Vision Impaired Healer Accessibility

[eq2imora]

I'm curious as to if there are any interface mods that have click cast and click cure buttons for the raid window and party window that are larger than say, DrumsUI or Profit. Heck, even make the frames for the party and raid window a bit easier to see via spacing or something.

I'm a bit spoiled with World of Warcraft's UI system, specifically Grid and Clique, and the macro system. I have Grid set up to show each player's HP and Mana bars as a rectangular brick who's border glows either blue(magic), purple(curse), brown(disease) or green(poison) depending on the type of detriment, and the class specific color drains in the block from right to left as hp depletes and the blue bar at the bottom depletes as mana goes down. My spells were all macro'd to "/cast spell[@mouseover]", meaning that whatever my mouse was hovered over, the spell was cast on if it were a friendly target. I could hover my mouse over a HP bar in Grid, or a player avatar in game, and cast a heal and it would land on that target, or myself if I had it pointing at nothing or a hostile.

My main in every single MMO I've played has been a healer. Unfortunately, this is not the case in EQ2, and that is because it's difficult for me to keep up with cures because I have difficulty aiming my mouse accurately on the click cure buttons. Manually switching targets to cast a cure is not feasible in raid content, as quick cures are crucial. I find myself using group cures to remove a single detrimental because aiming at that tiny little click cure is difficult. And don't get me started on the click cast buttons. Great idea.. but I can't aim at those either.

What I'd like is a mod that makes the bars thicker(vertical measure) and larger click cast buttons. I don't care if I only get one or two of them. I'd also like two larger cure buttons. One for curse, one for other detrimentals. Casting one cure spell removes one of each effect most of the time with a single target cure anyways.. I don't often need to say, only dispel the trauma. I'd leave indicators to determine what types of dets are up, but clicking each det button is difficult because of aim.

Is this even possible with how the UI is programmed? I know EQ2 has some tougher restrictions on what can be done with the UI, and I know nothing about modding or I'd try to do it myself. I dislike the fact that I need "outside" assistance in doing a job in game that others can do without issue, and even making this request is slightly embarrassing, but it needs to be done because I accept that I need a little help with it.

So if anyone knows of anything that might help, toss some ideas my way. I'd appreciate it.

Peace.

[Ellyana]

would something like this work for you?

http://www.eq2interface.com/download...fo.php?id=5003

another of the same type as above is the group window from DarqUI its possible to use JUST the group window from the package and the hp bars and click to cure/heal button are resizable from 1.0(normal size) upto 1.4 size.

http://www.eq2interface.com/download...fo.php?id=4997

[eq2imora]

I'll take a look at those shortly.

Another thing I'd really like to do is just use the raid window for groups and get rid of the group window entirely. Having both, since I need them to be in a certain spot of the screen for me to actually notice something happening in, is just annoying and gets in the way. lol

[Ellyana]

well this guys original mod was for the raid window here. http://www.eq2interface.com/download...llPriests.html

he converted it for a group window later.

any way G'luck hope one of them works for you.

[eq2imora]

Originally Posted by Ellyana

well this guys original mod was for the raid window here. http://www.eq2interface.com/download...llPriests.html

he converted it for a group window later.

any way G'luck hope one of them works for you.

Aye, saw that. What I was hoping for was similar to Grid's option to use the same frame for both raid and group, eliminating the need for two seperate windows.

[Ellyana]

yeah eq2 doesnt have any where near the modability of WoW i dont think what you want is possible.

anyway G'luck

[EQAditu]

Hmm, while my group window can become rather large, the raid window isn't resizable at all.

One of the major problems with making a window like Grid(I assume since I've never played WoW) is that we can make buttons that do things when clicked... but we can't detect right-clicks, middle-clicks, shift-clicks, etc. So if we wanted to do more than one thing per square, it would have to be in the form of tinier buttons. Which sounds like it defeats the purpose. I had some ideas to go around that, but I can't find the thread and it wasn't a great solution anyways.

The thing about making only the raid window visible is that the game simply doesn't populate it when you're not in a raid. Though I suppose I could do a trick where the group window exists always but moves itself when you get into a raid, thus covering the normal raid group. I already sort of do that trick with the player window looking like a part of the group window.

The problem with making the raid window resizable is that the resizing is already used for the 1x4/2x2/4x1 group arrangements. It's merely an issue, not a block, however.

