about grimrock 1 , this is my ideas for grimrock 2.

3. you wrote

LoG HUD already shows active spells but LoG does not provide information for how long a spell was/is active. Nowhere.

thats the antoher thing to have larger hud , giving information how long spell is active . If someone dosent want it than he can play with small hud if someone wants to have it he plays with larger hud.

4.

All those suggestions make me wonder, if you ever played the game.

go to you tube ravencrest 1985 and see the whole walkthrough.

5. even if i give suggustion that completly will change game or even are not support by engine by this time doesnt mean i havent played the game. i dont know how you came with this idea.if i like to change this game a lot, it doesnt mean i didnt played it.

6. i just think sequel should be with lots of diffrent stuff grimrock 1 didnt have , not be refrshehed grimrock 1 with new dugeons and monsters. We alredy have editor and we dont need game makers to make similar new dungeons and mosters , beacuse modders will make houndreds of them. we need things that even grimrock 1 haevliy modded cant allow , something new.

7. its only my suggestion so dont be mad , i didnt come to make wars or argue so peace .

[Dr.Disaster]

3. you wrote

LoG HUD already shows active spells but LoG does not provide information for how long a spell was/is active. Nowhere.

thats the antoher thing to have larger hud , giving information how long spell is active . If someone dosent want it than he can play with small hud if someone wants to have it he plays with larger hud.

Information needs to be displayed efficiently, otherwise it turns out to be a mess. Most large HUD's remind me of those old scifi and agent movies back from the 60's and 70's where computers were featured as walls of blinking light bulbs. Without knowning which light (or pixel when it comes to games) stands for what information you're as much lost as without anything being displayed.

I've already stated how information can be displayed way better then by cluttering the screen with a large HUD.
If there is a timed effect going on i.e. a fire shield was cast and you want to know
- if it's active (this information is already present in LoG by a red frame around the characters HUD's)
- how long it was or will remain active (that's what you're looking for)
just think about how such things are efficiently displayed. Diablo 3's HUD delivers this in an almost perfect manner: it's one icon on screen activated per effect, showing the remaining effect run-time live by constantly graying out and when you mouse-over over the icon you see even more information.

EDIT
Now re-thinking about the current handling of such time-limited effect: why not combine the current display (red frame for fire shield active) and the gray-out effect mentioned into letting the red frame fade away over the effect's runtime?

7. its only my suggestion so dont be mad , i didnt come to make wars or argue so peace .

Aye, maybe me just got a bit carried away

[sprawler]

hey, look what i found :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI9dfGyDU_0

its only alpha version , and its little claustrophobic now , it reminds me little of begining eye of beholder 2

it should be more wide open with less tress , or some trees will be smaller and wouldnt count as obstacle and you can pass by them

[Ixnatifual]

One thing I very much wouldn't want in LoG 2 is more UI cluttering the screen. I think it's very immersive having the environment full screen with just the bare minimum UI it has now. I think it's a bad idea to make an optional UI that takes up more space, because you shouldn't be at a disadvantage for choosing immersion over gameplay.

Outside areas I would definitely like to see in LoG 2. It could be Lands of Lore style, where the outside areas are simply another type of dungeon tileset with a sky. Or they could go for a sprawling open world such as the Ishar games. The graphics of that game were beautiful at the time. Grid-based combat as is would probably be far too powerful for the player in that case, so that might need some tweaking or switching up.

[Isaac]

...because you shouldn't be at a disadvantage for choosing immersion over gameplay.

What kind of disadvantage? [specifically, I mean.]

[Ixnatifual]

The extra information displayed by the additional UI elements.

[FlashSoul]

At a disadvantage compared to who?
It's not a competition. You play as you like. What if others do it too? They can already play on easy; are you at a disadvantage?

The only thing I can see is that players with a better HUD may be more effective and it may make the game less balanced for the minimalist HUD crowd if the game difficulty is based on the big HUD. But I'm not convinced it can really make that much of a difference. The best way to deal with that would be to add more difficulty options so instead of choosing the "Big HUD & Difficult" setting you could take "Minimal HUD & a-little-less-than-difficult".