I would already be happy of /save_uisettings would save changes made to windows that were made by script instead of user interaction. I don't need to save any custom values (with the addition of the Add POI window you can already do that).

PS: Since this thread was being derailed so often by all participants I didn't mod it any further than the initial creation, might be easier to make a new thread for on topic discussion (and I could heavily mod that if you want - this topic is bound to always be derailed in a wish list).

Yeah.. sorry about the derailments. I'll take credit for a lot of it :p

Side-by-side journal.
Thoughts?

I think most people prefer this over the standard UI's top-over-bottom layout.

We're kind of getting off topic. We gotta go back to the drawing board and figure out the first steps.

First step: BRAINSTORMING
We need a starting ground. Since we'd be developing from "the ground up", here's some logical first step brainstorming topics to discuss (UI graphics/design/features should come later):

1. What do we want to achieve? Why?
2. How do we want it to differ from the current default UI? Why?
3. Who would be the target audience? Why?
4. Should it replace the current default UI, but be toggleable like the old map vs. new map? Why or why not?
5. Should there be advanced features such as click-to-cure? Why or why not?

We need to know what we're doing before we dive right in. If there's any more questions to add in the brainstorming process you should do so in this thread. Keep your Wish List away...at least for now!

I'm sure everything is subject to change due to the future development process, but we need a place to start.

Just my opinion: the goal should be a cleaner, more compact default UI than the current one. One of the biggest reasons new people seem to switch to a custom UI is to get one that takes up less screen real-estate than the default. The most popular custom UIs seem to be the ones that cut down the clutter and space usage in window frames, bags, HUD elements. Following that lead can't, I think, be a bad thing.

I think the new default should be toggleable, so people who're used to the current default won't get a sudden incompatible change. They've got saved UI settings and a new default UI probably won't be compatible with those settings (windows will need to be different sizes and in different places, for instance). A real ideal would be to extend the UI settings format to hold the settings for multiple UIs keyed by the name of the UI, so when I toggled on the new default UI it wouldn't overwrite or try to use the old UI's settings, it'd create a new section in the UI settings file starting out with it's own defaults. And if I toggled the new UI off, as part of the change of UI it'd load the section for the old UI. If you key it by UI skin name, custom UIs would then do the same automatically so you could change between multiple UIs without your UI settings getting messed up on every change. That'd make it easy for users to try out UIs without the "Oh gods, if I try that and don't like it I'm going to have to re-do all my UI placement again!" factor.

Advanced features? They'd be nice and I'd like to see some internal UI support for things like click-to-cure to make them work smoother, but I'm not sure they need to be actually implemented in the default UI. Aim the default UI at the new user who needs the basic functionality while not confusing them with more features than they can grasp, and make it easy and natural to move on to custom UIs that require you to understand more of what's going on to take advantage of all the advanced features. POIs for the new map system would be an example: SOE implemented the underlying support, but left it to projects like EQ2Map to actually provide the POIs and create the full mod.

Things I would add and windows I would change!

You said to allow for overall color tinting, I would also like to expand that and ask for activated window tinting. Example your activated or current window is color and if its not active its grey scale.

Maintained effects:
Allow for the icon size to be adjusted under the options menu.
Make the black shade for countdown easier to see.
Add target information(advanced)
Add duration information(advanced)
When you hover over the icons area this changes to name of spell
Add amount remaining(advanced)
Allow for you to toggle the advanced information on and off. Turning advanced information off would make it look the same as it does now.
I really don't have a logical answer for this but I think its a huge pain how as a support class probably half your maintained spells are your buffs. Leaving little room for your debuffs, buffs or procs. There should be some way of working this out. More later.

Spell effects:
Allow for the icon size to be adjusted under the options menu.
Make the black shade for countdown easier to see.
Give us the information name and duration.
Split this window into two windows, one for until canceled buffs or buffs longer than one hour. Another for temporary buffs that way it makes it easy to see procs ect, this is a huge problem. Like I said before the maintained is also very cluttered with the addition of this new window you could move all BENEFICIAL maintained spells here too. Making a new Beneficial window, maintained window(or hostile window), Buff window and detrimental window.

