Legend of Grimrock 2 Shows Off UI Upgrades

[Andy Chalk]

Legend of Grimrock 2 Shows Off UI Upgrades

Legend of Grimrock 2 will sport an improved interface that makes character management and combat easier and more efficient.

The original Legend of Grimrock user interface was actually pretty good, and die-hard fans of the game (and old-school dungeon crawls in general) need not worry that the whole thing is being dramatically overhauled: it's not. It is, however, being tweaked and tuned a bit for Legend of Grimrock 2, both to improve on areas of weakness and to accommodate some of the changes in the sequel.

Looking at the image of the changed interface, it's clear that Almost Human hasn't reinvented the wheel, but there are some notable usability tweaks. Players will be able to cycle through the characters in their party using the arrows on either side of the portrait, and all important character information - stats, experience, food, health, energy, protection and evasion - will always be visible on the upper half of the character sheet.

Visually, little bits of color make the UI more appropriate for the sequel's outdoor environments, and race and gender-specific inventory background panels (by which I assume they mean the paper dolls) have also been added. Harmful and beneficial "conditions" will be indicated in the character portrait in the new game, so players won't have to pop into the stats tab to find out what's afflicting them.

Finally, the attack interface has been changed up to make the mechanical aspects of combat a little less trying. "We have also redesigned the attack frames so that the rune panel fits on the screen without hiding the little portrait and health and energy bars. It's a lot cleaner now, especially with multiple mages," the team wrote. "As a side effect the attack buttons are now a little bigger making it easier to hit them in the heat of battle."

It looks like positive changes all around - improving on the original without taking away from its character or dedication to the look and feel of the old-time RPGs upon which it's based. Do you approve?

Source: Grimrock.net


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[Demandred20]

This one do indeed approve of these changes. Especially the mage one. Trying to frantically push the right symbols when you are going down but that one fireball could save you from partywipe...yeah.

 

[RandV80]

Yeah I was able to handle my mage okay but it would have been impossible to use two of them. Looks like it may actually be passable here.

 

[viranimus]

Well I wasnt exactly a fan of the original UI, but it certainly wasn't bad. So improvement is always welcome.

For me personally I REALLY hope they allow a more customizable UI as a static UI in 5000x1000+ reso makes a UI driven combat system needlessly cumbersome. All I want is the ability to move all of the UI into the center and not screw with peripherial vision

 

[Fat Hippo]

I hope they change a few of the actual RPG mechanics as well. The original had a few extremely counterintuitive aspects, such as dexterity not affecting your ranged attacks at all, despite dexterity being increased by leveling your missile weapons. Instead, dexterity affected your dodging and accuracy of melee attacks, while ranged attacks always hit anyway. So if you kept leveling the dexterity of your archer, you'd end up with a bugger who might be bloody hard to hit, but hardly does any actual damage. In other words, he's pretty damn useless. And you're now on the 7th level of the game and have only just realized how hard you've gimped yourself, and oh my god this game is starting to get really hard, what the hell, screw this, I'm out. That was my experience anyway.

 

[Tastum]

The interface of the original REALLY turned me off even though I really like dungeon crawlers. I only played for an hour or two before quitting.

I was hoping they'd incorporate some way to use a gamepad, as that seems like something that would be ideal for this kind of game. You'd need a more complete UI rewrite than what's described here to make that happen, though.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

The interface of the original REALLY turned me off even though I really like dungeon crawlers. I only played for an hour or two before quitting.

I was hoping they'd incorporate some way to use a gamepad, as that seems like something that would be ideal for this kind of game. You'd need a more complete UI rewrite than what's described here to make that happen, though.

Really? I could see a gamepad being usable for something like Wizardry (if all the Japanese console versions are anything to go by, it is) but I can't see a real-time party based game working with a gamepad, myself. What did you have in mind?

 

[SonofaJohannes]

Misread it as Legend of Grimlock. Now I'm disappointed instead of excited for this game.

 

[Tastum]

Really? I could see a gamepad being usable for something like Wizardry (if all the Japanese console versions are anything to go by, it is) but I can't see a real-time party based game working with a gamepad, myself. What did you have in mind?

Well, remember I only played the game for about an hour or two, so keep that in mind. I also can't bring up the game for a frame of reference where I am right now. I'm the sort of person who uses the shell a lot in Linux and uses keyboard shortcuts everywhere. This makes me biased against games that expect you to do -everything- with the mouse, which Grimrock's UI seemed to do. On the other hand I get along just fine with games like Dota 2 and MMOs (with a lot of remapping)...

If I was trying to write a gamepad interface for a game like Grimrock, I'd try something like this:

D-pad / left analog stick would control movement, with shoulder buttons to turn.
Right trigger to switch between what character is being controlled
Left trigger picks up items - either for the character under control or for the first character with an available slot if full
For mages, input using the usual four right hand buttons would be something more like a rhythm/fighting game than the runes currently used. So you'd want to punch in combinations from memory, and earlier-game spells would have shorter strings to enter.
For others, you'd have a little more freedom to decide what button does what. I'd set up a skill bar MMO-style, where you'd be able to save 16 actions from the menu and then execute them with a two button combo. for example, XX swings my weapon, XY throws, XB executes such-and-such action that I gained from character customization, etc.
The inventory/controls menu would have to pause the game, and is a little bit beyond the scope of a forum post Surely you could do it better than Skyrim's, but I have to admit anything I can think of would be at least slightly awkward.

Where things break down would be interacting with environmental objects - pressing buttons, pushing things, stuff like that. I'm really not sure to do with this, but I'm hardly a professional game designer either. I'm certain you could do -something-.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Snippage

It's mostly the need to switch between the characters that would cause the most problems with me. It seems like side-stepping enemy strikes whilst swapping through the characters and setting up my attacks would be really awkward. Especially with the mages.

It could just be my playstyle, though.

 

[Azuaron]

Now if only they let you switch through characters with a keyboard command...

 

[Infernai]

Misread it as Legend of Grimlock. Now I'm disappointed instead of excited for this game.

I know that pain my friend. I know that pain.

 

[Clovus]

The interface of the original REALLY turned me off even though I really like dungeon crawlers. I only played for an hour or two before quitting.

I was hoping they'd incorporate some way to use a gamepad, as that seems like something that would be ideal for this kind of game. You'd need a more complete UI rewrite than what's described here to make that happen, though.

Well, the UI was limited on purpose. Using a gamepad would be similar to allowing keyboard shortcuts for all the actions or for switching characters. The entire fighting system was built around having the player fumbling about clicking on things in one area of the screen while keeping an eye on the main screen so that they can use their other hand to keep strafing around to avoid getting hit and getting in position to get a flanking hit.

I was a bit worried when I saw that the UI was being overhauled, but the changes they talked about sound great. I had a good time with Grimrock, although I did wimp out when I hit the big blue lizard difficulty spike near the end.