Runescape 3 Screen Layouts - Pretty or Practical?

This layout looked cool but wasn't practical

In spite of it's many bugs, I'm still enjoying Runescape 3.  The whole New Interface System is a blast.  Monique mainly keeps to a traditional layout, with some tweaks.  For myself, I'm an incorrigible tinkerer.  Playing with the screen layout is nearly as much fun as playing the game.  In some cases, maybe more so.

My favorite layout, until now, has been a horizontal control console at the base of the screen.  Visually, it's very appealing.  After a few days though, I realized it's not very practical.  Having the gamescreen very short in height and very long in width leads to some interesting situations.  I can click very far away left or right, but up/down (or North/South, if you prefer) is extremely limited.  That didn't bother me the first couple of days, because I wasn't doing much combat.  On day 3, Jagex finally fixed Sinkholes, which had not been re-setting.  Now we're doing Sinkholes again, the problems with my design become obvious.

My minimap is pretty large, which works great in skilling and running around Runescape.  In the Sinkhole, it's confusing.  You see the entire dungeon, and it's difficult to find your location at a glance.  I lost a lot of time trying to figure out where I was and where I needed to go.  Another big problem was the way all the controls were spread across the entire width of the monitor.  Moving the mouse from one control to another took too much time and attention.  Between both issues, it was the worst Sinkhole I've ever run.  Very annoying, and by the time it was done, I was pretty grumpy.

One other problem... I still hadn't customized my keybinds.  The action bar just feels more comfortable using the 'asdfgh' and 'qwerty' keys, which is where they WERE until RS3 wiped my settings.  That was actually okay, since there were so many other keys that can be customized.  So after the Sinkhole was over, the first step was to change the keybinds.  (I'll post more about keybinds next time.)

Next, redesign time.  All the control windows got stacked on the right edge of the screen.  At the top was the settings bar.  It's out of the way, and I'm not likely to hit it by accident.  Next is the chat window.  It went high out of the way, because I don't play socially.  Mostly it gets ignored.

Much better layout- my new favorite!

The Mini-map is a whole 'nother story... It gets a pretty big chunk of real estate, because I very much enjoy one-clicking destinations.  Lodestone to Al Kharid, and it's one-click to get to the Cactus patch, the bank, or the Gnome Glider.  Standing at the GE, it's one-click to the fairy ring.  On Karamja, it's one click from my Spirit Tree to the Palm Tree.  Then one-click to Del Monti.  Then one-click back to the tree.  I could go on.  The point is, my daily run includes harvesting coconuts, morchelli mushrooms, and running around in general.  A large minimap is just amazing. Big thumbs up for the minimap.

Putting the minimap centrally on my 'control wall' makes it easy to go back and forth, from 3-d gamescreen to minimap and back.  It's also very easy to click on the Home Teleport.  Getting around in the world is the most important part of my play-style.

Next, and very close to the bottom, is the backpack, equipped items, prayers, and some random tabs.  It's large enough not to have to scroll, near the bottom for easy access.  This is an important window, and I can reach it easily just under the mini-map.

Lastly is the action bar.  Bottom right corner.  I placed it here strictly to be in line with the vertical design of the screen.  I like the long form of the bar, even though it sticks out from my nice even setup.  It's bearable there.  To be honest, I'd rather have put it above the backpack and below the mini-map, but that would have looked seriously odd poking out in the middle of the screen.  Wish we could resize the action bar as freely as we can the rest of the screen.

Once all that was done, and I'd decided how wide to make the windows, all that was left was to edit the 3-d window placement.  Now I have the perfect Runescape game interface, and will never need to change it again...  Until next time.   :^D

Runescape: RS3 Finally Released

Ready or not, Runescape 3 is officially out.  Monday July 22 2013, was the release date.  I had some worries about it since the beta seemed a little unstable, even as recently as the weekend before.

Some of those fears were justified.  There were some hiccups... and a few louder, ruder, noises... at the time of release.  Monique and I still have audio problems, so that's not been fixed yet.  She got a black screen on login, though it didn't happen to me this time.  Both of us have had our action bar go 'missing in action'.  People complained about slow frame rates and disconnects.  I noticed the Fairy Ring dialer was no longer see-through.  Not a big deal, but annoying.  Later it was fixed.  Other minor issues, but nothing worth griping about.

Thankfully, the good far outweighs the bad.  I'm really enjoying all the customizations.  Still tinkering with screen design, but that's pure fun.  I like having a horizontal control window at the bottom of the screen, but still playing around with proportions and sizes.  It might also be fun to have a vertical control wall.  Or even an 'L' shape.  You may have noticed, I don't care for asymmetrical design.  My game window needs to be a clean rectangle.

One of the best new features is the minimap.  Having the Home teleport button on it is cool.  Making it resizable was like getting Christmas early.  I'm not a social player, so the chat window doesn't help me.  Except for actual game messages.  The re-design makes chat settings easier, so credit where it's due.

I would have liked the action bar to be much more versatile, in terms of size.  It's just a tad too long.  And the action bar selector (1-5) I'd have made a bit larger.  On the good side, you can keybind nearly everything.  And there are two new buttons on the action bar, both reflecting items in backpack.

That's the interface system.  Not an in-depth review, just a few things that caught my attention.

As far as the Battle of Lumbridge... what battle?  In and of itself, the event is pretty interesting.  But calling it a battle seems like overkill.  I saw two gods in a stalemate.  There was a lot of peripheral damage to buildings.  Huge damage, by player character standards.  But still, on the god scale, just collateral.

