taken from "Zooming Out" and the "Black Area"


Comment
Now that soem of our fears about UOA and being able to use classic containers are resovled.... I have two more.

1)The "Black Area". Currently we have a black area around the play window that serves as an area to place gumps. I, and many others, love this area. It's unique to UO and I'd hate to see it go. When I play other games I'm constantly opening my pack, getting an item, closing my pack, opening my pack getting an item out, closing my pack....etc etc. In UO I can leave it open and off to the side and avoid this pain in the arse. It's also an excelent place to dock a UOAM window (that's been resized) and the only place to put the many healthbars one needs up. Aside from these ones it's also a good home for the status bar, paperdoll, journal, radar, and many more. While soem of these may be integrated into other places in the new UI, it's clear that not all will...and they need a home. One cannot play properly when they're cluttered all over the play-window. It seems to me that we should be given the option of resizing our play-window to give us as much, or as little, "black area" as we'd like. Now that we have the zoom option we shouold be able to zoom out, and then resize. Zooming gains visual range, changeing the playwindow decreases it...and they equal out.

2)"Zooming Out" Despite the usefullness I just alluded to...I think the zoom option is a bad idea. I have two reasons for this. First of all it shows the defences of any area one group may be attacking, or shows when key events are happening i.e. the champs up. Secondily it gives soem poeple more of an advantage over others. That is, people with better computers and btter connections will be allowed to zoom out farther while playing...thus being able to see more. Also, the same applies with people sitll playing 2D...they wouldn't be able to see as m

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Limit zooming to the mini map.

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Zoom idea that may help out weaker systems and retain balance and the desired functionality:

If you zoom out past a certain range, then erase all the mobile objects (players, NPCs, animals, creatures) amd leave in houses and the map itself. Do not allow a zoomed out client to move the character until they have zoomed back in to the target level.

This would allow people to zoom out for a quick look of an area if they are lost, or to take a screenshot for a map image of a player run town, or whathaveyou, but they would be unable to use it in a situation that would give them an advantage. Plus without having to move and update, the stress on a player's system would be greatly reduced.

Just throwing something out.

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i too like the 'black area'
great extra real estate. im happy to run my game play area window smaller if need be to keep it possible to store all those extra things off to the side.

a total wish list item to add to that: dual monitor support. That's be sweet. Then i COULD have the fullscreen game window, and have all my gumps etc off on the 2nd monitor!

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Judging by screen prints posted over the years for one reason or another I'd say the vast majority of us play 'windowed' using the black area. In fact I don't think I can remember seeing a 'full screen' screen print.

I'd very much regret the loss of this function. Some rotten mob is bound to creep up on my under cover of my open 'back pack'

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I'm hoping that if they keep the ability to zoom-out (which I hope they do keep), everything that isn't a cached house, a static, or part of the map itself that is beyond the default viewing range is not visible, and that a slight shading is given to the area where stuff is not visible so it is easy to tell where stuff might be even though it isn't shown.

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JIB UO Engineer


The plan currently is to support the "black area" as an option.

As for zooming out, that is still under debate. If we do allow this it will not give players any advantage over others, it would only show static map data and maybe cached housing.