Character Planner - New Interface Ideas

[Zistra]

And, maybe I'm thick, but I don't really get how the skills section is going to function. I can see where you would have the totals of each available, but not sure about displaying how much of what taken at a given level.

This is just a skills display panel. The skill input window hasn't been posted yet.

[Zistra]

But if I put in a tome at level 7 but I ate it last life, how does the planner know at which point to add it to the ability? There isn't a slot for that, as the Past Life column doesn't look as if it's editable. Which is why I figured that just letting the planner apply the points as it goes through is easier, than a player needing to constantly reference when the tomes apply and when they don't.

Ron touched on this, but in case it wasn't clear, past life tomes are entered on the Past Life screen rather than here (and displayed here). This area is solely for current life tome entry.

[Edit] Past life Tome application will be automatically handled by the planner (in specific contrast to the old planner). All you need do on the new version is indicate when you ate the tome. If it was in a past life, the planner will automatically increment the stat on each relevant level (At the beginning of L3, L7, L11, L15, L19 & L23) up to the value of the tome. Obviously for current life tomes, it applies the full bonus at the level you indicate that you ate the tome AFTER the levelup metrics (e.g. a +3 tome eaten at L12 doesn't affect feat prereqs until L13).

[Zistra]

Perhaps as part of the past life screen there could be a tome listing and it would auto fill in the areas on the Tomes list on this page and grey out the level boxes to avoid any confusion. If the player eats a larger tome later it could be added in a box that is still actionable. This way the planner knows which way to apply the points, because you're right it does make a difference.

Greying out the tome values superseded by past life tomes is a suggestion I hadn't seen elsewhere and seems like a good one.

[Dragon.Star]

The big differences with just labels are visual (much less chaotic), space (even a little less may be important when you get to the skills screen), and the size of the click area (the entire label instead of just the tiny icons on each side of the number). [Edit] Also the lack of need to move the mouse at all when switching from incrementing to decrementing is a plus.

Are we talking about the Tome Boxes or the Actual Ability Create left/right icons. I was mainly talking about the Tome Boxes?

[Zistra]

Are we talking about the Tome Boxes or the Actual Ability Create left/right icons. I was mainly talking about the Tome Boxes?

We were specifically talking about the 'Level you ate the tome' boxes. However, it seems to me that for consistency, the Ability and Skills input screens (and any other similar) should use the same system.

[Edit] I went back and corrected my post from 'on each side of' to 'beside' because I wasn't looking at the screen at the moment I made that post. Apparently I didn't fix it quick enough. Sorry.

[EllisDee37]

On a superficial note, I'm digging the new color scheme. I like it.

[Zistra]

On a superficial note, I'm digging the new color scheme. I like it.

They've suggested it will be customizable and that you will be able to save and trade 'skins'.

[Edit] Not necessarily on initial release.

[EllisDee37]

Yep, I remember.

Looking back at page 9, I see it's not actually a new color scheme. It's technically the same colors as the original screen mock-ups.

However, the look now is much more polished, and the colors work much better now. Either way...pretty!

[EllisDee37]

Super minor point: On the feats summary area on the main form, at the bottom you have three buttons: All Known, Granted, and Selected. I would swap All Known and Selected, so that the order reads Selected, Granted, All Known. Then I'd default that to always show Selected unless manually changed by the user.

Not a big deal either way. In the many builds I've prepared using the planner, I've never once cared about granted feats. Some build rely on granted feats, of course, like getting the TWF line for free on the tempest trapmonkey. But in terms of putting it together in the planner, I've never found granted feats relevant.

[Zistra]

Super minor point: On the feats summary area on the main form, at the bottom you have three buttons: All Known, Granted, and Selected. I would swap All Known and Selected, so that the order reads Selected, Granted, All Known. Then I'd default that to always show Selected unless manually changed by the user.

Not a big deal either way. In the many builds I've prepared using the planner, I've never once cared about granted feats. Some build rely on granted feats, of course, like getting the TWF line for free on the tempest trapmonkey. But in terms of putting it together in the planner, I've never found granted feats relevant.

