dinsdalepiranha

I know this has been brought up on the Larian forums dozens if not hundreds of times in hopes of the official devs taking notice (with apparently zero engagement on their part), so I'm probably screaming into the void right now.... but we desperately need an option for making the UI bigger. I know there's mods to increase text size/change the fonts to something more readable, and that's all great, but I'm talking mostly about buttons and icons. This post will be divided into two halves, Part I (the screed), and Part II (the solution). Feel free to skip to part II if you don't wanna listen to my whiny diatribe. PART I - The Screed This is my first CRPG. I can tell that it's an amazing game and I want SO BADLY to enjoy it. But alas, I do not have the ability to play it on a 4K ultrawide monitor, while sitting with my face ten inches away from said monitor. And that is literally the ONLY way I can imagine the vanilla UI being adequate. I think the sheer number of UI improvement mods that already exist, is testament to that fact. Clearly, there's a lot of gamers with less-than-perfect vision, who've felt the need to ask for or create these mods. Yet for some reason, there doesn't seem to be a single mod that can uniformly increase the size/scale of the whole UI. Personally, I am splitting my playthrough between the Steam Deck (with a custom control scheme allowing me to take advantage of the mouse/keyboard UI, because the controller UI has its own litany of issues), and playing docked, on my 65" 1080p bedroom TV. When I'm in handheld mode, at the very least I can hold the Deck right up to my face in order to better read the microscopic icons (still not a pleasant experience) but on the TV, it's nigh-unplayable. The icons are the size of a literal thumbnail. If I can't find a way to change this, I'm afraid that I will be forced to give up on the game, and miss out on the 2023 GotY. Which would really, reeeeeeeally suck. PART II - The (proposed) Solution We need a mod that allows us to scale different elements of the UI (ideally, on an individual basis) both UP in size, as well as down. Currently, there's mods to make it SMALLER, but none to make it bigger, which is wild to me. Having more screen real estate doesn't mean dick if I have to strain my eyes in order to do any kinda of inventory management, or even to organize my hotbar. Ideally, I'd want the option to scale the hotbar up to 200% of its default size. I don't care if the icons end up looking low-res. I don't care how much of the screen the UI takes up, I just wanna be able to look at the icons and tell what they are AT A GLANCE. Same goes for the character sheet/inventory screen. I don't care about overlapping windows. I don't care about containers having a bigger grid size. I'm not averse to scrolling. I want icons that come closer to the size of those you find in games like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, etc. I don't care if that means I can only see 4x3 icons onscreen at a time without scrolling. I'll deal with that, if I can actually make out what the icons are. The aforementioned feature (UI scaling up to 200%) is the most important thing needed; however, there are some supplemental features that would make it even better. For example, being able to assign a hotkey that will, in the event of having multiple containers/UI elements open, allow you to flip through them, changing which window has focus and displayed as the top layer (basically the same way Alt+Tab works, but only affecting in-game UI elements). A hotkey like that could also be used to switch between the different sections (shutters) in the hotbar, since having the UI scaled that big would obviously make it difficult to show multiple sections simultaneously. This mod would hopefully be compatible with mods like Aether’s Immersive UI, so as to remove the scaled-up UI when it’s not needed. It also hopefully would operate independently from mods that change the font/size of various text in the game (mods like this), so that even with a scaled up UI, certain text could still be reduced (or made even larger) by utilizing a font-changing mod. Lastly, (and this might be the least likely to be feasible), it would be amazing if it were possible to use the keyboard keys to select different icons in the hotbar/inventory (similar to how it works in the controller UI), so that users would have the option of using the mouse cursor OR buttons to flip through their inventory (WITHOUT having the entire UI/control scheme switch to ‘controller mode’). I assume the only way to do that would be something that changes the x,y coordinates of the mouse cursor’s position in relation to the UI window, (i.e. calling the coordinates of [row 1, column 1], [row 1, column 2], etc). I’m no modder, but that sounds like a difficult thing to implement, even to my ignorant self, so I understand if that’s not really a possibility. But damn would it be sweet if it were. Maybe assigning a hotkey that you hold down, to shift WASD’s inputs from camera mode/movement mode to ‘UI mode’ IN CONCLUSION: Again, I’m not entirely sure what’s possible, so all the extra features are just my ideal wishlist. But the MAIN point, which is just straight-up UI window scaling up to a much larger size, is something that I feel should’ve been implemented in the official game, and I’m frankly amazed that no one’s made a mod to do it yet. If some enterprising BG3 modder were to make this request into a reality, I promise you, it would make a MASSIVE difference in the accessibility of countless semi-blind gamers, and allow them to enjoy the Baldur’s Gate 3 experience as much as everyone else. Please, pleeeeaaase, can somebody make this happen? I would literally pay you to develop such a mod.

