Improving ToEE's User Interface

I don't know that we'd add options to TFE-X, probably just add it all in to the regular mod. It would be automatic.

I'll have some new revelations soon ... not all of them good.

 

Okay, here's the bottom line:

What we can do:

• Change the font for various interfaces as seen in the images above to a larger, more stylish, existing font, namely Priory. Noteable interfaces where this can be done:
  • the logbook, minus the combat section of the ego tab
  • the worldmap and the townmap
  • hover text (not the hovering dialog window)
  • character ui item, skill, feat, and spell descriptions
  • various aspects of character creation
  • popup or 'alert' boxes like area descriptions
  • maybe some other aspects of the character ui (stats, etc., with some fiddling)
  • other pissant interfaces
• Add nice-looking backgrounds to the various printed text interfaces

What we can't do:

• Add new fonts. Tried this many ways and new fonts don't get recognized.
• Replace existing fonts. Tried this many ways and the replacements don't get recognized.
• Because of this, and being as there are no separate control files for the regular dialog interface, we can't mod the dialog text. It seems our predecessors were right and the dialog font/function is hardcoded. The fact that override measures are fruitless likely means that the game is not actually looking at the installed fonts folder to get font info. Sorry.
• Change the font for the Help system. Actually we can, but as some other guy discovered some time back, doing so causes the radial menu and bottom right menu hover text to turn into the new font as well. This wouldn't be a bad thing if it was like that from the outset, but it only becomes that way after accessing a help hyper-link, and it turns back to the old after accessing an element of character ui. The back-and-forth would be goofy and shoddy.
• Change the sizes of various interface boxes to accomodate larger text. (At least I haven't figured it out yet. If we can't, some of the other ui changes will have to go because we'll have text spilling out all over the place.)

I'll post some screens later of the remaining things we can change.

 

PARTY POOL



CHARACTER CREATION



All aspects of this have the Priory font in the description pane.

 

Here's a screen of what I worked up for a new character ui to accomodate the larger Priory font and to generally be easier on the eyes.



Changes:

• alignment, sex, and race have moved to the top bar.
• encumbrance has moved from the lower center to the top right to make room for enlarging the text box.
• the use item and drop item buttons have been shortened and moved to the bottom right to make room for enlarging the text box.
• the text box has been enlarged, growing several pixels in height upward to the bottom edge of the inventory box. Basically it now accomodates 7 lines of Priory text, whereas before it accomodated 5. This pretty much makes all the difference as far as text not spilling over goes, except for a few remaining instances.
• the character sheet has been overhauled. It kind of needed to be in order for Priory to look right in there (enlarged boxes, aligned boxes, etc.). If the colors look garish we could change them to a muted grey or ToEE's regular boring slate blue, but I thought color differences might actually be helpful for that stuff. The level boxes might not be able to stay where they are now though (outside the normal sheet for lack of space), as they don't highlight and hyper-link like they're supposed to over there. The numbers are certainly easier to read.
• another issue is the stupid painted on scroll bar that's not a scroll bar and doesn't scroll ... it's shorter than the text box now and can't be changed or gotten rid of. Yay!

You wouldn't believe how much effort this all took. :blegh:

[edit]

Can't remember if I mentioned this before ... the basic problem here that makes redesigning the ui necessary (assuming the use of the Priory font) is that the basic box can't be enlarged. (At least I can't figure it out.) This means that instead we have to make better use of the existing box by reclaiming whatever idle real estate we can, hence the move to make the text box bigger and eat up the space between it and the inventory box, etc. Hope that makes sense.

 

Tweaked ...



Now the level boxes are back in the normal pane. The height and weight boxes are limited to what the height and weight of the character are, leaving out the boxes that say "height" and weight." (This again due to lack of space.) They're connected by a little line though so people who get confused by a random number sitting there (weight) might see that it's somehow connected to the clear height indication (feet and inches) and then deduce that it's weight, since height and weight usually go together. :hug:

[edit]

Here's with a pixel shaved off the outer edge of each of the boxes. Seems to give it a bit more breathing room.

 

Wow ... :suprised:

I had no idea you were capable of a .dll hack, random. That's great work. I think all we need do then is change the Arial-10 reference to Priory-12 - that will make all .dll level font instructions change to Priory across the board (I asume), which combined with the stuff we have changed via mes files et al will basically just transform ToEE from an Arial font game to a Priory font game. I think that's all we want, in a nutshell, because Priory-12 is bigger and nicer looking, end of story.

You'll have to tell me exactly how to patch the .dll with your code. (Either that or I can post the most current .dll here and you can patch it and send it back.) I assume you're just using a hex editor?

One thing I notice is that in your last example the hover text is still Arial-10. Does that mean that there are different calls to fonts in the .dll for different things? If so we'll have to patch them all.

I don't think that the changed font will be an issue for low resolution players, as Priory-12 is only a two point increase - IMO it basically makes the game legible for high res players without making it absurd for low res players.

I also don't think using Priory-12 (as opposed to adding new fonts) is a big deal: it basically addresses all our needs anyway.

The Arial-24 font is already used for things like the stat increase interface, random encounter survival checks, and so on. We wouldn't need to alter that at all.

Good stuff.

 

I wouldn't worry about that either ... as we've already seen, our plate will full on this job just getting the basics switched over. Best to keep the focus narrow.

Not really. The truth is I don't know exactly what is missing, because the mes portion of all this stuff is so scattershot - only some things are controllable, some things control other things that don't make any sense, etc. What I do know is that we couldn't touch dialog and dice rolls, so I would focus on that initially. The Help system we actually can change on my end, but it has the added affect of altering the radial menu and hover text over the bottom right controls temporarily.

My thinking on this is to pretty much just change them all and eliminate Arial-10 from the game. Otherwise we don't really know what we're leaving in, and Arial-10 has little value anyway so we're not losing out on anything. As far as text overflow problems go, that's going to be another story entirely and will likely require art changes to the backdrops, unless you can figure out how to make them 'dynamic.' It seems virtually every UI operates differently however, so we have to be careful and take them on a step-by-step basis. Dialog for example: I patched the .dll with your code and observed the overflow problem you describe above, where it appears the game is still only accomodating the smaller Arial-10 in the dilaog box. If we can just make the boxes bigger that will take care of that, and it's possible we may be able to because the game seems to fluidly scroll them on the fly for dialog based on how much is there. Anyway, we can get into that more later.

No, let's put that out of our mind right now.

I use the highest supported resolution (1680 x 1050) and it looks great with Priory-12. So between you and me, we've got the extremes covered and needn't worry about it any further.

Is hover text dialog connected to the Help system somehow? I see from your pic that the hover text is now Priory-12.

Not really sure what you're asking, but any file in the installed game dirtectory will override anything that the game is pulling from the dats, yes.