[Drumstix42]

The only way I ever thought about being able to do shift or ctrl clicks possible, was when I was using the broker window and realized that the buttons change depending on those key presses. However, I don't think you can detect them unless you are currently in a broker session and have an item clicked

[eq2imora]

Yeah, I really don't do the modifiers for click casting. I really dislike click casting in the first place but it's useful for cures. These were the two mods in question, link is from the development site:

http://www.wowace.com/addons/grid/
http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/clique

I have Clique set up to cast a cure spell on right click on the frame. Other players set it up to use shift, control and alt modifiers, as well as both right and left click, but I'm too lazy for that.

All of my healing spells were macros. All I had to do was move my mouse and press a keybind.

I can understand why they made the restrictions that they did here in EQ2 but it makes some things a bit more difficult. WoW's UI is completely done in .xml and .lua.

Edit for clarity, Grid is just a frame replacement. It does not have click casting in it natively; you need to install a separate plugin for it.

[ObsidianDragon]

Don't know if this would fit the bill or not, but here's an idea:

You could mod a raid window to keep an updated "HoveredPerson" variable in it.

You could also put in bits of code that access that variable that can be called from a macro, like EQAditu does in his Hotbar Macro Scripting.

You could then have hotbar macros with lines like

Macro1
/show_window MainHUD.Raid.CureHovered

Macro2
/show_window MainHUD.Raid.CureCurseHovered

Macro3
/show_window MainHUD.Raid.WardHovered

Macro4
/show_window MainHUD.Raid.HealHovered

You could then bind these hotbar slots to any spare mouse buttons or keyboard combinations you desire. You can't override the default actions of left and right click, but if your mouse has extra buttons you can certainly use those.

[EQAditu]

I sort of had that idea as well back in another of the "I want Grid/Squared from Wow" threads, but I couldn't find what I wrote. Even with a user search, which is puzzling.

Anyways, you can even clear the variable when the mouse leaves the window. Then if the variable is blank, it could cast on your current target. That way you don't need different buttons for targeted/raid healing.

A better EQ2 macro for such a key would really be more like:
/useability Spell Name (This would allow the icon to correctly show the recast timers, etc.)
/show_window MainHUD.Raid.Bank5Spell1 (Or similar)

It was going to be longer, but then I figured why it didn't need to be.

I didn't really go anywhere with it because I didn't and maybe still don't have the time.

[Landiin]

Yea, I ask to have right, middle and dbl mouse click events added a while back. The response I got was "why would you want that on buttons for?". Was like really? and just let it alone.

[eq2imora]

Originally Posted by Landiin

Yea, I ask to have right, middle and dbl mouse click events added a while back. The response I got was "why would you want that on buttons for?". Was like really? and just let it alone.

Funniest part.. I only use the Right Click event with Clique, unlike some people, who use it like Healbot(another, similar addon), and I only use it for curing. Healbot default sets up left, right, middle clicks with alt, control and alt modifiers and drives me bananas. I sort of detest click casting for my healing spells.. I use it here for my rezzes on my dirge and stuff mostly.

Since there's so few spells in WoW(they keep trimming the spellbook in an attempt to make it less confusing for people o.o) I can do the vast majority of my healing with four macros. They all follow this format:

#showtooltip Lesser Healing Wave
/cast [target=mouseover, help] Lesser Healing Wave; [help] Lesser Healing Wave; Lesser Healing Wave

First line: when you mouse over the macro, this is the tooltip shown. In this case, I'm showing the tooltip for the spell "Lesser Healing Wave"(they've since renamed this spell...)

Second line dictates the spell cast and the target arguements. First one, attempt to cast on what my target it moused over. "Help" indicates the target must be friendly, and what spell to cast. The second argument dictates to cast on any friendly I have currently targetted if no mouseover, and the final with no target indicates to cast the spell on myself if neither of the above are present. You can also add [nodead] to indicate the target must be alive if the spell is one that can be cast on a dead target.

Those macros for my four to five main spells and the ability to cast them on a compact "grid" of HP bars using mouseover targetting and right click cures(one spell, each healing class/spec can cure 3 types of detriments only, two classes of which have 2 friendly and one offensive dispel) with the grid of bars telling me HP percentage, mana percentage and that there's something I need to cure, along with icons for certain things I cannot cure but need to keep an eye on (only stuff I really need to know.. that stuff's there and stuff I need to cure is there) makes healing easier and allows me to not have to look in 3 different places to see what's going on, who needs healed, and where I'm standing(omg move out of bad things). I have spatial awareness issues which are linked to piss poor vision, so I focus my attention on the bottom third of the screen. I can't fit hotbars(my healer has 6 of them), chat window, group window and the full raid window there. I've tried a few layouts and it just doesn't seem to work.