Now, how about a UI patch?

[atheniandp]

So there seems to have been progress in the AI department, but Rome II is still faced with other design problems, and one of those is the UI. We need a UI patch that reverts almost everything back to the Shogun II style UI. Rome II's UI is beyond hideous; it makes me nauseous. My eyes cannot tolerate it.

Further reading on the matter: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...-of-Shogun-2.?

A few suggestions:

-solid-colour, contemporary-style menus, not the translucent industrial grey that is so unfitting for Rome II
-get rid of the ridiculous encyclopedia and go back to the older info menus of previous titles
- make unit cards more aesthetically pleasing. They are hideous, even though I appreciate the attempt at making them in contemporary ancient style. Why weren't they inspired by actual Roman images, like that of Trajan's column?


If this game would be patched with an entire political/family tree system and an overhauled UI it would be very close to perfect.

[ABH2]

Well, there are some mods that have done some good work on UI. See my sig.

I would personally love to see the type in the thread here someone mocked up.

[atheniandp]

No UI mod has been able to even approach the quality level of Shogun's UI. Most of the UI framework is probably hardcoded. That's why it's imperative that CA does something to fix it. It looks like garbage, although I like the fact that there's no stupid "news" feature on the main menu.

Oh, and the twitch button is a horrible, horrible idea. That should be hidden somewhere in the options menu, not everywhere.

[stevehoos]

No UI mod has been able to even approach the quality level of Shogun's UI. Most of the UI framework is probably hardcoded. That's why it's imperative that CA does something to fix it. It looks like garbage, although I like the fact that there's no stupid "news" feature on the main menu.

Oh, and the twitch button is a horrible, horrible idea. That should be hidden somewhere in the options menu, not everywhere.

I agree, the twitch button placement is a very questionable design choice, as is the entire user interface, don't know who CA has doing this, but they need to look elsewhere in the future, one of the worst UIs in any game I have ever played.

[Evan MF]

The worst thing about the UI is it actually obscures your view. So not only are you getting an ugly UI, but it's demanding so much of your attention all the time, getting in your face. It's a major put-off.

[kamikazee786]

Thats all well and true, however we can't change the color of the ingame text.

I really want a Roman white marble looking UI which shows us the senate and levels approaching civil war, this would be a temporary fix while CA overhaul the politics system to make the game look amazing.

End product should resemble this in at least some way.






And yes im aware that this has been posted before, but if CA can not do this then the least i would expect is for them would be to change the text color to black, this would allow either modders or CA themselves to then to upgrade the UI with a solid white marble finish. People have already made mods for the UI however they cant get the marble look due to white text on white background being invisible !

There are is however a black marble mod but i think white would still be an improvement.

This would be for rome and greece however they should also make new UI's for the other cultures aswell.

[The Roman Republic]

So there seems to have been progress in the AI department, but Rome II is still faced with other design problems, and one of those is the UI. We need a UI patch that reverts almost everything back to the Shogun II style UI. Rome II's UI is beyond hideous; it makes me nauseous. My eyes cannot tolerate it.

Further reading on the matter: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...-of-Shogun-2.?

A few suggestions:

-solid-colour, contemporary-style menus, not the translucent industrial grey that is so unfitting for Rome II
-get rid of the ridiculous encyclopedia and go back to the older info menus of previous titles
- make unit cards more aesthetically pleasing. They are hideous, even though I appreciate the attempt at making them in contemporary ancient style. Why weren't they inspired by actual Roman images, like that of Trajan's column?


If this game would be patched with an entire political/family tree system and an overhauled UI it would be very close to perfect.

You can easily do 2 out of the 3 you list there on your own.

[riskymonk]

Seeing as though the AI is hardcoded and they replaced some of the staff members, it might be possible that the design team has also been replaced and hopefully they're working on minimising the UI and maybe even cutting down on pointless notifications.

[Epic28]

What's annoying with this design concept is that CA has created the UI to be minimized and hidden from the player. The UI tries to hide itself (transparency, all tabs can be closed/opened with +/- buttons, hide hover method of info). Its as if CA knew the UI was down right ugly and lackluster. But in the campaign game when you spend a majority of time using the UI for functionality it becomes a real draw back.

I don't want the UI to appear hidden because players NEED to view the UI constantly, I don't want to be forced to open up the clunky and horrible encyclopedia to see building phases. Building unit cards are a completely cheap effort as well. How much more unoriginal could they get, theres no visual representation of anything your building in the UI. The only sense of grandness is the Level I,II,III,IV icons changing.

[JRR]

@ Kamikazee786

I totally agree with your post. I saw that UI and politics stuff on the official forums and I hoped that CA would take notice, but alas they did not...

[PeonKing]

See, there's a pretty huge difference between what you're asking for and what patch 14 was. The AI needed to be fixed, it wasn't functioning properly in sieges by not utilizing the equipment it had at it's disposal. The UI changes you suggest are personal preferences for you. I don't particularly mind it, I liked Shogun 2's better, but it's not broken. It's not particularly difficult to figure out how to use, and it's not like it actually causes any problems in terms of speed and access, so there isn't anything 'wrong' with it, it's not aesthetically pleasing to you. That's not something that needs to be patched, that's just an artistic difference you have with it. One thing I could see as not functioning properly is the way the encyclopedia works, I seem to always encounter load times on it, it's so slow that I actually ignore it and try to work off of the tooltip stat windows, but that limits my ability to compare units.

Political/family tree patching is a different beast, but honestly that sounds more like an improvement for an expansion than a patch, since that's going to change the gameplay in a fundamental way. I would love to see politics be more than just some sort of sideshow you try to ignore.