Detrimental effects:
Allow for the icon size to be adjusted under the options menu.
Make the black shade for countdown easier to see.
Give us the information name and duration.

Hot bars:
For the love of god get rid of the spinners!
Maybe throw the bank control in hot bar settings since they can still be adjusted with hot keys? Just make a marker of some sort which is your active hot bar! Or just really make it so if you hide the spinner it doesn't have dead space :P
Get rid of the border so they can be used as a block.
Make the black shade for countdown easier to see.
Allow for timers under hot bar settings.
Remove the clear all option in the drop down and move it to hot bar settings window.
Show timers for items.

Chat:
Make the tabs more compact.
Make the scroll bar hide unless you hover over the window.

Target window:
Add Percent health and power.
Give us the actually health amount pwease :):):)

Implied window:
Add Percent health and power.
Give us the actually health amount pwease :):):)

Start button:
Get rid of it

Compass:
Add a small round eq2 emblem to the bottom of it and make it the new start button.

Heroic opportunity:
Just condense it a tad and cooler graphics.

Quest journal helper:
Allow for showing multiple quest in a collapsible tree esq thing.

Quest journal:
horizontal view kind of like explorer.

Group window:
Allow for the player window to snap into here or make a option to have it be part of the group window all together.
Show health and power percents or values.
Build pet health into group members.

Player window:
like I said before snap into the group window.
Remove concentration crap that can go into the persona window.
Change appearance to mimic the group window.

Socials window:
Switch macros tab with emotes making it the primary.
Allow you to drag the order of macros for reorganization.

Raid window:
Shrink it a tad.
Two modes, show curse and show all five detrimentals.
If in a square names should go from the center out. Expanding on that the top two groups should fill from the bottom up and bottom two should fill from the top down.

Bags:
Have two modes under the options menu all in one or individual.
All in one would be the same as if they were just next to each other in a block. Still respect the bag rules and order but appear as one block with the title in the top left(Bags) and the x at the top right.

Persona window: EDITED****
All the drop down options just make those visable all the time! There is no reason not to there is plenty of room.

That is all I can think of at this late hour couldn't really sleep so decided to get the ball rolling. Hope this is the kind of stuff you are looking for.

Personally I started using UI's cause I hated not knowing exactly how much I was getting per kill and how close I was to level
Found one UI I liked (Dracokyn) which became outdated and now I am modding it my self for my own purposes and my wifes... how ever someone else has taken up tryingto keep it up todate as best they can.

So I would have to say Show me my percents instead of lil bars
also I like being able to see all my stats (dps modifier, crit modifier, run speed, haste, and such) in persona not just the main ones (str int sta wis, and resists)

Almost all of those are shown in your persona...

I'd agree with pretty much everything you said except for this one and the player window one (see below). I don't think removing the spinners would work for most users, it would just have them put more hotbars on screen (or probably that's what most users do anyway, so you may have a point). But I'd like to get the right click menus fixed to how they worked before the introduction of IconBanks, i.e. all options being available when you right click the IconBank, that way we could get rid of the dead space.

Haven't checked the default window in a while but last time I checked it had two circles too many, there are no HOs that use more than 4 circles (unless that changed as well since I last played, but noone ever complained about that in ProfitUI, which only shows 4). So you can actually condense it quite a bit.

I don't think that would work for most players either, unless you an indicator elsewhere. But I agree with you that the whole distribution and separation between maintained and effects windows should be reviewed anyway so that could be part of it, conceptually it could better be indicated in one of those windows.

The huge thing is I hate having a feature that is going to be used what once a week at most? Its not clean, but I also realize that to new users they are fairly important. That is why I suggested making it so when you hide them there is no dead space. With that new users are happy and so are older users. I also agree with your point of bringing back all the options but still remove clear all hot keys!
You are correct sir.
The only real reason I say this is because!
A) If you hover over the window it shows you concentration information again.
B) If its going to snap into the group window the idea is that they all pretty much look the same.
C) The majority of classes couldn't use all their concentration if they tried. Therefor its just an eyesore more than half the time.
D) If you cast a spell and don't have concentration it tells you. So in my opion there is PLENTY of ways to know your concentration if you cant just remember it(which you should :P).