Lol.. I specifically disagree. Particularly for newbies, having it show all the feats they get as the default seems wise. Clicking to see the ones you picked is easy enough, and this isn't where you pick'em anyway.

[Ron]

They've suggested it will be customizable and that you will be able to save and trade 'skins'.

[Edit] Not necessarily on initial release.

Yes, this is all true. The majority of the work for the skinning system is done. Some of the screens you see in the screenshots are already using it (others are not, they need to be hooked into the system, the initial setup of which can be a bit tedious). At the moment, what you see is our default (what we are calling "Factory") skin. On top of that there will be a general skin setting you (as the users) can modify (so if you don't like the blue headers, you can change them to green or fusia or whatever all at once). Finally, on top of THAT, there will be specific settings you will be able to change (e.g. if you want to change the main screen "Feat" panel background to orange while leaving all the other feat panel background as default, you will be able to do so).

The first layer is operational now. The second we intend to have operational by late alpha or early beta. The final will be operational by late beta. At this point, implementing them is quite simple. All the hard work has been done already. Really, mostly it's going to be a matter of getting a UI for it put together, that's probably the hardest bit left to do.

My intent is actually to extend this to allow you guys to move/resize panels around, and even to the internals of the panels themselves (perhaps even extending to adding new fields and taking other out). Although that part of it will perhaps not be available until after we finish beta.

[Ron]

Additional Stats still needs BAB. Will we be getting AC breakdowns like in-game? And Spellpower/Attack speed (Melee & Ranged)/Doublestrike/Doubleshot, etc too?

Things that I noticed were that there currently is no MRR section in defenses. Ofc, that hasn't been implemented yet and you probably have plans, but just thought I'd throw out a reminder.

Yeah, the "Additional Stats" panel is completely unfinished right now. Much more will go in.

The old planner was clearly geared more to new players... the lack of much past life functionality beyond picking the feats and getting the stat points alone suggests that. I think the new planner will be better for both.. streamlined and with all the multi-life functionality that will make it quick and easy to use (and play with.. 'what if' scenarios) for experienced players as well as showing the outcomes of every choice as they are made for the newbies. The biggest thing I wonder about for newbies is flow.. is there a mechanism to make sure they've touched all the bases?

This is more of a function of the "Past Life" system didn't exist in DDO when the planner was first built than it was any attempt to make the planner "newbie" friendly. And trying to shoe-horn it in after the fact was **** near impossible given the way our classes were set up.

Now, don't get me wrong about this, I'm proud of all the versions of the planner, it's a good bit of code. But at the time it was first created (something like 8 years ago?), I was a relative newbie at OOD/OOP, and it shows in the codebase. The version you guys have now (4.xx) has had a LOT of stuff tacked onto it that it was never initially designed for, and because the classes weren't laid out in the best way (Object-wise), it was becoming increasingly fragile. One of the main reasons I personally was open to a full rebuild was to really future-proof the code, make it nice and robust and very Object oriented so that if something changed or needed to be added, we could do so with out breaking 3/4 of the systems. I hope we are accomplishing that goal. I think we are.

And also to tackle a few things that always bothered me (use of png files rather than bmp so we had true transparency in the graphics, moving away from text based data to something more robust, etc) that we couldn't fix in the 4.xx series. All this of course allows us to design the new planner with all the current systems of DDO in mind (past lives, proper handling of tomes, iconic classes, destinies, robust equipment lists, and so forth).

[EllisDee37]

Out of curiosity, they've already thrown you for the first big loop with the universal harper tree. On a scale of 1 to 10, how much of a total PITA would that have been to implement in the 4.x version, and how much of a PITA was it to implement in the new version?

[Ron]

I'm not going to say it is impossible in the old version. But you notice we aren't doing it. It's one of those things that would be a whole lot of work that would end up breaking a lot of code. That's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say the code was getting increasingly fragile.