Additionally, it's hard to call it a battle when we as players don't get to fight that much.  If you go into the dead zone between the two gods, you can collect divine tears to help the god of your choice, and you can fight opposing npc's.  That sounds kind of warlike.  But it's hard to get a fight, there are more players than npc's.  Tough to get there in time to share a kill, much less actually have your own fight.

So... Battle of Lumbridge?  No.  Stalemate of Lumbridge is more like it.  Other than that, it's a decent premise.  I spoke with Duke Horatio to help in the rebuilding, and earned 32k toward Dungeoneering.  From what I can tell, this seems to be a once-a-week event where you can help the Duke decide how to rebuild.

If you're curious, there were two families who had lost homes, one family Saradomists, the other Zamorakians.  With limited resources, you have to pick whether to help one family or the other, or both of them.  I chose both.

The one thing that does annoy me is the tears randomly appearing in my backpack.  They can't be banked.  They take up inventory space.  So, unless you want to dedicate a backpack space to them, you have to periodically visit Lumbridge and deposit them.  I like the idea, but wish they were less obtrusive.

Hopefully, the glitches will be ironed out soon.  I truly like the interface system.  It's going to take some getting used to, but that's just a matter of retraining  old habits.  Like reaching to the upper right corner for the minimap.  I may be an old dog, but I can still learn new tricks.

Runescape: Bringing Home the Bacon just didn't Sizzle for me

Finally did the "Bringing Home the Bacon" quest.  Monique and I treat quests like a date, and enjoy them together.  But this time around, we've both been under the weather and way behind.  So it took a while to get around to this quest.

'Bacon' wasn't a serious quest on any level.  It was short, very easy (novice level) and emphasized humor.  In a world where pigs are mostly useless, only Eli Bacon and Martin the Master Farmer still raise them.  With the discovery of bacon (the food) Eli fears the remaining hog population will be decimated.  It's our job to discover a use for pigs that will make them popular.  Eli hopes that, once Pigs are safe from extinction, he can introduce bacon to the world (and get rich).

There's a lot of comedy.  Some of it deliberately creepy.  Puts me in mind of "Motel Hell".  The old scary movie with the tagline "It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's Fritters!"

Anyway, it's pretty mellow.  You have to distract a few villagers, do a favor for Martin the Farmer... somebody's been pickpocketing him...  Now I'll never feel right about picking his pockets again!  Raise a piglet, train it, and show it off around Runescape.

Out of it all, you get a piggy pet, and some new summoning creatures, and access to bacon.  You can eat the bacon, or cook it into higher-level better-healing food.

The rewards are scalable, but to be honest, even the best of the rewards just aren't that 'rewarding' if you're a high-level player.  It was an easy quest for beginners, with rewards going up to somewhere about mid-level for cooking and summoning.

If you like pets, the pig is a pretty fair reward.  Bringing Home the Bacon had some light-hearted moments, but overall just didn't catch my fancy or hold my interest.  What the heck... you can't win them all.  At least it was a short quest.

Runescape: Last-minute Maintenance before RS3 Release

Recently, logging in and playing Runescape has been more adventurous than usual.  Lots of different problems, and many complaints on the forums.  Random disconnects make players afraid to do anything risky.  Who wants to risk all their gear in a boss fight if you might be disconnected during it?

Game-loading problems.  Loss or distortion of audio.  Black screens instead of the usual game screen.  Dramatic frame rate drops.  Quite the list, and coming at a very bad time considering Jagex is busily promoting the release of Runescape 3 next week.

Have you experienced any of these?  I've suffered the black screen. Had to close my browser and run CCleaner before it cleared up.  Some people were luckier, only needing to wait a bit, teleport somewhere, or log out and back in to fix it.  It's happened about 3 times for me.

Also had the loading problems.  Click to load the game into the browser window (using Google Chrome), the logo comes up, and then it just... sits there.  Apparently doing nothing.  Sometimes, if I go away and come back it's okay.  Other times, it's better to just click re-load and try again.  This happens fairly often currently.

The audio problems have happened more to Monique than to myself, though both of us experienced it while doing the new 'Bringing Home the Bacon' quest.  I often play without audio, so may not have noticed every time.

I haven't personally seen the fps problem, but several people on the forum report that it's tied to the 'bloom' lighting effect, and certain graphic-intensive actions like casting Barrage.  Some say if you turn 'bloom' off, the frame rate goes back up to a reasonable level.  As far as the random disconnects, we've been fortunate with those.  It's been a problem in the past, off and on.  But at the moment, not bothering us.

During all of this, not much has been heard from Jagex.  One forum thread.  As far as I can tell, it's not been kept updated, so all you see are pagefulls of people wondering what's going on.

Until today.  Today, there's an announcement on the News page about weekend-long maintenance.  It's for the 19th through the 22nd of July, with a specific list of times- looks like about two hours (at separate times) on Friday, and one hour per day Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

There's a clear warning that, while the game will still be playable during these times, there's a risk of disconnection.  So play accordingly.  Don't risk things you can't afford to lose.

I'm glad on a couple of levels.  One, it's nice that they're letting us as players know what's going on.  Sometimes being left in the dark can magnify a problem.  Two, I'm glad to see they're making a serious effort to fix things.  Knowing they're working on it helps me stay patient.

Lastly, the timing is important.  The official RS3 release (but not the HTML5 version) is on July 22nd (2013).  That's less than 4 days away as I write this.  It would be immensely damaging to player satisfaction to have a grand release while plagued by problems.  Certainly there will be hiccups integrating the new systems.  Going through that without fixing existing issues would be very bad business practice.

In spite of all this, I'm excited about the upcoming launch.  Haven't spent much time on the HTML5 Beta, but the New Interface System (NIS) is a lot of fun.  Spent several evenings just playing around with differing layouts and seeing how they worked.

Here's hoping for a smooth transition!