Yes, my comments were with the new users in mind, I think they'd want an easy to see indicator about which spells cost concentration and also the possibility to cancel those spells from there by right clicking that they currently have. Of course every somewhat experienced users should know this by heart and won't ever need that indicator again, so to save space that's why I though that you could simply add an indicator to the maintained window instead (if you keep the buffs there). Or add a toggle, toggles are always good.

Same on the hotbars, I think new users need the spinners, but once you are settled in of course it would be nice to be able to toggle them off, I'm all for it. Also "clear all hotkeys" definitely needs to be (re)moved, no doubt about it.

Just move clear all hot keys to hotbar settings window, in my opinion of course!

Zone reuse:
Make persistent the primary tab!

Did this idea already die :(

I know I and probably most other people have been busy with the hustle and bustle of Christmas and New Year holidays. Once things settle back down to normality I am sure this thread will be come a bit more active.

Hi all. I'm back from a long vacation and have caught up on this thread. I thought I might have a chance to keep up with it while I was gone, but that didn't happen.

I agree that the direction needs to be nailed down first because that will ultimately resolve many of the other issues when we know the answers to some of these basic questions.

Here are my ideas/opinions on the above questions.

1. Build a new UI that is more current and reflects the changes that have been made to both the game itself and UI Scripting/XML. Also focus on performance to minimize the impact that the UI has on frame rates.

2. The new UI should have a clean, fresh look with the XML reflecting a more organized structure lending itself to easier modding and customization. I'd like to see a more HUD-based approach with fixed elements rather than a floating window approach.

3. I think the target audience should reflect all play-styles with an emphasis more towards new and casual players. Advanced/hard-core players are more familiar with the inner-workings of the client and have a greater knowledge of client commands. They are more likely to switch to a third-party UI or use game commands as shortcuts regardless of how successful this new UI turns out. I think the greatest gains can be seen by making a UI that is friendlier and less daunting to new users yet provides enough accessibility to features for casual and even hard-core players that don't need that extra level of scripting and detail that third-party UI's often provide.

4. This UI will need to work like any other third-party UI. It cannot sit "on top" of the default UI with a simple toggle. It would have to be loaded like any other UI. If we end up patching this UI down with the default, we would make sure that switching between the two via /loadui command or in-game interface worked smoothly.

5. I would lean more towards leaving out advanced features like click-to-cure for some of the reasons I listed in #3. Its not my intent to create a UI that replaces the work you guys have done in your own custom UI's.

Regarding #2 above - my only concern with a HUD based UI is the amount of screen real estate it would use up - one of my major grievances with the EQ2 interface from the beginning has been the absence of a EQ1 style "viewport" command - I would love to see the ability to keep UI elements from covering up any of the game world during play.

I realize this is not a small thing, but I think it would help the "immersion factor" immensely.

I'm glad you brought those two points up, firstly I was going to mention a window position mode but didn't know how far you wanted to go into this so I kind of stayed away from advanced stuff like that.

Secondly most of my suggestions would cater to new and old players with the option to toggle modes for more information. Or is this not something you would want to do?

Essentially if I was to redo the entire UI I would make it so most windows cant move saves bags etc. Then make a entire portion of the options devoted to advanced features hiding aspects of the UI such as check boxes to show or hide windows and advanced features(like the extended info on maintained window).

I dont think the two ideas are mutually exclusive. If we decide to go with a HUD-based approach it doesn't mean that it has to take up a lot of screen real-estate. Some of the windows that I think would work nicely into a solid HUD are windows such as the hotkey bar, compass, XP Bar, target and implied target info, casting bar, etc. Id like to see a HUD element at the bottom of the screen that incorporates these types of windows into a clean and space efficient area. Due to the way the client works, they will still have to be separate windows, but we can make it so they are not movable by the user and locked by default.

