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dev_todo:improve_client_ui

Client UI Brainstorming

Brainstorming for the client's user interface.

  • quickbar - A generic “quickbar”. (has slots which can contain items/spells/actions/etc)
  • magicmap - Ideas on how to display magicmaps to the player.
  • Keybinding Profiles - Switchable sets of keybindings.
  • New keybinding gui - better gui for keybinding (afaik, most players just use the commands)
  • Beter utilization at both low and high display resolutions
  • Better container handling
  • Better item/inventory interface
  • Compact/expand player stats in gui
  • themes
  • Coloring displayed protections (stat area/ possibly message text) based on status
  • More keyboard control for everything
  • Mood music. Some people used to choose the old dxclient win32 client specifically because it had music.

~For those interested, the old dxclient had many interesting and useful UI features (some of which are mentioned here). You need windows 2000 to run it (lol-VMware), and an old server version to connect to if you want to see anything other than the gui. You can download the old installer at http://web.archive.org/web/20031009043409/http://crossfire.real-time.com/clients/cfdx125.exe

Improvements to Client UI

The user interface of the clients seems a bit plain, and most actions are done through text commands and key bindings (sometimes confusing to new players).

Possible Ideas

  • Organize the spell list a bit. (its hard to find one spell in a large list)
    • Perhaps an expansion tree by |– spell category –> spell level –> individual spell
  • Some sort of “quickbar” which items, spells, and skills can be assigned to slots
  • Server-Negotiated menu, that can hold commands added with plugins.
  • Should provide menu items for many more of the commands so text interface isn't needed.
    • Configurable key bindings for these menu items allows same use pattern for experienced players
  • Add client side display of parties.
  • Add more virtual stats (bowmode, applymode, etc) so that client can be kept more up to date, as well as provide menus to change them.
  • Quit character menu item should probably be very clear that it means character will be destroyed and everything lost.
    • With a verification dialog, “are you really sure you want to permanently delete this character?”
  • The quit character, disconnect, and quit from client may need to be clarified. Disconnect should probably be 'disconnect from server', quit character should perhaps be renamed 'delete character' or 'kill character' so as not to be confused with the normal 'quit' menu item.
dev_todo/improve_client_ui.txt · Last modified: 2014/05/11 18:14 (external edit)