Tes4Mod:Mod Ideas/User Interface

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This article provides User Interface ideas, as part of the Gameplay section of the Mod Ideas article.

Contents 1 Lock down skill levels 2 Delay level-ups 3 Automatic Armor Repair 4 Improvement in Mercantile 5 Instant Right Click Selling 6 Scrolling spells 7 Automatic healing 8 Useful Telekinesis 9 Backup Management 10 Lighter corpses 11 Make corpses stay or go away 12 Make corpses decay over time 13 Alchemy interface remake 14 Murder Investigation 15 Lesser Spellmaking Altars 16 Decent Enchanting System 17 Disenchanting System 18 More Custom (Blue) Markers 19 More and Easier Hotkeys Functions 20 Clock 21 Map Marker Color 22 Mini Map 23 Reduce Spell Menu Jumble 24 Notebook 25 Arrows Inventory Tab 26 Keys Inventory Tab 27 Deleting Gates 28 More detailed map 29 Improved Alchemy Sorting 30 Armor on Hud 31 Carry Corpses 32 Sleep/Wait Overhaul 33 Investigate Creature/NPC

[edit] Lock down skill levels

Locking skills so that you cannot skill-up in them can make 'Efficient Leveling' less of a chore.

[edit] Delay level-ups

Allow character to sleep freely at anytime (even when next level pending), make level up an option.

• Sounds like something that can be done already. Perhaps if you could explain more completely?
  • As the level-up system is currently, when you actually "sleep" (in a bed) and you're ready to level up, the game will level you up. I believe he wants it to have a scripted dialog box pop up in this situation asking if he wants to level up. Yes, and he would get the normal level up screen. No, and he'll sleep as normal.

[edit] Automatic Armor Repair

Make it so that when you click on a repair hammer, it goes to automatically repair all your armor (losing hammers as needed) instead of having to click on each individual piece of armor multiple times. (the problem with this idea is that if you have too few hammers, least useful items may get repaired, and essential ones broken)

• A solution to this problem would be to make it to where it only auto-repairs if you have more than, say, 10 hammers. That way, it'll auto-repair as far as it can, then you use the remaining hamers to pick and choose what to fix.

[edit] Improvement in Mercantile

Tedious negotiating gold piece by gold piece is not everyone's favourite way to spend hours at their console. Let haggling be done to establish a fixed rate with the store owner while the character is inside the store. Skill increase per "good rate" would be higher, and waste less game player time. This would still allow deliberate training to increase personality since haggling with the owner would be optional.

• The Morrowind Barter System : I hate having to sell items one at a time. The old system required more skill and jugdement, it is also more realistic.

[edit] Instant Right Click Selling

A simple mod idea that I would kill for - when you right click an item on the merchant screen, it automatically sells or buys ONE of the item without having to confirm the purchase/sale. When trying to level up my mercantile skill, it gets rather annoying having to click, slide the bar over, then click again.

[edit] Scrolling spells

Sure, the spells menu works quite well, but it really annoying having to go into the menu to select frequently used spells that didn't get room on the hotkeys. I'd love to see a mod that lets you scroll through your spells, preferably select ones, like when you switch weapons in FPS games.

[edit] Automatic healing

When there is no enemy around, there is a "fast healing" option, i.e. the time interval you lose with healing goes fast time (the game automatically calculates how much time would it take you to heal, heals you, fast forwards the time as in waiting/sleeping and calculates how much Restoration skill you have got with this healing session). I think thats what waiting was made for. You can either wait an hour to restore health and magicka etc, or spend the time doing it yourself to get your restoration skill up.

[edit] Useful Telekinesis

I would like to see someone utilize the havok physics engine to make it so any objects moving at high speed would be able to do damage. I know that the game already calculates velocities but with exception given to arrows fired by a bow, absolutely no projectiles work in the game. It would be great if you could actually make anything into a projectile by using telekinesis to hurl objects all around. I have spent some time dropping warhammers and then flinging them at people to see if anything will happen, but no matter how hard I try the richocheting 80 unit warhammer just bounces and bounces. Speaking of its weight, having mass be part of the equation would be nice too, like a silver nugget in all of its .2 or so glory would be considerably less harmful than launching a daedric cuirass.

• Interesting idea. How about adding this? If other objects could cause damage using TK or just throwing them then why not add a spell designed special for object launching TK attacks or a "TK Disarm" spell? Watch those enemy weapons fly out of their hands undamaged! Oh! Maybe even "TK pickpocket"! A wealth of potential!

[edit] Backup Management

I would like to see a utility that lets you drop files into your data folder, and when it needs to replace something else, makes a backup. So basically you can restore backups by having the program delete the files copied and restore the replaced ones.