I also think we could have an upper bar to incorporate other parts of the UI. Then windows such as the Group window and spell effects could appear on the side and are only visible when necessary.

One of the problems though is that I'd really like to design the UI around 1 chat window with tabs because it will leave a lot more room for other elements and look a lot cleaner. Most advanced users will probably want more than 1 visible chat window, but I think for new and casual users 1 window open by default should be enough.

I'd like to start drawing up some concepts in photoshop and posting them. I'm no graphic artist, but I'd love to contribute to a starting idea, and I'm agreeing with the fact of a more HUD display at the bottom.

just some design thoughts....

I was always a big fan of some of the "wrap around" UI's from EQ1 - if memory serves, our very own Cairenn had a very nice Celtic-Themed one that "framed" the screen all the way around... I'll have to go over to eqinterface and take a look around - its been a while :)

also, I was looking at the LoN UI and I really like the way the left side menu "slides out" from the frame on mouseover - keeps things tidy while making it very easy to get at more info when wanted.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the hotbar drawr idea that is AWSOME i so want that BADLY!

that said....lol

I think it would be nice to have a switch to change it from a basic ui and layout to an advanced one.

I would like options for layout and setup for each specific class

realistate is important to me.

one thing i hate is the popup stuff blocking my access to clicking something

i hate the way the hint popups tend to appear under other windows

an auto scrolling ticker with the option to rewind fastforward would be GREAT

as for looks something simple buut still screams FANTASY RPG

thanks for reading my player feedback on your project

I CANT WAIT!

I'm very interested in being involved with this. I've been a professional UI designer/developer for over 20 years now and would love to see this become a shining example of good modern UI.

Basic Principles

Progressive disclosure: A concept that involves setting up the UI to be as minimal as possible by default, but capable of increasing its feedback, options and/or complexity to suit the task and user preference.

Function over Form: UI is not art. Yes it needs to look professional, but above all else it needs to be functional. UI also should not be the primary focus of any app, no more than a hammer and saw are the focus of a woodworking project. The entire purpose of the EQ2 UI is to facilitate interacting with the game world, thus should avoid obscuring the world with otherwise pointless or excessively large visual elements.

What I'd Like

Definition - Container: What we currently call a page, but tagged with an attribute that identifies it as a top level window wrapper. Containers would support some additional attributes irrelevant to nested pages... for example a titlebar/tray icon.

Definition - Pallet: A new UI element with drag/drop support, data and display management for multiple containers. Ideally pallets could display a list of containers in a variety of ways (button list, link list, tab bank, etc. in both vertical and horizontal formats).

Definition - Master Control: A new UI element that combines a special container with a nested drawer component.

Id like to see the default "out of the box" UI fully functional from just 1 or 2 persistent master components that provide icon access to flyouts or drawers with all the secondary stuff, and a pallet schema that allows for user customization.

Each master component would have a predefined list of secondary drawers that dock to it by default (Customizable in XML).

Opening a drawer would cause a box to slide/expand out from the parent component (away from the nearest screen edge). Each drawer would have a detach button, converting it to a floating pallet that the user can place wherever.

Pallets would have the following behaviors/options.

1) Drag and drop a pallet to a master control to change where it docks.

2) Drag and drop a pallet to another pallet to merge them under a single list control similar to how the chat window works now. The pallet should provide options for how the container list is displayed (Buttons, Text Links, Icons, horizontal, vertical, etc).

3) Close button that hides the pallet and restores all nested drawers to the master component they were last docked to. Probably a good idea to include a confirm dialog by default if the pallet has multiple nested containers.

4) Minimize button that reduces the pallet to a tray.

5) Collapse button that reduces the pallet to just its titlebar and link list.

6) A pallet with more than one nested container should display a link list. Selecting a container from the link list should display the associated container. Each container should be docked to the pallet bar with nearest screen corner determining what corner of the pallet bar the container is anchored to.

