Improved Interfaces & Compatibility for Mods & Vanilla

[GuNSl1nG3R7065]

All of this mod was discussed in a previous post of mine, but probably was ignored because it was so lengthy and posted under Oblivion despite being primarily Skyrim focused. As such, I'm dividing and reposting the mods in the Skyrim section. I also don't know if they belong here or the request mod section, but since I'm willing to work on the mod myself I suppose its a mod in work at snail paced production.

 

For those of you hate reading details, basically this idea is to bring to life an interface that can be navigated in less than a second to equip your desired items. In addition it also would hopefully remove the chances of mods being incompatible (whether game crashing or just not being able to mix match socks) by adding in several gear slots (like good old Morrowind had more of) and giving more hot keys and in-game menus to reduce inventory clutter.

 

Scripted Hotkeys:

Summary: This mod creates an interface menu that has 8 pages which have 25 tool bars each (arbitrary). This menu and toolbars are navigated using only the mouse wheel or page up/dn keys. Each page is categorized as spells, abilities, poses, actions, equipment equip, equipment animations, mod abilities, and misc; however, they are only labels and the user can decide what each page contains. Each toolbar works the same as any normal toolbar with keys of 1 to =. Modders can make entire toolbars for specific tools or items (example: a toolbar for FONV's Umpa's dance tool) which users can then bind to one of the 200 available toolbars on the page they desire. The user fills the toolbars just by dragging dropping abilities/spells into the toolbars (somewhat similar to mmorpgs). In addition the user can make scripted hotkeys which do multiple actions (same as mmorpgs' macro binds) so long as no cooldown occurs. This would include the possibility of using a hotkey to switch to one of the other 200 other toolbars, allowing for a chain of spell casts, abilities, or animations to be done without manually changing toolbars. Additional to the interface, CS changes will provide easy mapping of hotkeys and actions by modders, provide a new CS (for modders) and in-game interface menu that allows control of mod variables (I believe FONV's caliber or some mod does this, but no other mods use it), define and implement in the CS and in-game new gear slots to prevent gear incompatibility and allow further customization of equipment, and optional implementation through the CS and mod options interfaces to create and use new skills, spells, weapon types, and armor types. All of these options will be primarily optional to use, so both modders and users should be fine having it as a requirement for their mods.

 

Reasoning & Explanation: I've always disliked having to use modifier keys or using odd hotkeys to cast spells and so forth in games. I'm also tired of hauling around 10 mod configuration items. I'm also tired of navigating through slow scrolling menus. I also dislike having menus or options forced on me. And most of all I dislike un-uniform standards for mods resulting in incompatibilities not due to personal preferences. With everything contained in this no one should have any incompatibilities so long as modders use it as the standard. While this doesn't make clothing mods uniform (unless all clothing and so forth comes in one package with its own enable/disable option in the mod options), it does make any mod with mechanics that are not supported or are incompatible with another mod to be compatible. It also allows easy chain casting, re-equiping of items with no slow menus, and less inventory junk for options, hotkeys, and controls. In addition most of my other mod ideas build off of the concept of the scripted hotkeys. For those of you who don't see the practical value, here's an example:

 

Say you want all of your 50 spells binded to only the 1-5 keys for the actual spells. With scripted hotkeys it'd be easily done and fully customized:

Press 1 to select ranged spells, 2 for touch spells, 3 for buff spells, 6 to return to previous menu (pretend you pick ranged)

Press 1 to select destruction spells, 2 for illusion, 3 for alteration, 4 for restoration, 6 to return to previous menu, 7 to return to first menu (pretend you pick illusion)

Press 1 to select charm spell, 2 for light, 3 for frenzy, 4 for demoralize, 6 to return to previous menu, 7 to return to first menu

Cast your spell

 

With just pressing 3 keys which would have no delay you can cast one of 125 spells using only the keys 1-5. I'm sure I can press 3 keys in the 1-5 range than any other method or navigating through a favorites menu. In addition you could make all the toolbars linked to each other by having 8 go to equipment's menu, 9 to abilities, and so forth.

 

This mod will require editing the CS or using third party software to give easy mod-making interfaces for modders; else no one will use the idea. The CS would just need forms made for various options such, as I doubt anyone wants to have to copy/paste long codes and figure out what numbers and lines of code they need to edit.

 

As explained in my original post, I essentially have no practice with coding or the construction set. I'm slowly progressing in the field, but I imagine people would like the mods before TES8 is released. As such anyone is free to "take" my idea so long as they make the mod right. Additionally, what's written here is potentially less than 25% of my total thought put into it as its just a summary of the whole thing. So contact me if anyone has interest, suggestions, or desire to take on the project/mod as their own, as I should have plenty of concepts and details that'll speed up the process or improve the mod.

Edited October 7, 2011 by GuNSl1nG3R7065

[Stormcrown]

Great ideas Gun. I'll support this for sure.