(Question to this: why do some mods need to overwrite files anyway? Why can't the mod ESP contain the files and refer to them, so that no replacement is necessary?)

You can include your own files into .BSA archives, however, there are some priority issues.

[edit] Lighter corpses

Make corpses lighter or easier to move with the drag key. This could be used for putting corpses in coffins and such.

A mod was made to make bodies easier to drag. However, there was a discussion about the possibility that the Strength attribute actually may determine how much weight you can lift. (I have tried this mod; it does allow for more movement, but in the wrong animals. Why can I toss a troll like a ball but only lift an imp's wing?)

Alternatively, allow corpse dismemberment for easy movement. There's nothing nicer than being able to put some heads, not just skulls, above your fireplace. There was a discussion about dismemberment here.

Would you really want Oblivion to earn an AO rating? The topless/bottomless women mod for Oblivion got it a M rating...

The mod is not what gave the game the M rating. It did, however, attract greater ESRB scrutiny, though, and the most extreme instances of violence and sexual themes got it the M rating.

I doubt that would affect the rating, even if Bethesda actually put it in the next game. The only reason that ot it M is that nudity is taboo in the gaming world. Extreme violence and gore, however, is not.

Example to reinforce the above position: Unreal Tournament has dismemberment, plus gibs.

[edit] Make corpses stay or go away

When I murder someone in the basement of Anvils haunted house I want that corpse to stay! Also, make arrows that are stuck in corpses stay there. On the flip side, it seems some corpses just never go away. 20 days into the game, and the first mudcrabs I killed after leaving the sewers were still there. I really miss the "Dispose of Corpse" option from Morrowind.

[edit] Make corpses decay over time

In one of the necromancer dungeons, there's the sound of flies buzzing. After a couple of days, there should be flies buzzing around corpses, and over time, they should decay, eventually becoming skeletons. Or if it's in a town, the watch should haul the bodies off to the morgue.

• There is a corpse decay mod that turns them into zombie bodies, then skeletons then ash, with the possibility of the zombies and skeletons reanimating

[edit] Alchemy interface remake

The way I see it is that a list of available potions shows up based of ingredients in the inventory. The list of potions would be dynamically changed after creating consequent potions. It would make alchemy soooo much easier! Can anyone do it?.

• I was a little confused by this (but eventually worked it out), so I just want to give the rest of you a hint: You list the potions you can make from your current ingredients instead of listing the ingredients. Great idea by the way.
• You'd have to offer a method of choosing which ingredients to use when you have multiple options available, so you don't end up making a lot of very heavy potions when lighter versions are available. (For instance, make a Restore Fatigue out of a Pumpkin and a Corn, then make 10 more out of Corn and Rice; now make one out of Corn and Rice and 10 out of a Pumpkin and a Corn. Assuming you don't advance an Alchemy level in there, the first method will leave you with a lot of VERY heavy potions; the second will leave you with much lighter ones that do the same thing.)
• In the same vein as the previous comment, you may also want to preserve more useful ingredients for later use in some instances. For example, I find Flax useful for my character, since it offers multiple effects that I use often like Feather and Restore Magicka and it's very light, so I try to keep a lot of those in stock for emergencies, and use up the less-useful and/or heavier ones first. So again, you'd want the ability to choose which ingredients you use for any given potion.
• Finally, this could get rather complex in terms of figuring out the 3- and 4-ingredient potions. You might well have hundreds of utterly useless combinations listed. All in all, it would be nice to have this option, but might well end up being unworkable in the end.
• A better way of doing it might be to have a list of effects, instead of ingredients or whole potions. Each effect would have 2 numbers next to it, the number of different ingredients that have that effect, and the number of total ingredients with that effect. When you select an effect, it would then give you a list of each ingredient that has that effect for you to choose. For example, say I have a sweetcake, some flax, some venison, a bog beacon asco cap, a stinkhorn cap, and 2 aloe vera leaves. My screen would read something like:

Effects	Ingredients
Restore Fatigue (2,3)	Sweetcake (1) Aloe Vera Leaves (2)
Restore Health (3,4)	Sweetcake (1) Aloe Vera Leaves (2) Venison (1)
Restore Magicka (3,3)	Flax (1) Bog Beacon Asco Cap (1) Stinkhorn Cap (1)
Feather (3,3)	Sweetcake (1) Flax (1) Venison (1)
Shield (2,2)	Flax (1) Bog Beacon Asco Cap (1)
Invisibility (2,3)	Stinkhorn Cap (1) Aloe Vera Leaves (2)

...and so on. That should be a bit more organized.

