Reviving TabletsII

Agathorn · #1 10-13-2005, 09:49 PM

Hello all,

I've been away from EQ2 for a long time and recently came back to find that Tablets II suffered a fall to the wayside when Talyns left EQ2. While I wasn't suprised as this happens to UIs a lot, as we all know, I was disheartened. Having contributed some to the development of TabletsII and having used it as my own personal skin I was hoping to be able to use it still. I do'nt blame Talyns though. We all burn out. I did too

So anyway... I've started working on reviving the interface. Its going slow as i've been away from EQ2 for so long that i've kind of forgotten all this UI stuff but at the moment i've managed to at least get the basics up and running with LU14, though still lots of bugs to fix. As things start to come back to me work will progress faster. I am NOT making any promises here, and even once/if I get it all up to date for LU14 I make zero promises on me sticking around as I tend to play these games in burts of a few months at a time. But I just wanted to let everyone know that I was here and doing this. I'm not releasing anything right now as theres still loads of bugs to fix, but hopefully within the next few days at the latest.

Raesoth · #2 10-13-2005, 11:34 PM

This is good news

I too have been a user of this UI since beta and though I've found a new UI that I like a lot I wish you luck in this endeavor.

If you need people to help test your work count me in

Agathorn · #3 10-14-2005, 01:19 PM

Just an update on this. At the moment I have everything for the most part WORKING and useable now with LU14. It isn't all pretty and theres a bunch of skinning I still need to do, but its all functional as far as I could see at a quick run through all the various elements.

If anyone is desperate to get thier hands on a working Tablets II let me know and i'll see about uploading the current state of it, but otherwise i'm going to hold off until i've at least reskinned the major elements that need to be redone.

Agathorn · #4 10-15-2005, 12:06 PM

Just another update to say that I now have everything working as far as I can tell and all the major windows skinned.

Attached is an in game shot.

I will be uploading this to the system sometime today once i've had a chance to go through and clean things up and type up instructions.

Findarato · #5 10-15-2005, 06:31 PM

Thank you, trying to maintain 2 diffrent UIs was annoying.

Agathorn · #6 10-15-2005, 08:28 PM

Sorry I haven't gotten this up yet. Unfortunately shortly before I had to head off to work I found a few more serious bugs that I want to fix before submitting and I didi not have time before work to fix them. I'm home now and working on things and HOPEFULLY I can get a release out tonight.

Agathorn · #7 10-16-2005, 09:53 AM

Ok well I wanted to get this out last night but just before bed while playing I ran into a few more bad bugs. I fixed those this morning and now i've finally submitted the first beta release. Any testing people can help with is most appreciated.

Agathorn · #8 10-17-2005, 09:23 AM

Ok there seem to be a couple reports of the game not loading at all for people with the UI. All I Can say at the moment is it works fine for me so I need to figure out what is happening. If it doesn't load for you, please look in your TabletsII directory for a ui.log file and if preset post the contents of that here. Also if it is not loading for you do you have DOF?

natebc · #9 10-17-2005, 09:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agathorn

Also if it is not loading for you do you have DOF?

yes, and I was logged out in SS. I hesitate to think that its DoF enabled-ness that is causing the problem though, but i could be wrong.

contents of ui.log (dated around the time when i had the problem, i've since switched back to a lesser custom ui):

Code:

Couldn't load eq2ui_listboxrow_template2.xml

Chaddwick · #10 10-17-2005, 09:50 AM

yes i have DOF, does it not work with that. still trying to get it to work.

Agathorn · #11 10-17-2005, 09:55 AM

Reason I asked about DOF was simply because I don't have it and it is workign for me. So it may be something DOF related, i'm not certain yet.

The error about that xml file is fine. Hmm. Guess i'll just have to go and buy DOF today so I can test with it to be sure.

Agathorn · #12 10-17-2005, 04:51 PM

Well I just bought and installed DOF and everything still works for me. So you all will have to bear with me while I see if I can't figure out what the heck is going on.

Agathorn · #13 10-17-2005, 08:05 PM

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I just downloaded the file from here, and installed it following my included directions (just in case they were wrong) and everythign worked fine

So i'm at a real loss here.

Is this WORKING for anyone?

Those of you whom are having a problem, you say it locks up. I assume it locks during loading? At what stage? Loading UI resources?

