Better Mouse-Cursor Handling..
I have seen a
bug report where the mouse-cursor was mistaken for a part of the scenery. I too have mistaken the mouse-cursor for scenery briefly. I would like to make some suggestions on how to minimise possible confusion:
1) When the player is doing things via keyboard -- except for looking and targeting, when the cursor is being actively used -- the mouse-cursor should disappear. Much like, when using a word processor, the I-beam cursor disappears the second you start typing. As soon as the mouse-pointer is detected moving over the game window the mouse-cursor should reappear again.
2) When the main dungeon/village/world view is scrolling, such as when you are walking, or have just moved the mouse to the edge of the window to scroll the view, the mouse-cursor should either update so it stays under the mouse-pointer, or should disappear if the movement is being done via the keyboard. ..currently it moves with the scenery, which makes it look like scenery.
3) I would suggest the pointer have a different art-style to the rest of the graphics. The pointer in R48 and before, and the updated one in R49 are both beautiful, but are intricate and detailed enough that they look too similar to other tiles in the game. My thought is that it should be simple, angular, and monochromatic, so it looks apart from the scenery. ..if it pulsed or flashed like the text-cursor, that could aid in distinguishing it too.
I've attached some screenshots with something like what I think it should look like. The first screenshot (on the path to Terinyo) shows the old cursor, the new one beside it, and a copy of the new one over scenery so you can see how it would look in use. The second two images are of the tutorial dungeon, one with the R49 cursor, the other with my suggested cursor. Note how a simple square cursor doesn't cover-up the torch graphic either. I think this is a good thing.