[edit] Murder Investigation

If you Murder someone in a city with no witnesses and you leave the body, the next day guards would find the body and start an investigation. If you are seen running from the scene guards will approach you and interrogate you. If your Personality/speech-craft is high enough you are given conversation options that prove your innocence, if you skill is not high enough, your lies can't persuade the guards and you get arrested. SO you should be able to move the bodies to hiding places(I.e places where NPCs don't walk by) and hide them, or if you have a spade, bury them. This would work with the lighter bodies idea. Also if you are seen carting a body you are chased by the guards.

• That actually sounds pretty interesting, seeing as it would create a real use for Speechcraft. When a guard approaches you, perhaps you don't have time to cast that Charm spell of yours, so you would HAVE to talk your way out of it.
• I would like to see a mod similar to this, to apply to all crimes that leave evidence, but aren't caught. Murder where you successfully hide a body is becomes an unsolved disappearance. When you commit burglary, they have a chance gathering specific pieces of evidence about the suspect and crime scene as time passes, with each crime getting a profile, and the closer each person matches the profile, the greater the "heat". Investigations end after a time proportional to the bounty at stake.

[edit] Lesser Spellmaking Altars

Make special "lesser" spell altars at every city mage's guild. These altars will only make spells from the guild hall's primary school of magic- i.e. the Anvil altar will only make restoration spells, etc. In addition, the spell altars will be limited to spells up to apprentice strength(25-49). Spells of greater power, and spells with multiple schools of magic will still need to be made at the Arcane University's Altar. I think that this will be a big boost to low level mages, allowing them more leeway in getting through their guild recommendation quests.

[edit] Decent Enchanting System

Where are the rings that can cast offensive magic? Why can you make a ring with a constant drain magicka, but not a constant restore magicka? Why only one constant effect per item? Why make it so difficult to use certain effects (like constant chameleon) on items? Its just silly that players with no willpower had to whine about it and get it removed. If you don't like it, don't use it! I hope they make the system fun again in TES V. I remember making a ring that allowed me to jump halfway across the map. It was great fun.

[edit] Disenchanting System

Is it just me, or does it suck that you can't remove enchantments you put on weapons or armours. This would also give some enjoyment to a previous wanted mod about empty staffs. But for something like a special weapon or armour (Umbra, or Brusef Amelion's Cuirass/Sword) that might have crappy enchantments, or just one enchantment and you'd like more on. I mean, BA's Sword is a 5pts Frost Damage. How exactly is that gonna help? Disenchanting it and putting on a 50pt Frost damage or something would be really useful. It'd cost something like a Greater/Grand Soul Gem with a Greater/Grand Soul in it to disenchant, but it's something you'd have to deal with.

• A Disenchant Spell mod exists.

[edit] More Custom (Blue) Markers

You might be able to add more blue markers to different locations by placing them on your map, then select one individually so your HUD compass won't be filled with blue markers.

[edit] More and Easier Hotkeys Functions

You have lots and lots of important items, spells, etc. you need to access them quickly. More hotkeys would be great. For example, the L2 + R2 (on ps3) would open up a small hotkeys window on top of the screen. You could scroll up and down for pages, and left right for different hotkeys. Sort of like Final Fantasy 11.

[edit] Clock

There are so many moments you need to know the time, and pressing T is blocked when monsters are near, that it would be nice to have a clock visible in the main screen. It might be nicest to make it configurable, e.g. only if you find and carry an item (e.g. pocket watch)

• You can access the time by looking at your map

[edit] Map Marker Color

Map markers change colour when you find a place, from light to dark. Map markers should remain light until you enter a place not merely when you find it. That way you can easily see which forts, ruins, caves you have cleared and ones you have merely passed on your way some place else.

The map markers gradually get darker as you get closer to your target, and they are at their darkest when you are closest, and they will lighten when you move farter away. In asking for this you might as well be asking the same question above yours.

The problem is that the marker actually has nothing to do with the interior cell. It's a point on the world map, and then there's a (probably globally defined) range around it at which you're considered to have "found" it. To link them to the actual dungeon that you can enter from near that marker, each one would need to be scripted, along with the corresponding door or interior cell. It's probably doable, but it's probably tedious work.

[edit] Mini Map

Of all the Morrowind features that were not included in Oblivion, I think I miss this the most. Some sort of small on-screen map that shows all the time, not just in menu-mode. This would be especially helpful in caves and dungeons and the like. Even better is if you could get the Detect Life spell to show little markers on the map, just like the detect spells did in Morrowind.

