I'm not used to working with elder scrolls fans. I have modded for fallout for years and never seen such negativity for my work contained on two pages in a row.

I simply said get used to it because I honestly didn't know how to react to the rhetoric being used. The icons follow a style the team likes and frankly all I'm hearing is "more cletic" and frankly theres nothing cletic about the UI imo sans the pointer and the menu arrow.

For what it's worth, I'm 100% behind your using whatever icons you want to use. I have no problem at all with your response re: the icons. I'd still like to know what replacing them with my own would involve, however. That my tastes differ from yours shouldn't be taken as negativity

Mate, it's not negativity, it's feedback, which is what I assume you expected to get when your work got posted in these forums with the encouragement to "post ideas and suggestions". Try to understand where people are coming from and accept other viewpoints, especially if an alternate viewpoint is coming from a wide range of different people. We have all conceded your icons are nicely done, but we don't think they fit the Nordic/Celtic theme of Skyrim and in order to appeal to a wider audience, i.e. us, you might want to fix that. Nobody is flaming you. Chill out and listen to what people have to say instead of just dismissing criticism and pouting, which is what it seems like you're doing here.

EDIT: Also, the fact that there is nothing celtic or nordic about Beth's default UI is part of the problem for some people. >.>

Sadly its not as easy as overriding .dds files. You'd need to import vectors with a flash program.

Edit: The icon style and many icons themselves are based on previous TES UI elements. I'm aiming to fit the elder scrolls as a whole and not earth based cultures.

Apart form the game being set in an ENTIRELY fictional land AND time....
The /only/ thing about Morrowind and Oblivion's UIs that made them look "celtic or nordic" was that they were brown and looked as if they were on parchment, not grey and transparent.

These comments and suggestions come across in a very arrogant and deconstructive way.

It has more to do with the entirety of SKYRIM's setting, influences, and atmosphere than Morrowind or Oblivion's UI. O_o

Yes, Skyrim's setting is celtic and nordic. It may be fictional and fantasy, but there are obviously extremely heavy nordic and celtic influences in this game.

I also fail to see how our comments or suggestions were arrogant or deconstructive. By that logic, the only constructive criticism is "Wow that's flawless!"

By your logic you should've moved on by now.

Well the plan is to have the resources (like icons for example) in a shared library so they can be used across multiple menus. This should make it relatively easy to change them in one place.

Will you release sources when it's near completion?

i.e. when there are just little bugs to iron out

Thinking about it, I suppose if you're used to a different mod community, we might come off sounding really opinionated. It isn't intended to be rude; most of us really are trying to help. It's a bad idea to come round here asking for critique and expecting no negative comments.

I can see where the influences from these icons come from, but the thing is these menus are very different from the menus we're used to. I've seen them described as more fitting of a sci-fi setting than a fantasy setting. I happen to love that, but beyond TES games I've never been much of one for fantasy. These icons have a certain charm, and I can see where they'd fit much better in one of the older games. The main thing that makes them stand out to me is, they're really curvy while the menus themselves are made up of mostly sharp angles and slight curves.

The other concern I have regards the icons in a way, but has nothing to do with their design, but their placement next to every item. If I'm browsing the potions I don't need a potion bottle next to every item to tell me they're potions. It seems kind of odd to have those still included in any section but the 'all' and 'favorites' sections, and even then were it optional I'd turn it off there (I can see the point of them being there, though, so having that as an option shouldn't be any big concern).

That UI is so purdy I'd have six with it.

But seriously, it's looking great so far.

I appreciate that. As I've said the icons are mimicking a style of UI Icons from Oblivion and Morrowind. If anyone is interested I can display more of these "inspired icons" in HD so they can compare them to similar icons in previous TES games.

The plan is to release them once the first version is uploaded on Nexus.

This will change, we already have a lot more icons for different types of potions, different weapon types etc, just haven't integrated them yet beyond simple testing.

I think the icons look fine, honestly. I love this entire UI and I want it so bad =P

Although the icons could be more... Skyrim themed, it simply looks amazing. I'm looking forward to downloading it.

this looks fantastic ! nice work downloading this when it comes out. can i suggest that you include an organized container UI too if its not planned already

The menu needs more curves. Too many angles is boring. Drawing a bunch of straight lines on the screen and saying "Oh look, it's done" is kind of easy, but it doesn't do much for aesthetics. Look at architecture, the most interesting buildings always have curves. http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/flw/guggenheim03.jpg, and http://www.archithings.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/Tower-Gate-Capital-Abu-Dhabi-4.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-5Cl9WHU-Uo/SgqpyS5CjeI/AAAAAAAAESk/5SCi-g9M7do/s400/dubai+(9).jpg http://www.washroom.co.uk/images/news/Aldar_HQ.jpg. You can't honestly tell me that those are buildings aren't as nice to look at as http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HPPzDQtmyJQ/TndUURo6gEI/AAAAAAAABtA/lsXoFgnbYGk/s1600/world-trade-center-before8.jpg.


To this I must point out that, when made possible, each icon can represent the slot that the items uses. Rings, amulets, armor, boots, sword, knife, bow, etc, etc. So having a spot for them is a good idea. Plus, I do believe that it's bad design to have inconsistent implementation, ie what you suggested in having them in some menus but not others. I'd rather have useless icons in some menus than have them in a few, but not others. I do agree that, when possible, a way to turn off certain elements would be nice.

EDIT: So, some of my stuff has been addressed already, but that happens sometimes when you take time to put thought and research into a post.

Yes, curves can be nice, but the problem is that nothing else has them so they feel out of place. Were the rest of the UI redesigned to have more curves, they might fit. It's more an issue of consistency.


I get this. I think part of my issue is I don't get why people want the individual icons beside things back, but I suppose my mind just processes things different as to where I don't use them for navigation.

This looks excellent. The layout icons everything, great work

So what is meant by celtic looking, colour ? style? Serious question I'm not being snide. I detested the ui in Oblivion, but liked Morrowinds, but skyrims is the worst I've ever seen.

Celtic is generally used to describe an artistic style, as seen http://images.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1378&bih=772&q=celtic&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2&oq=fallout&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1003l2097l0l2194l7l6l0l1l1l0l219l664l2.2.1l5l0.

And described by Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic.

I would rather have functionality first rather than trying to "localize" the UI so it fits in more cleanly with the world. A first pass on just getting something to show more information at once will expose the limitations and requirements of getting that far, which is important to find out sooner rather than later.

So, in this case, I say leave the skinning (and the complaints about skinning) for later and just try to make the most usable, PC-esque, non-console-limitation-ridden UI possible.

Looking good guys keep it up!
Loving what I've seen so far, icons aren't really an issue for me, main thing I want is an efficient reliable and working menu designed for pc gamers. Which is exactly what this sounds and looks like it will be. Will definitely be keeping an eye on this!

Hear hear!!

What?! Schlangster, Gibbed, and T3T working on TES? I never thought I'd see the day.

It looks amazing, simple as that (don't change the icons, they're incredibly well done. In today's vernacular I would even go so far as to say "Fornicate with those persons full of icon hatred" )

Really looking forward for the first release!

I′ve stopped playing Skyrim until the first UI-Mod comes out, so maybe I won′t have to wait long to continue.