Not necessarily a thread saying I will be doing it, more to start discussion on it. And maybe when I get home from work the interface will have been upgraded (that would be nice).

Anyway, extracting the Interface.bsa yields some txt files and some swf files. Haven't experimented with the swfs yet (might be possible to reverse engineer them, alter them, and re-export as swf). The txt files have the button mapping info.

This is one of the only mods I can think of that could be created without the TESCS, so anyone who is itching to try something might want to have a crack at it (if not, then I might later today)

Looking at the Hardware Software issues forum, there are quite a few complaints about the UI on PC, so, despite what Todd's been saying about the ui for pc being better, it might not actually be.

Calling Darn!

Personally, I wouldn't trust complaint threads for another 1-2 weeks. There's bound to be a flood from folks who don't have a clue what's going on or those that just want to have fun making it seem like a good game is really not. It was like that with FO:NV and I had none of the issues on launch that everyone was complaining about for the first week. The only issue I had was a random crash after a 6 hour run (in a single session without shutting the game down) which somehow corrupted my install and I had to reinstall as a result. Though it was made by Obsidian, the point still remains that too much faith shouldn't be put into these complaints so early on.

The UI for PC is atrocious, you can't even use the mouse in most of the menus, you have to use the A/D or the arrow keys and enter. This definitely needs to fixed, hopefully it won't be too difficult to mod.

Atrocious is actually putting it lightly. Freaking consoles, freaking everything up....

For those that haven't played yet, the interface for PC is bad. The mouse barely works on it (you click on one thing and it selects another because it doesn't change to what the mouse is over a lot of the time). Creating my character was a pain. It's just... very unintuitive. You kinda need three hands to navigate the menus properly.

It's still playable, but it is annoying when you say something in dialogue that you didn't mean to say, and take five times as long as you should to do things because of the way the menu works.

In the beginning, there was darkness and the void.

Then came DARN, who in seven days, brought light into the night.

We pray, O JARL, for your blessing once more.

Fix this interface!

He disappeared without a trace in january (i thnk) and hasn't been heard from since. I don't think we can count on Darn here unfortunately...

OMG this is exactly the problem I was talking about Months ago.. and its in swf format ? Flash? is there a freeware flash editor out there like the gimp (2d) or Blender for (3d) ?

Damn it I have to wait another 6 hrs untill my copy De-crypts to check


Help us Obi-DARN Kenobi your our only hope!

Maybe he just went into some sort of hibernation mode?

There's an open source CLI one, but I can't name it off the top of my head

SWF is the compiled Flash format. This could be *extremely* bad for UI mods if the files are "protected" as there aren't really any fully working protected SWF decompilers. If anyone has the chance, please check if the .swfs are protected or not, as it will mean the difference between basically not being able to change the UI ever, and actually being able to fix it properly with relative ease.

I could be wrong about the decompilers, but I'm not sure there are even any for the latest Flash versions. It'd be nice if someone with more experience reverse engineering Flash SWFs could give us some insight into the state of the UI SWFs (whether they are protected or not, and whether or not we'll be able to get at them to fix things). But it's *seriously* not looking good at this point for the possibility of modding the UI (like...at all, ever).

are we talking about an Addon? or complete redesign.


What I think would be conservative and effective is

Inventory system stays as is, hovering mouse over Items you have not highlighted shows that object and its stats, so that you dont have to scroll through every freaking thing yeah?

The current UI is so bad that I feel awful asking modders to fix it for me.

What I SHOULD be doing is return the game to the store and ask for a refund until Bethesda patches it.

...

But Skyrim > principles

Yes, this is a high priority mod please!!!

I've yet to run into a menu I can't use the mouse in. Have you considered clicking on things before saying they don't work? Dragging them? Maybe trying them twice in case you missed them the first time? Even the "ENTER Accept TAB Exit" buttons work through the mouse when you click on them. The only thing I'd like to see a mod fix is the spacing - maybe make the text smaller, too.

I'm not exactly sure this falls under UI, but I hate the Favorites feature with a keyboard and mouse, can't wait for someone to mod in 123456 as hotkeys instead...

UI in Skyrim is driven by http://gameware.autodesk.com/scaleform, not exactly Flash, but close.

You can already do that, in the favorites menu highlight the item you want to hotkey and press a number key, 1-8 like in previous games.

Combined with the fact that you can navigate every menu in the game with your left hand.

TAB = Open Menus/Exit Menus

W & S = Up and Down

A & D = Left and Right

E = Confirm Selection/Equip (De-Equip) & Buy/Sell


I really don't understand why people are hating on the UI and menu navigation. It's pretty damn efficient. I feel the reason there's hardly much mouse support (or shoddy support) in the menus is because the mouse is extremely slow compared to keyboard navigation. Don't need to use arrow keys and enter.

I feel really silly admitting this, but I had hoped that when Darn disappeared, it was because he got hired by Beth on the low.

stoopid scaleform, not very scaleable if you ask me.

well the UI isn't very scaleable at super widescreen resolutions anyway.

I guess thats better than flash in terms of authoring tools.. Still not sure if theres a Freeware / Open source version of an editor

There generally always is. Now, how good they are is another matter. As an example, Gnash still doesn't work all the way and is an opensource version of Flash Player

For the time being simply forget you even have a mouse when navigating throught the menu. While this system may work with a pretty small inventory I fear things will get ugly once it begins to get big. Moreover turning the pc's most powerful tool when it comes to graphical interfaces into a liabilty is quite a feat.
Eargerly awaiting mods to fix this since designing an interface specifically for the pc version seems to be beyond the capability of a small studio like bethesda.