We haven't started coding the enhancement system in the new version yet. But it really ought to be no big deal. If an enhancement is an object, and the trees themselves are objects, they really shouldn't care about what classes/races can use them. That's not their job (from an OOD point of view). Properly coded, even if this change hit us after we had finished the system, it would not be any problem at all. I'm not sure yet how Dragon is planning on implementing enhancements yet, but if it's anything like the systems we've set up so far (and there is no reason it shouldn't be), then what enhancement trees go to which classes would probably be embedded in the data itself, and handled through some sort of tree collection class to be fed to the UI classes.

[Ron]

Hey gang, doing some work on the past life screens, specifically with tomes, and I have a quick question

Do skill tomes have names in the same way that ability tomes do? E.G.

Tome of Gainful Exercise (Str)

Is there something equivelent for Jump, Swim, UMD, etc? And if so, is there a list of them? I'm not seeing anything on DDOWiki.

[Psiandron]

Hey gang, doing some work on the past life screens, specifically with tomes, and I have a quick question

Do skill tomes have names in the same way that ability tomes do? E.G.

Tome of Gainful Exercise (Str)

Is there something equivelent for Jump, Swim, UMD, etc? And if so, is there a list of them? I'm not seeing anything on DDOWiki.

The way that I remember it and the way that this chart from the wiki store page presents it, I think that it's just Tome of Skill X +1-5.

Skill Tomes

Item	×1	×6	Benefits
Tome of Skill (+1 to Any Skill Except UMD)1	195 TP	895 TP	+1 min lvl 1; +2 min lvl 5; +3 min lvl 9; +4 min lvl 13 Bonuses from tomes persist through reincarnation. You may use more than one tome, however only the highest bonus will count. (Example) You buy a +1 at level 1, then a +2 at level 5, you would only get another +1 at level 5. Applies to one of the following ability skills: Balance, Bluff, Concentration, Diplomacy, Disable Device, Haggle, Heal, Hide, Intimidate, Jump, Listen, Move Silently, Open Lock, Perform, Repair, Search, Spellcraft, Spot, Swim, Tumble Applies ONLY to Use Magic Device.
Tome of Skill (+2 to Any Skill Except UMD) 1	295 TP	995 TP
Tome of Skill (+3 to Any Skill Except UMD) 1	495 TP	1795 TP
Tome of Skill (+4 to Any Skill Except UMD) 1	695 TP	2495 TP
Upgrade Tome of Skill (+1 to +2, No UMD)1	195 TP	695 TP
Upgrade Tome of Skill (+2 to +3, No UMD)1	295 TP	995 TP
Upgrade Tome of Skill (+3 to +4, No UMD)1	295 TP	995 TP
Tome of Skill (+1 to Use Magic Device) 2	695 TP
Tome of Skill (+2 to Use Magic Device) 2	895 TP
Upgrade Tome of Skill (+1 UMD to +2 UMD)2	495 TP

That's from the Wiki DDO Store page.

I hope that that helps.

Psi

Edit: Wow, that looked a lot better before I hit 'Submit'

[EllisDee37]

Not 100% positive, but I'm pretty sure that when my pally/rogue was collecting skill tomes from sagas last life, he got a Skill Tome of Open Lock +3, not a Skill Tome of Escape +3.

[Stoner81]

Skill Tomes have the exact same name as the skill that it applies to.

Stoner81.

[Ron]

Cool thanks guys. So I think we're gonna call them Skill Tome of Skill +X, (e.g. "Skill Tome of Open Lock + 3"). I think that ought to be sufficient.

I've run into a bit of a snafu with the ability tomes. **** Supreme tomes are throwing me off. We're trying to figure out how to represent those in the database. It's always something, lol.

[Tscheuss]

Cool thanks guys. So I think we're gonna call them Skill Tome of Skill +X, (e.g. "Skill Tome of Open Lock + 3"). I think that ought to be sufficient.

I've run into a bit of a snafu with the ability tomes. **** Supreme tomes are throwing me off. We're trying to figure out how to represent those in the database. It's always something, lol.

Can't you represent them as the six ability tomes? I mean, a Supreme tome is effectively just a bundle deal, right?