Chaddwick · #14 10-17-2005, 08:12 PM

it does not even get to load anything. just gets to the screen with the loading bar, then nothing.

quaror · #15 10-17-2005, 08:15 PM

I tried it as well, here is what happened. I changed my UI test character's filename, since I use a different UI for default. So essentially the character that would be using THIS UI didn't have a UI settings file. The game went through the normal introduction screen, and froze up at what would say "Loading entity resources". I then tried it on another charcter who already had an existing UI settings file for another UI, and it did the same. So it seems that whether the character has a uisettings file or not, doesn't make a difference and it freezes in the same place everytime. Hope this helps in some way. Looking great though, hope you get it sorted.

Agathorn · #16 10-17-2005, 08:33 PM

Darned strange. I sure wish I could get the problem to happen here

Sure be a lot easier to fix.

Chaddwick · #17 10-17-2005, 08:54 PM

ok i just erased all the files with tabletsii in them and then reloaded the ui. it got to that screen then nothing. but it cause my eq2 to quit responding. well i hope it gets worked out will keep my fingers crossed. really want to use this ui.

Agathorn · #18 10-17-2005, 09:20 PM

If you load into the game with another UI that works then do a "/loadui TabletsII" what happens?

Chaddwick · #19 10-18-2005, 01:11 AM

ok did that. it worked but was missing some stuff like i could not see my factions, and it said that my quest journal was full, could not see that either, then i tried to change to another char and it did not load, went to the same problem got to the screen and froze.

Agathorn · #20 10-18-2005, 10:25 AM

The faction and quest journal problems are actually normal when using /loadui. If you do a /loadui and then zone everythign, including factins and journal should work fine. You might give that a try. If it works then you'd at least have a way to use the UI if in a roundabout fashion.

Seems very strange though that /loadui would work whereas logging in with it doesn't.

Agathorn · #21 10-18-2005, 12:01 PM

I still can't seem to find anything that could be causing this problem. So, what i'm going to do when I get home from work is completely rebuild TabletsII from scratch. This version what I had done was taken the latest TabletsII then just modified/fixed things until I got it working for me, but obviously theres other more subtle problems that are causing problems. So i'm going to throw all that out the window, start at the current default UI and completely rebuild TabletsII from the ground up. Hopefully this will fix the problems. It certainly should.

This will be released in a couple stages. The first stage which will hopefully be out either tonight or tomorrow will be basically the skinning of the default UI to the TabletsII standard, but will not contain much, if any, of the more advanced TabletsII features such as multiple layout windows, autosizing bags, etc. The second stage will then incorporate those more advanced features.

So bear with me here and we'll get you all up and running as soon as possible.

Chaddwick · #22 10-18-2005, 08:04 PM

hey thanks for all the hard work you are doing will wait for the new one thanks again

s3rial · #23 10-19-2005, 12:34 PM

Agathorn, I'm having a similar problem to the one others have described. Here's what's happening:

I installed TabletsII as per your instructions (I'm using the grey - not fantasy - folder as images, if that's relevant). I logged in from the launcher directly to one of my characters, and I got through all the loading screens just fine. I get into the game, and can see some of the UI elements (I've deleted all my UI configs and have started over from scratch), but the game is frozen. I can hear the music playing in the background, and it's not looping like in a crash. I can alt-tab out and have some limited ability to switch to other windows (although I can only see that in the taskbar, and can't see the windows themselves until I kill EQ2 via the task manager).

I'm really looking forward to using TabletsII. I'm new to the game, and have been entirely dismayed by EQ2's default UI and most of the mods available for it. I came here looking for a tutorial how to make my own, and came across TabletsII, and figured all my problems were solved.

So, I can't wait to get this one working.

If it's of any consequence, I don't have DoF, and I run the game at 1680x1050. My experiences with TabletsII have been strictly since the 10/19/05 patch.

EDIT: And just a suggestion -- all the color schemes are cool options, but it'd be nice if you could maybe include a screanshot of each in the distribution so we can see what they're like?

Agathorn · #24 10-19-2005, 08:32 PM

Ok. For those of you having the loading problems, please do me a favor and give this a try. Some of the windows won't work, others will look funky opr downright wrong, and others are totally unskinned. However I need to find out at this point if its going to load properly or not.

Let me know what happens. If it still doesn't work, let me know if it doesn't work any differently

s3rial · #25 10-19-2005, 11:05 PM

It seems to be working.

One request, though (and I know you're very early in the process), but I managed to get it (sort of) working with /loadui earlier today, and I noticed then (and with this build, it's currently the case) that the main menu button, even though it's not locked, isn't movable. It'd be really helpful if it was.

But as far as not crashing, this build didn't have any problems. Thanks for all the work you're putting into this, Agathorn.