There's a number of tough and/or memorable fights that I'd love to be able to relive any time, or perhaps use for practice. Say I'm trying to get used to a new weapon, and wanna challenge myself against a Crucible Knight, or a particular boss several times in a row. Maybe this could be handled in-game with two reusable items, or incantations with no stat requirements; - Using/casting "Ancient Rite of Reanimation" will revive all non-respawning enemies in your save-game that have already been killed. - "Lesser Rite of Reanimation" will revive any non-respawning enemies within a certain radius from the player [maybe tied to the nearest Grace or Stake of Marika, since you typically find those near tough fights], and can be used in cases where you want to fight a particular enemy again for runes or practice, but don't want this to affect every other enemy/boss. Is this possible? I could care less what you call it, or if it has to be handled in a less immersive fashion. But yeah. Respawning bosses without starting a new file/NG+. I'd love it if someone made something like this.

So let me just preface by saying that I'm not a dev/modder, and I have no idea exactly what is possible; bear that in mind if any of the following sound ridiculous. With Elden Ring adding stealth elements, I've been thinking it might be a good angle for a different kind of 'hardcore' mod, related to enemy aggro distance and conditions. Imagine a mod that makes enemy AI react at least SOMEWHAT more like human characters would, in certain situations. Examples: - Enemies react to sound. They detect/aggro more quickly/at a longer distance on a character that's clunking around in heavy armor, as opposed to wearing something lighter. Also, smacking your weapon off walls or an enemy's shield has potential to put nearby mobs in 'search mode' [whatever you'd call the condition where they've got their weapon out, but haven't actually seen you yet], particularly if they're posted up right around the corner, even if you're not in their line of sight. - So they react to loud noises and also flashing lights. This means you will need to be more careful about when you throw out magic/explosives, or a big flashy weapon art like Gravitas, etc. Basically if you wanna do a pure magic build, stealth is gonna be tougher to pull off. [except maybe with the 'Night'/Invisible sorceries] - In order for this to not break a lot of encounters, maybe there could be certain "volume levels" [aggro distance triggered by attacking something] associated with different weapons/attacks [i.e. a backstab is nearly silent, and a fully charged R2 is quite loud]. This could also be applied to weapon types [attacking with daggers/bows is much quieter/shorter aggro distance than greatswords/heavy crossbows]. This would make it possible [i think] to play an assassin/thief build with daggers/thrusting swords and actually have a tangible advantage when it comes to sneaking up on enemies. Maybe the Assassin's Approach incantation could be altered to silence weapons as well as footsteps, to allow heavier strength builds to take advantage of this to some extent as well. -Once a mob sees you, you can't de-aggro them by turning a corner or finding the nearest tall grass and crouching for like five seconds. [if someone shot me in the back with an arrow and it somehow didn't kill me, I don't think I'd just forget about it the moment the perpetrator was out of sight.] - As an added level of difficulty, maybe if a mob comes across the body of his comrade that you just ganked five seconds ago, he's put into a permanent 'search' condition. "You killed my best friend! We've been guarding this hallway for as long as I can remember, and now he's gone. I WILL FIND YOU, and I WILL MAKE YOU PAY." - Certain other situations could trigger mobs. Say for instance, the Ancestral Followers in the Siofra/Nokron region, they seem very connected with the wildlife in the area. Maybe killing a deer or goat has a certain % chance of aggroing every Follower within a certain range regardless of line of sight, and the % increases with their proximity to you when it happens. It just seems to make sense lore-wise that these guys would be coming after the person that's systematically slaughtering their herds for arrow-crafting material. Once again, I'm not sure how much of this is possible, but I feel like it has the potential to change the whole dynamic of the game and force players to be more careful and actually utilize stealth more intelligently. It'll also add a new level of stress to trying to get through area with tough mobs when you play a low-level/light armor character. Anyway, if any of this sounds feasible/anyone wants to take on a project like this, I don't require credit, just let me know that you're making it, cuz I'd LOVE to try something like this.Thanks!