[edit] Reduce Spell Menu Jumble

Spell selections is a mess, even with BTMod (or worse). While you have "All", "Targeted", "Touch", "Self" and "Constant" spell tabs - it's just not enough. For instance, if your looking for a specific shield spell, dispel or detect life; you have to wade through several dozen spells - most of them inconsistently named (bought from different faction spell vendors), oddly categorized etc. It usually takes a long time before you find it unless you have the right spell hot keyed. There needs to be a mod that subdivides the spells within the tabs to the various schools they belong to. EG: Alteration, Destruction, Illusion, Conjuration and Restoration. Multi-discipline effect spells will have to be sorted to first spell effect it listed (a simplified work-around).

Alternatively, split the spells into "offence", "adventuring", "healing/boosters", "other" and allow for moving the spells between the groups. Lethal elemental storm, charm merchant, speed-up horse, all in the same "on touch" group make little sense.

[edit] Notebook

Like the journal but you can actually type notes into it. This is very useful for some things. Writing down the name of the merchant who has that weapon you can't quite afford. Extra info about quests.

• Or how about being able to use parchment and quills to write notes like the above.
• I was thinking about maybe a new alter-like desk should be made, where, you go, use and can write books. When you have finished, and you press "done" you choose what the cover should look like (the basic skins of the books I mean) and then when you go out of the alter, the book is sitting in front on the desk, or in your inventory. I just think it would be so much cooler to be able to make your own books and then place them in your house.
• This idea would be really easy to implement and I think it would add a great element of role-playing to the game. If you could write a book and some way to measure the quality of it (e.g length) would influence how much a merchant is willing to pay to buy it.

[edit] Arrows Inventory Tab

Seeing as over the game one accumulates many enchanted yet different arrows, it would be nice to have a separate tab (that you can disable or enable) for Arrows. It's a pain to have to scroll through tons of them just to get to your weapons (seeing as most of the arrows in the game begin with "A").

[edit] Keys Inventory Tab

We all like to keep hundreds of lovely weightless keys...but having to scroll through them is a pain. A separate tab for keys would be wonderful.

• A Keychain mod (also available at Planetelderscrolls) exists to put all your keys on a single "key ring".

[edit] Deleting Gates

When you close an Oblivion Gate, the marker on the map remains, and so it is difficult to remember if you've closed a certain gate before until you actually go there again. A mod to remove the gate markers when the gate is closed would clear the clutter up.

• Or maybe a new marker icon, something like the standard oblivion gate icon for the open gates, and the oblivion gate icon without the dot in the middle for the closed gates.

[edit] More detailed map

I'd like to see a more detailed in-game map with things like the back roads shown. And maybe add some colour while you're at it, like some of the colour map mods do. I can find a printable version of the back roads here on the UESP site, but that's not quite the same as having the in-game map show them.

[edit] Improved Alchemy Sorting

Although many mods implement the sorting of alchemical ingredients by alphabetical order or effects, there seem to be none which manage to do the following. I think it would be very useful if it could be implemented. A single container where you could store all your alchemical ingredients. When you equip a morter & pestle, the potion making wizard should access the ingredients inside the container, thus eliminating the need to have them in your inventory. This would address the problem of having to carry all ingredients you need on your person in order to make a potion.

[edit] Armor on Hud

I haven't seen this in a mod yet, but I think it would be useful to know how effective each portion of your armor is at a glance via some sort of a graphical indicator. A good representation (arguably ripped off from SiN) would be to show manniquine-esque display with all the armors depicted visually, colored from green to red, or blue for those who've repaired up to 125. No numbers, just visuals.

[edit] Carry Corpses

It'd be nice if you had the option to add a corpse to your inventory like the read/take or feed/talk options on books and sleeping people. I'd like to be able to take the corpses and add them as trophies to my various homes. Perhaps have them set up like mannequins where you can keep their armor on them or just take them in to your inventory without taking their inventory off of them.

[edit] Sleep/Wait Overhaul

It'd be awesome if you could wait for any amount of time like 1 hour and 20 minuets I want to be able to wait/sleep for anything from 1 minuet to a whole week or maybe even a month or year but I want to be able to wait very specific times and maybe even type how long to wait/sleep with the keyboard but I must be able to at least pick any exact time within a minuet.

This might actually be a pretty easy mod to make, if you can edit the wait screen. As for picking an exact time within a minute, that's not possible because the game doesn't measure any smaller than minutes, and Tamriel minutes are already fast enough. One real second is two Tamrielic minutes, I believe.

[edit] Investigate Creature/NPC

I find it tough to remember each creature/NPC's weaknesses and strengths. It would be great if instead of the "Talk" option, you get a "Investigate" option which will list the creature details and its strengths/weaknesses. This can even be a spell or a skill you get after you do a quest - Something like a hunter quest - get me 10 pelts or various animals and prove that you are a great hunter.

• Or a page new pape in the jornal about all the creature/NPC's which has there states and a pitcher of them?

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