VanGurK - Vanguard ui skin for Everquest 2 by gurkoz

[gurkoz]

Hello people!

I am fairly new to these forums but i hope you still will have a glance at what i have created. I just put my finishing touches on my Vanguard inspired ui skin for Everquest 2.
I won't ramble on but give a few quick notes about the features and what to expect.

If you find it interesting please use this link for more information and download.

DESCRIPTION

This is a user interface skin created by gurkoz based on the theme of the
game Vanguard Saga of Heroes. It is a complete re-skin bringing the best
aspects of Vanguard UI to Everquest 2!

FEATURES

• Vanguard Saga of Heroes skin theme!
• Complete re-skin of all elements currently in use ingame!
• Crisp clean graphics in 32bit resolution!
• New Dialogue buttons!
• New Clock!
• New Heroic Opportunities wheel with touched up symbols!
• New Heroic Opportunities icons!
• New Buttons!
• New Scrollbars!
• New Inventory equip boxes!
• New clean spellbook!
• New clean knowledge screen!
• New cool looking "Start" button!
• New target ring!
• New compass!
• New Experience bar!
• New Target info boxes complete with skulls representing toughness!
• New Coins!
• New Progress bars!
• New Main Menu with new icons!
• New Tabs!
• New Background plates!
• New Main icons with a rounded edge!
• New Icon ready animation!
• New Mouse over effect on icons!
• New smooth backplate for icons!
• New Map Icons with better contrast and readability!
• New Emotion icons!
• New Pet control icons!
• PLUS much more including buttons, icons, frames, corners, bits and pieces!

[dragowulf]

Thats a nice skin, the theme and icons and everything else is awesome. Good job and kudos to you. It looks like it took forever though.

I hope to see more of your stuff. Are you going to change all the spell icons or just a few?

[gm9]

Wow this is a beautiful skin, very well executed. The alpha fading effect on the black background is a nice idea also.

Works fine with ProfitUI also although I see some glitches which might however be due to bugs in my skins and the way I set up my XML to accomodate them.

On first sight the only thing I'd say you should still skin are the vertical arrows e.g. on the hotbar spinners. You already have the horizontal variant of them so it's just a copy'n'paste thing.

And IMHO most of the map icons are too massive with the background now, but I love e.g. the new quest indicator map icon, that's great.

[Drumstix42]

You're better at displaying a UI and presenting your work than the Developers themselves. Good job.

The gaming community could use more work like yours!

[dragowulf]

You should make this compatible with ProfitUI

[gm9]

Originally Posted by gurkoz' installation instructions

If you think your system can handle 25mb extra load of ui and you crave
crisp clean graphics, use my uncompressed standard version.
Or if you have some kind of low-life smudge fetish or are paranoid about
memory usage, go for the not so recommended smudge Lowres version.
Ultimately the choice is up to you!

haha, that gave me a good laugh.

Originally Posted by gurkoz' installation instructions

Let's talk a little about the new map system. I was glad to se finally a
better system was created. although, the icons where too small and too
complicated. Initially i was going to remake every icon but i realized
that would take quite some time. Instead i focused my efforts on making
the current one easier to differentiate. This had nothing to do with
Vanguard but i felt i had to try to do something about it.

You might think about making a complete icon set for EQ2MAP in case you use that and to publish that as a separate download.

Originally Posted by dragowulf

You should make this compatible for ProfitUI

looks good on my ProfitUI with the brown or black ProfitUI skins

PS: Except for the glitches I mentioned, I did now verify for most of these these that they are glitches in gurkoz' skin, e.g. the right side of the disabled tab button graphic is a couple of pixels off. In the default UI you don't notice that but in ProfitUI you do because it is more compact and thus tthere is less margin for error.

[gurkoz]

First and foremost, thanks for the feedback! I am glad to see someone liked it

And, cool to see it's compatible with other mods, well at least almost. I will have a look at the errors gm9 talked about trying to get full compatibility with ProfitUI since that seems like the top mod people are using. My initial plans where to find a substitute for the default skin and i feel i pulled that off pretty much. Looking at other mods in conjunction with mine would be the next logic step to take. I will have a quick break to catch up on some pressing irl-matters then i'll get back to check this out.

Nice to see someone (gm9) noticed the gradient black background hehe, to me it's a nice feature, to others maybe not so good, i don't know.

All in all, im pleased with the results of this skin. Only thing i didn't get to fix where all of the square icons sticking out of the rounded corners in the icon boxes. In the end, this would mean i'd have to redo _all_ icons with a rounded corner effect and that would, well.. take a lifetime to say the least hehe. And... i tried to add alpha channels to the icon files only to find out eq2 would crash, so perhaps it's a no no. Anyway, i feel the current solution is good enough.

About the ProfitUI. I hope i can find some fixes to have the skin work both as a standalone and in conjunction with ProfitUI. It might even be possible to do further skinning just for the ProfitUI. At this point i am not up to speed on what parts of the skin ProfitUI uses besides the standard components. I will have to look into this, that is if i have permission to continue development towards a ProfitUI enhanced version.

Also, i guess i will have to look into the EQ2Map and ways to improve those aspects too. Time will tell.

And again, thanks for the feedback and kind words.

Ps. Looking at other peoples profiles i see some of them are Authors and Portal holders, how do i enable those features? I thought submitting a ui would make me an author by default hehe. I've tried to read faq's and site information but didn't find any info. Perhaps these are features for subscribers?

[gm9]

ProfitUI adds some image files but otherwise while it skins some default images you can also do without them and use the default UI's image files instead. That's also why it should be compatible with any skin out there. When you looking into it if you find a bug in my skins please let me know. I know a few of my XML files have some glitches in the titlebar area, not sure when I messed that up but I never fixed it.

Regarding your author status I thought as well that it was automatic but maybe it isn't. I let Dolby know, he'll be back Monday. As soon as you have that you can create a portal yourself by going to the portal listing and clicking a link there I think (has been a while...).

[Kavalan]

I am a long time user of Fetish Nightfall UI and I have yet to give it up, however I downloaded this as soon as I saw it. The only reason that I left Vanguard SoH was my system could not handle the game even at it's lowest settings, with the sound off, but that is another story.

I really liked the UI there so it really was nice to see this. I look forward to seeing this expand and grow.

I played with just this last night and it was really nice. Only a few things that I found that I was really missing from the fetish ui were the quick links to alak./eq2i, the guild group invites from the guild window, as well as the bags. All of which features I think I will be able to get incorporated once I merge it with Fetish Nightfall. I will let you know how this skin affects it once I get home later today.

GM9, how does EQ2MAP affects this skin once you run the update. Does it keep the new icon files?

[gm9]

Originally Posted by Kavalan

I played with just this last night and it was really nice. Only a few things that I found that I was really missing from the fetish ui were the quick links to alak./eq2i, the guild group invites from the guild window, as well as the bags. All of which features I think I will be able to get incorporated once I merge it with Fetish Nightfall. I will let you know how this skin affects it once I get home later today.

GM9, how does EQ2MAP affects this skin once you run the update. Does it keep the new icon files?

You need to realize that his skin is just graphics files, no window are actually modified. As such you can usually just install his images on top of any UI you are using, including EQ2MAP or Fetish (unless Zonx went a different route, I'm not really familiar with Fetish, but why not give it a try).

[The-Order]

Very awesome looking! Using it right now, I can see that there is something that looks strange around the edges of the hitpoint and power bars, seems to be like this place square on the right side. Not sure what that is. Also the compass doesn't quite match up to the heading in degrees, looks a couple off. But other then that, perfect!

[lordebon]

Wow, that had to be a lot of work. I played VG for a time, and that looks pretty darn good, especially the spell icons and such.

I would not personally use it (especially because spell icon recognition is important sometimes, especially in raids) but I have to give you some serious kudos, looks very polished.

[gurkoz]

Thanks for the feedback people! Greatly appreciated!

Originally Posted by lordebon

I would not personally use it (especially because spell icon recognition is important sometimes, especially in raids) but I have to give you some serious kudos, looks very polished.

In fact, you still can use the skin for all the windows and frame graphics. If you don't want any changes done to spell/icon related stuff you can just skip the "icons/" folder and only use the "images/ folder.

Reading all feedback i understand i need to make some stronger points on what it really changes and how it works. I feel it has great potential being able to use it with any mod and the fact that you can customize what parts you want to include. It would be a shame if people miss this. I will update the description and also get to work on future ProfitUI/EQ2Map compatibility.

Originally Posted by The-Order

I can see that there is something that looks strange around the edges of the hitpoint and power bars, seems to be like this place square on the right side. Not sure what that is. Also the compass doesn't quite match up to the heading in degrees, looks a couple off.

Aha, actually i noticed this but i always thought this was also present in the default skin. Didn't really feel like something i could mess up with just the image files. I'll have a look at this again then. Also about the compass. I created it on top of the old one to my best abilities, perhaps i need to shift in somewhat. But really, when standing to the north the compass should point out north. How accurate can you be?, is there a way to confirm what really is north? Perhaps a stupid and pointless question hehe.

[gm9]

Originally Posted by gurkoz

Also about the compass. I created it on top of the old one to my best abilities, perhaps i need to shift in somewhat. But really, when standing to the north the compass should point out north. How accurate can you be?, is there a way to confirm what really is north? Perhaps a stupid and pointless question hehe.

Yes, easily, the maps are always north aligned, and as soon as the icon indicating your position has zero rotation you will be north aligned as well.

[Kavalan]

Well, looks like this is not compatable with Fetish Nightfall UI. Since fetish is a complete reskin and Zonk's has done alot of graphic files and the xml changes it is going to take alot more than copy paste to incorporate this into his UI. So it looks like I am going to have to do without using this for now unless someone out there with more extensive knowledge can incorporate this into fetish. I still think this is a very well done change to the default UI, and hope that one day I will be able to use it with fetish. I have tried other UI's and they just don't make the game as good for me.

[Drunador]

After I saw a couple of the responses from gm9 in this thread, I decided to try this "skin" with ProfitUI Reborn.

I must say, I am very impressed. Nice and clean looking. I like that it doesn't mess with Profits top or bottom bars, or the xp numbers that Profit uses.

Overall a nice job.

I have played Vanguard as well, and I walked away from that game thinking the only really good part of it was the UI. Thanks for this skin.

Drunador

[SOE-Rothgar]

VERY nice job on the skin Gurkoz! Its very clean and I love to see that.

Originally Posted by Drumstix42

You're better at displaying a UI and presenting your work than the Developers themselves. Good job.

The gaming community could use more work like yours!

Ok Drums, no more mods to UI Builder or UIScript for you guys since you'd rather me spending more time in Photoshop than actually coding!

[gm9]

He was talking about your marketing department and not about you Rothgar. So keep the goodies coming.

[wolfeedarkfang]

Oh my goodness. That is a sweet skin. Thumbs up man.

I myself sometimes dabble in making UI pieces, but i never seam to publish them. Most of the time once i get done with one, i look here and find that either gm9, fetish, drums, or pooka have already done a nicer job on what I'm wanting, so i get theirs instead. Their all super. For example one time i wanted to make a in-game notepad that could save and load text files. I almost tore my hair out in frustration till i found one already made. It just needed a minor edit to change the UI from fetish back to default, but the end results i got what i wanted.

[gurkoz]

Originally Posted by SOE-Rothgar

VERY nice job on the skin Gurkoz! Its very clean and I love to see that.

/bow

Thanks for those kind words! Getting this feedback from an SOE-employee really made my day

ok, back to work. *shakes head*

I am currently trying to "enhance" the icons used by EQ2Map but im running in to some problems. Perhaps anyone has a solution? The thing is... I edited the "icon_eq2map2.dds" file "re-skinning" the 8 icons present. But the strange thing is, only like half of the icons gets changed in-game.!??

The image of a skinny little Ethiopian man (the black figure of a man) still is present. How come only a few icons in this file changes? Does EQ2Map uses more files that the two in icons/ or am i missing something? Perhaps this is some strange cache issue? I'll try a reboot.

EDIT

AH, found it, how stupid of me. hehe

EDIT #2

But really, is there any reason why EQ2Map still uses icons from the core resource files as "icon_map1.dds" ? Since the "old" map system is abandoned. In a perfect world, all icons related to EQ2Mod should go in the "icon_eq2map.dds" and "icon_eq2map2.dds" files.

In any way, here is a view of the new icons.

[gm9]

Nice! With the outline too big for my liking but otherwise very nice, clean and consistent.

EQ2MAP uses icons from the following files:

/images/icons/icon_eq2map2.dds
/images/icons/icon_is6.dds
/images/icons/icon_map1.dds
/images/icons/icon_map4.dds
/images/icons/icon_map5.dds
/images/mugshots_female.dds

There is another of the black guys in icon_map1.dds as you found out in the meantime.

It does make sense that not all icons are in custom files. We always try to keep bandwidth usage down so we reuse existing files as much as possible if we do not modify them. In the specific case you'll have to ask jnils why the image is duplicate, probably just an oversight.

[jnils]

The thing is that when we relesed the new version of EQ2MAP we still had no icons for the new icon types, we used the same icon for diffrent types.
But as non of us, gm9 and i, are any graphics artists i had to come up with a quick solution, thats why i created the map2.dds file.
The 4 icons to the left are not used , i only use them as templates.
I was hopeing , (and still are) that someone would make new nice icons for us to use, as this was only a temporary solution, but so far no luck

[gm9]

Yeah we're definitely better at coding than at painting.

Originally Posted by jnils

I was hoping , (and still are) that someone would make new nice icons for us to use, as this was only a temporary solution, but so far no luck

I'm actually a bit surprised by that, some of our icons are ugly enough that I would have thought we'd have several icons packs uploaded within a week, hehe.

[gurkoz]

Aha thanks for the clarity on that point jnils.

Also, thanks gm9 for the description of files, you are always helpful!

I did some edits and got the new icons in right place, this is how it turned out. Perhaps i got carried away with the outline as you mentioned gm9, but im just making sure their visible

Im pretty sure i'll include these in an updated version of my skin but i think releasing it as a standalone also might be appreciated.

EDIT

Oh, a question. Is it even possible to release reskinned icons for EQ2Map? Will the Updater scan the files and download the default icons and overwriting any custom changes? Then again, by my tests i seems to be working.

[gm9]

Yes, EQ2MAP is set up for being skinned both with respect to icons and the skinnable_ XML files, and the updater will not overwrite those by default.