USE:
1. Hovering the mouse over the spell's icon could display additional informations about it, normally seen only in spell book. That would save some time:
http://s9.postimg.org/esigr12zj/screen1.jpg
A nice little addition, because why not.
2. While fighting a "Boss" tagged monster (like Diablo, Butcher, Lazarus, etc.), its hp bar would be shown there. Wider, not to have the name cover the bar. It would also inform us when we are "in battle" with a boss, since going back to town and returing out of the monsters line of sight makes us be out of combat and that bar would dissapear out of there. Could be handy for monsters that we fight with using homing missiles and healing themselves (damn you Risen hero). Could dissapear after hovering our cursor over the monster as the usual bar is shown on top of the screen. Or there could be both of these at the same time so our eyes would have to do less job (keeping track on: potion = bottom of the screen, monster = center, monsters hp bar = top (normally, now would be also on bottom)).
http://s9.postimg.org/5450nw867/screen2.jpg
3. Solving a puzzle would record steps that weve made. I came with with this when raging over riddles to open some quest passages, i didnt like the idea of using the pen and piece of paper to write down combination ive already tried, or using my memory so much.
http://s9.postimg.org/f2pzadhlr/screen5.jpg
http://s9.postimg.org/56owaqbtr/screen6.jpg
4. How many times have you been in a situation when your character says "i cant carry anymore" and wont pick up this 6-slot item just because there is a single stupid scroll in said items way? Having backpack on the screen all the time could let us sort our stuff while walking and drink potions from it if needed when battling a boss. It would dissaper when the inventory screen is opened.
http://s9.postimg.org/eiay7oodb/screen3.jpg
5. Im not a fan of this one, but meh, i guess that is one of the easient to do out of the ones sugested here:
http://s9.postimg.org/4oyc8mbmn/screen4.jpg
Shows us all the spells assigned for the F1-F8 hotkeys. Could be useful for mages i guess. Or these could appear anywhere else after clicking some hotkey, or in the spell selection screen on top of the screen maybe. Idk but looking through all spells to find the one we have under our FX key can get some time, how about we get all F-ed spells in a pretty row?
REMOVE:
Now this is where things get interesting.
Interface as we know it without the box: http://s9.postimg.org/qiwe8evrz/screen7.jpg
Having a monster on bottom of the screen would finally not be a bigger problem than having it above us.
The same but with parts closer: http://s9.postimg.org/kkn6bx273/screen8.jpg
Im a fan of this one. Keeps all the buttons and takes less space on the screen.
Extreme minimalistic: http://s9.postimg.org/z5496qx5r/screen9.jpg
Just look at this. Contains all the crucial informations while taking very little space. Its awesome and scary at the same time in my opinion because of lack of text. Going through the dungeon like this would ba amazing
I suppose all of us use hotkeys anyway (ESC for menu, I for inventory, C for char, etc) so there is no need to have the buttons for them on the screen. If someone forgets a hotkey he can always check it on Help menu by pressing H.Open all three of these images in bookmarks and select them one after the other, it could help you to compare differencies and decide which one you like most.
My suggestion:
Create a "Choose interface" option and two interface modes. Frist one would be normal, interface as we know it at the moment. Second one would be the one from three listed above, preferably the "Extreme minimalistic" one, for players who want to have their screen clean of useless buttons and covering as much area as it is possible while keeping important informations on it.
Player would choose interface mode as he chooses difficulty right now, before the game. On normal interface we could have one of the suggestions from USE section (or two, like improved spell desc and riddle hint) and the minimized interface would come from the REMOVE section.
I guess in Multiplayer only one of this interface modes would have to be avaliable for balance reasons (duels), but hey, multi is nowhere to be implemented in Belz so lets not think of that.
What do you think?
I never paid attention to that and thought that they are different with every game.
Belzeboobs
