Interface Improvements

There will be a number of improvements in the user interface in v2.2.

Descriptions in The Message Window

The little description panel that monsters and items have that describes them is very small. There is a lot of other information that needs to fit there. In previous versions I have even enlarged the entire panel, but still it’s not enough. Often descriptions are truncated and some flavour text is even missing. Well, I realized there’s a perfect solution that both makes more space in the target/item windows and allows much more space for textual descriptions. Look!

Item and monster descriptions are now in the “message” panel

Since there is now so much space it also give me an opportunity to add things in the descriptions I didn’t previously have room for, as well as adding more flavour.

The drawback might be that you don’t see the latest messages while doing this. But I don’t feel that that is a problem as they are available as soon as you exit your inventory or examining a monster.

Clearer Alerts

The message window blinks whenever there’s a message that is more important to see. However, it can sometimes be hard to see which message was intended for the alert.

The alert now removes all other text, centers the message in the message window like this:

Clearer alert

Better Prompt

Finally, the prompt previously asked you to press ‘y’ to confirm actions. This could be confusing, especially if you didn’t see it (any other keypress would cancel the action). It also forces you to move your hands from the default keys.

The prompt is now instead a menu in which you can select yes or no. It is harder to miss, and easier to use.

prompting with a menu

Less Clutter

Some new players have been complaining that TGGW is showing too much information. I can certainly understand how it is hard to filter out relevant information for a new player, but I still want to keep the mechanics completely transparent and visible. However, not all information is relevant at all times.

For example: a rat have 0% armour and 0% block, it resists only cold and have no other resistances and vulnerabilities, they don’t have a ranged attack and does not use magic points… so why show them? The game will now only display non-zero values when examining a monster for a much more focused overview:

Only the important information about a rat is displayed.

This also helps in emphasizing a monsters abilities, strengths and weaknesses as it is less likely to “disappear” in the clutter. A related function is to semi-hide all attributes that are currently at zero for the player in the attributes panel. This should help the player to focus on what is important. I am consider to have this function optional though, not sure everyone would be happy with this.

Only the relevant (non-zero) attributes are displayed in a bright colour.