New quest log

Hello, I would like to propose a new design for quest log. The original one is quite simple, not really useful and can be easily glitched by long quest descriptions.

The very important feature for large maps is to show where the quets is actually located. This cna be done on a large (twice as original) minimap and indicated with some little icon.

Also, modern games usually have extended and permanent quest log, which saves all the progress about it and not only one sentence. It could be used to display some graphics, too - like needed objects and rewards. Also, potentially it could allow some more advanced storytelling than bring-that-and-forget.

Here’s quick sketch of what I have in mind:

Thoughts? Anybody care to help?


Wide areas of text are usually hard to read - long lines require a lot of eye movement. Maybe It’ll be better to re-align screen like this:

-----------------
| Map   | Desc  |
--------|  rip  |
| List  | tion  |
-----------------

Another interesting idea is to use this dialog to show main “quest” as well - victory conditions. So “Defeat all” will show all visible enemy towns and heroes, “Build grail” - town-destination and hero with grail (if any) and so on.

Take them from world overview window (“VwSymbol.def”).

This is what I miss a lot in Heroes, very good idea. I suggest to not complicate it with useless descriptions, as for custom maps a simple DL can show advanced features, as I did in TEW.

For random or basic maps it should simply have a small icon near each quest (log), click on it will move view on quest hut or guard. In Heroes it is very frustrating to have to bring some centaur axe, but have to scroll all map several times until find the specific seer hut.

Maybe use Glowing Sparkles animation on top each item needed for any quest? (so if some Seer Hut needs Centaur Axe all Centaur Axes on Adventure Map would be marked). Also Ready status is welcome (ie. if hero find the item for Seer Hut it will show it). Also “New” status for Quest Log button would be nice (Phasing Colors via Pallette for just the button or use new DEF frames, if Quest Log contain any unreaded information).

Since I’m a bit bored with coding right now…

Map may have clickable icons to find questgiver or destination(s) (e.g. monster to kill). I’ve also tried to increase its size but it doesn’t feels right imo.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/22372764/vcmi/dialog-quest.png

Simple, but nice. Thank you very much.
If you don’t like large adventure map, it’s up to you. I just though it would be handy with maps bigger than 144x144.

Not sure about info bar at the bottom, can hardly find a use for it. Or maybe it could display some info about objects pointed on minimap?

I’d like to organize it as in H5, where mapmaker may add text and goals to quest log via scripts.

Big map is a nice functionality but 288x288 map looks bad on this small 640x480 dialog. Should work as extra feature for high-res UI at some point though.

Nice idea about infobar - apart from useful tip it may also indicate that icon is clickable. And don’t forget that exit buttons have tooltips so infobar won’t be wasted anyway :stuck_out_tongue:

This picture doesn’t work in game either, do you need to update with this one:

Or just allow player-recolor function to accept pictures with more than 8 bit depth.
QuestLog.rar (94.8 KB)

Here it is: