Plz help me get started with an own tradeskill-window

[ZACK]Hunter · #1 06-16-2005, 08:56 AM

Hiho,

For crafting, i think that a lot of displayed info is unnessessary while other info is missing. To further add to inconvinience, i really dislike the way the info is displayed.
After using different mods for tradeskilling, i simply haven't seen something that really fits my needs.

I havent been big into ui-tweaking for eq2, so I need some info on how things are done (above the starters-stuff in the info given with the ui-editor).
Basically I just want five single-line bars displayed on the form in addition to the main buttons:
1.) Overall progress of the item.
2.) Overall "condition" of the item.
3.) "condition" in the top-quality of the item (so if pristine is possible, the green bar in the pristine section, else the bar in the highest possible quality).
4.) my own power.
5.) my own health.

These bars shouldn't be the bars used at the moment, but solid bars (not rounded and without these lines at 10/20% steps) that are color-coded, fading form green to red for the second till the last bar and fading from black to blue for the first overall progress-bar of the item.
In addition to these bars i would like another color-display what the highest quality achievable is and what quality-step im currently on.
This could possibly done with two more solid bars (not color-changing) that display 25% for the first step, 50% for the second, 75% for the third and 100% for pristine.

Later on i want to get rd of the fancy window and replace it with a solid-colored one, since that would be better suited for the rest of the templates, but for a start it isn't that imnportant.

I know how to rearrange things and how to get rid of the old bars, but i have no idea how to get the info i want to display and i don't know how to create the bars needed. I have seen a color-coded bar that resized in another ui, but without extra-hints i don't know how to do it on my own. Bars that have 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% filling based on the quality i'm currently in / the quality that is possible at the moment are another mystery to me.

If someone could point me into a direction on where to read on or could supply me with code-snippets with these features. As I said I have seen some of these things, but I lack the understanding of how they really work in order to put them into an own ui.

Thx for your time,
zack

taco-man · #2 06-16-2005, 12:43 PM

if you mentioned what ui that had the feature you saw that you wanted and included a link to it, i imagine you will get a much quicker response.

[ZACK]Hunter · #3 06-16-2005, 01:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by taco-man

if you mentioned what ui that had the feature you saw that you wanted and included a link to it, i imagine you will get a much quicker response.

http://www.eq2interface.com/download...fo.php?id=3867

This one is similar to what I had in mind, but it should be a normal bar (without the inclining height) and I don't want shadows on the bar - if possible it should be an opaque coloring of the progress bar, even without the "rounded" edges seen on the standart "overall-progress" bar of the tradeskill create window.

http://www.eq2interface.com/download...fo.php?id=3380
http://www.eq2interface.com/download...ew.php?id=3206
are two of the special TS-addons, I have been looking at, too. Both have nice ideas, I would lilke to refine.

From the original Fetish TS I like the idea of putting in the active buffs, but I would like to just display the crafting relevant ones.
I have my hotkey-list setup below these spots and want to see which buff is currently active and which i can activate.
Ideally I think of a field where the three buffs are displayed right above a toolbar field of 2x3 icons (the ones for progress and the ones for durability) where the buff-display matches the button-type connected to it (if possible automatically adopting to the tradeskill skillset used).
[I thought of a toolbar display that displays only the first 6 fields of the pane for that. The buff-display could even be omitted since you know that that kind of buff is active when the corresponding key is greyed.]

CaffeineBoy has perfected the middle part of the crafting process. I would simply copy that solution and remove the name-display of the item as it is completely redundant with the item-name display at top.
The exp-display is nice, but later on unnessassary and available on other gui-elements, too, so I would like to replace that one with a health bar that could even be completely opaque colored without color-fading while going down as the health usually shouldn't move to much.
The power-display should be green and fade to red while loosing power, since I normally do not have to watch the power, so a colored red reminder would be awesome if it does get too low.

The big thing with both TS-windows is that I would like to refine the top-display. The progress could stay the same (although I'd really like it to fade from black to blue while gaining for better optics), but the durability is the bar is what should fade from red to green quite fast while durability is lost.

Hope that clears some of the things I have in mind. Good idea to give graphical hints as they are way better for others to imagine.
If you don't understand things, english is not my native language and I might have some quirks in it, so keep asking...

zack

dc_roenfanz · #4 06-16-2005, 02:19 PM

Quote:

rom the original Fetish TS I like the idea of putting in the active buffs, but I would like to just display the crafting relevant ones.

It is not possible to filter which maintained buffs are displayed

Quote:

CaffeineBoy has perfected the middle part of the crafting process. I would simply copy that solution and remove the name-display of the item as it is completely redundant with the item-name display at top.

I tend to disagree because each is named versus degree of quality.

Quote:

The big thing with both TS-windows is that I would like to refine the top-display. The progress could stay the same (although I'd really like it to fade from black to blue while gaining for better optics), but the durability is the bar is what should fade from red to green quite fast while durability is lost

.
The Fetish mod already does this, and I am unsure as to whether this is part of default

Quote:

I havent been big into ui-tweaking for eq2, so I need some info on how things are done (above the starters-stuff in the info given with the ui-editor).
Basically I just want five single-line bars displayed on the form in addition to the main buttons:
1.) Overall progress of the item.
2.) Overall "condition" of the item.
3.) "condition" in the top-quality of the item (so if pristine is possible, the green bar in the pristine section, else the bar in the highest possible quality).
4.) my own power.
5.) my own health.

These are all possible, except for maybe 2. Although, this might be done as well.
see attached pic as example

[ZACK]Hunter · #5 06-16-2005, 03:07 PM

Thx for your reply.

Ad the middle-part of CoffeineBoy's middle-part, I really like that setup and just wanted to simplyfy that as my first idea. I just wanted a quick display of what stage I am currently in and what is the maximum achievable from the ressource-standpoint of view as you can still get the durability into the pristine-region with the durability buffs even when you lost it before (as long as your progress doesn't hit the max before).
On the second thought it isn't too important to get that simplyfied as the display already serves that purpose well. When I know what "stage" I am in, I don't really need to know the name associated with it and therefore I tought of ripping it since it wastes space imho and doesn't look too cool with long names in the way it is displayed by CoffeineBoy.

The top-bar turning yellow is a standart-feature, but if I remember correctly, I doesn't turn red and I really changes it color too slow. I usually craft semi afk and therefore like to see alarming colors like red as soon as I need to watch the monitor more closely.
Usually I just push the durability a bit into reserve and then only counter the events, but if the durability gets too low on the pristine level (last quarter of the durability on the highest bar) I need to react and it would therefore be best if could get easily detectable visual feedback for that.

Staying with your red-dot display, I thought of something like a dark red dot for each quality stage available with my current ressources and the one corresponding to the stage i am currently in highlightened in a ligther red. The displayed bar would be just the durability bar and not the durability bar for the stage i am in at the moment, but the highest currently possible "stage", because that is the one to watch in oder to get pristine items...
But that would only be a minor tweak and if it is complicated, the CoffeineBoy-approach with the four regular bars horizontally next to each other would serve my purpose well, too.

The health and power display in your picture is similar to what I thought about except that I like to have the colored visual feedback I have seen in the group-menu from AzGroup (http://www.eq2interface.com/download...fo.php?id=3867) with the small tweak to have it the same shape (bar-type and not inclining height) all the time.

In your picture you have the overall-stage bars at the top in a bright opaque color - how can someone achieve that look and would it be possible to adjust the colors according to the percentages the bars show in there?

If it isn't possible to filter my buff-window, I have to go to my other idea here. I have my hotkeys setup in a toolbar in a 3cols x 4rows view below my crafting window. When a buff of that type is active, the corresponding toolbar-buttons turn grey and therefore already give the visual feedback.
When moving or closing the crafting window it is quite unconvinient to have that toolbar displayed. Is it possible to have a toolbar (with selector on which one someone wants to use) embedded into the crafting window?
As the type of technique used can be displayed, is there a way to set the toolbar according (when I would include a hard-coded matrix which toolbar-pane corresponds to what technique)?

zack

[ZACK]Hunter · #6 06-16-2005, 04:33 PM

While trying around I have found some other points:
- I was able to change the appearane of the progress-bars to my liking except the fading coloration. I will have to look closer at the AzGroup-UI there.
- I have no idea on how to integrate a toolpane into the window.
- I can't seem to get it right to resize the creation-window. when changing the size manually through the object inspector it looks utterly bugged and the changes to the "parent"-size (TradeSkills) get constantly reverted back to its previous settings - it simply doesn't accept my changes.

dc_roenfanz · #7 06-16-2005, 04:46 PM

I should let you know that the indeed does go down to orange and red, in the same format as health does:

Green = 76-100
Yellow = 51-75
Orange = 26-50
Red = 0-25

By the time the overall durability reaches the orange or red stage, you will be in the "shaped" quality area.

I know you can change the colors of the health stages thru the options window, but I am not sure about the dura for tradeskills.

[ZACK]Hunter · #8 06-16-2005, 04:59 PM

ahh - thx for your answer again.

Sadly it seems that you are right and I can't control the color on my own. I am way too used to programming languages where everything is possible in that way.
Could you give me a hint on how to effectively change the sizes? In the RAD-tools I am used to, it is quite easy to visually develop a form, but with the GUI-tool from sony it seems that there are some hidden features that prevent me from changing some values.
I am now thinking on how to integrate the toolbar-pane number 9 into the crafting window in a 3 column 4row style, if there are ways to do so (yes specifically a toolbar-pane with a hardcoded number - i can then use macros to load the setup for that toolbar-pane according to the technique used. That way I can't accidently push the button to change the pane and maintain a cleaner look with less unnessassary ui-elements)

zack

dc_roenfanz · #9 06-16-2005, 05:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by [ZACK]Hunter

ahh - thx for your answer again.

Sadly it seems that you are right and I can't control the color on my own. I am way too used to programming languages where everything is possible in that way.
Could you give me a hint on how to effectively change the sizes? In the RAD-tools I am used to, it is quite easy to visually develop a form, but with the GUI-tool from sony it seems that there are some hidden features that prevent me from changing some values.
I am now thinking on how to integrate the toolbar-pane number 9 into the crafting window in a 3 column 4row style, if there are ways to do so (yes specifically a toolbar-pane with a hardcoded number - i can then use macros to load the setup for that toolbar-pane according to the technique used. That way I can't accidently push the button to change the pane and maintain a cleaner look with less unnessassary ui-elements)

zack

Not sure if this is possible, if you are speaking of the hotkey. Hotkeys and chat windows and bags are similar in this regard via the fact that you have a core window that merely dupicates which cannot be reproduced in UI builder. However, there is the unused quickbar window, which has 10 slots. Maybe you can some how incorporate that into your scheme. Im not sure.