[Ataegina]

- reduce the size of the units thing in battle (UI)........ when having 2 armies it takes half the screen.............

[rem123456]

Thats all well and true, however we can't change the color of the ingame text.

I really want a Roman white marble looking UI which shows us the senate and levels approaching civil war, this would be a temporary fix while CA overhaul the politics system to make the game look amazing.

End product should resemble this in at least some way.






And yes im aware that this has been posted before, but if CA can not do this then the least i would expect is for them would be to change the text color to black, this would allow either modders or CA themselves to then to upgrade the UI with a solid white marble finish. People have already made mods for the UI however they cant get the marble look due to white text on white background being invisible !

There are is however a black marble mod but i think white would still be an improvement.

This would be for rome and greece however they should also make new UI's for the other cultures aswell.

This would be SO AMAZING!!! I love it. I also want generals with lots of traits like in the original Rome. This added a lot of immersion for me. If those pics haven't been posted in the official forum then you should to make sure they see them.

[Hetairos]

Awesome thread, best suggestion.

There is one thing that destroys Rome II completely and its only one thing - the UI design. One of the things we will never understand. The UI doesn't suit the theme of the game, its not practical, it can't deliver information, it takes up the entire screen, it leaves unused gaps (unnecessary), it cuts out family tree, info and more, it limits buildings and trait display, it is tooltip heaven for tooltip enthusiasts apparently, it limits descriptions and therefore kills of any kind of educational possibility here. And not to mention that it is just incredibly ugly... and I mean really really ugly. Reaching its height of ugliness with the HatG DLC ^^ and last but not least its not moddable, you can only redesign its png's which again are recycled everywhere, so a real full scale UI redesign is not even possible.

What we need is either a new UI with a expansion (completely reverting to shogun II style) or modding tools that make it possible to mod AND redesign the UI properly.

[PointOfViewGun]

So there seems to have been progress in the AI department, but Rome II is still faced with other design problems, and one of those is the UI. We need a UI patch that reverts almost everything back to the Shogun II style UI. Rome II's UI is beyond hideous; it makes me nauseous. My eyes cannot tolerate it.

Further reading on the matter: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...-of-Shogun-2.?

A few suggestions:

-solid-colour, contemporary-style menus, not the translucent industrial grey that is so unfitting for Rome II
-get rid of the ridiculous encyclopedia and go back to the older info menus of previous titles
- make unit cards more aesthetically pleasing. They are hideous, even though I appreciate the attempt at making them in contemporary ancient style. Why weren't they inspired by actual Roman images, like that of Trajan's column?

If this game would be patched with an entire political/family tree system and an overhauled UI it would be very close to perfect.

A patch is supposed to fix a problem, not appease to people's taste. You are free to mod the game to have what you want in UI.

[priam11]

This. We can all be art critics when we want.

The only functional issue I have with the UI is the unit cards are too big in certain situations and can take up too much of the screen.

[Causeless]

A patch is supposed to fix a problem, not appease to people's taste. You are free to mod the game to have what you want in UI.

The UI is barely moddable. It's essentially a colour change and icon changes, at most - the underlying shape and form of the UI is not able to be changed, despite the fact that the UI is probably what limits other areas of the game (for example, limited building slots in cities)

And no, patches aren't only to fix a problem. The vanilla game mechanics have been vastly changed and (in my opinion) improved, despite not really being a bug. There's been a whole lot of rebalancing and the addition of new features, such as the formation attack button, the addition of seasons and wonders, several expansions to faction rosters, unit numbers on unit cards... to say patches have only fixed bugs and problems is shown wrong by evidence.

I don't expect a UI overhaul, but I definitely hope for one. The currently bland grey blob isn't enjoyable whatsoever. It feels like an artificial method to access the game, rather than part of the game itself.

[alQamar]

So there seems to have been progress in the AI department, but Rome II is still faced with other design problems, and one of those is the UI. We need a UI patch that reverts almost everything back to the Shogun II style UI. Rome II's UI is beyond hideous; it makes me nauseous. My eyes cannot tolerate it.

Further reading on the matter: http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...-of-Shogun-2.?

A few suggestions:

-solid-colour, contemporary-style menus, not the translucent industrial grey that is so unfitting for Rome II
-get rid of the ridiculous encyclopedia and go back to the older info menus of previous titles
- make unit cards more aesthetically pleasing. They are hideous, even though I appreciate the attempt at making them in contemporary ancient style. Why weren't they inspired by actual Roman images, like that of Trajan's column?


If this game would be patched with an entire political/family tree system and an overhauled UI it would be very close to perfect.

I would love to see a patch something like this :
http://forums.totalwar.com/showthrea...gn-Concepts%29

but to be honest we have more urgent issues in the game than the UI, while UI improvements are still a valid concern for many fans.

[baptistus]

To be honest I don't know a lot of games which really change the UI with a patch.

And no, patches aren't only to fix a problem. The vanilla game mechanics have been vastly changed and (in my opinion) improved, despite not really being a bug. There's been a whole lot of rebalancing and the addition of new features, such as the formation attack button, the addition of seasons and wonders, several expansions to faction rosters, unit numbers on unit cards... to say patches have only fixed bugs and problems is shown wrong by evidence.

The OP seems to imply that the UI is not good, so he attacks the OP. There is nothing more to understand with him.
fanboys exist.

[alQamar]

To be honest I don't know a lot of games which really change the UI with a patch.


The OP seems to imply that the UI is not good, so he attacks the OP. There is nothing more to understand with him.
fanboys exist.

I can give you two examples of my games where the UI has been improved and reworked by patches, some aspects more drastically like in Eador and in some aspects more in terms of the accessibility:

Civilization V
Eador - Masters of a broken World