7) The pallet bar should be realizable independently of any of its nested containers.

Gotta run... will post more when able, maybe work up some wireframes.

Zonx, I think your basic principles are dead-on.

Unfortunately the features you're describing would take a LOT of code work and I don't know that I'd be able to tackle something that big in my spare time.

I'm certainly willing to give code support when needed but I think in general we should try to make the UI work with the current implementation and UIScripting capability. We can probably use Effectors to create sliding windows that move in and out on certain events, so I think that level of polish is achievable. But the ability to dock and undock windows would be pretty difficult at this point.

I worked on some ideas last night for common controls like buttons because I really wanted to get started on something.

I think our first step is to mock up some layouts for the main HUD windows that are up all the time. The graphic polish doesnt have to be there yet, we just need to get placement and size nailed down. Then we can have some artists mock up some textures that fit the layout.

If anyone has ideas for how you'd like to see the windows organized, feel free to whip up something quick and dirty and post it here. I'll try to work on a couple of ideas myself to at least get the ball rolling. Sometimes its easier to get participation when you have a starting point and people can at least say what they like or don't like.

To start, these are the windows I think we need to organize into the HUD.

1 Chat Window with tabs
2 or 3 Hotbars (I think thats about all we could fit into an integrated HUD. Additional hotbars would probably need to float. I really want to implement the drawer concept so that 3 hotbars would be enough for most people)
XP Bar
Casting Bar
Group Window
Player Info Window
Target Window
Implied Target Window
Mini Map
Compass
Clock
Quest Helper
Maintained Buffs
Spell Effects
Detrimental Effects
Threat Meter (Many people may want to turn off the threat meter, but I think it should be designed so that when its on, it looks like its part of the top or bottom HUD bar and not be a floating window.

Let me know what you think.

I may be alone in this, but I would prefer to see at least 2 windows - 1 for combat and 1 for chat both are central and should be viewed at the same time even by a newbie.

What is your default resolution you are shooting for. Knowing that will help determine the flow of the HUD. If its rather small then less feedback data can be done other wise more feedback can be incorporated.

I used to be the same way, but I think the advanced user can get used to 1 chat window if you give it time. EQ1 didn't have chat tabs, so it took me a while..

It's not necessary to watch the damage window with the floating combat numbers. And with the ammount of numbers that can fly by, you really won't be missing anything.

Thus, I think the advanced/veteran user can do 1 chat channel. Plus I find multiple chat windows cause more FPS drops... I can't believe some play with 5 chat windows, seems very inefficient.

I used to have 1 window for chat channels, one for guild chat, one for em/say/groupsay/raidsay and one for tells. The rest was in tabs. So /shrug, worked for me, easier for me to keep track of different conversations.

I've always been torn between showing 1 or 2 chat windows myself. Personally I use 2 chat windows all the time because I want to see my outgoing damage separate from chat text.

The biggest problem is that making a permanent space for a second chat window eats up a LOT of screen real-estate and can turn a relatively clean, minimum UI into something more beastly.

I think it comes down to making a decision about aesthetics. The advanced user could always open a second window and find a place for it, but I'm not sure if making a dedicated spot for it in the default configuration would suit the needs of the most people.

I expect this is just the first of many issues that people will feel strongly about on both sides.

Perhaps anyone that's thinking about submitting some layout mockups could try it both ways. I'll try to make some time to do a couple rough layouts in Photoshop tonight just for window placement and see what it looks like with both 1 and 2 chat windows.

Its also possible that we could come up with 2 different layouts for the same UI. Most of the windows and common UI elements would be the same, but the windows that make up the bottom HUD bar would be slightly different to accomodate 1 or 2 chat windows. We might even be able to do this with scripting so its the same UI with different window options depending on the layout you choose.

I also agree with Drums that it would be nice to see as much performance gain as possible by keeping UI elements to a minimum.

Two chat boxes is useless in my opinion, you cant keep up combat scrolling by and pay attention to what you should be while fighting. Most people use the combat tab for after a wipe to see what was happening not to watch during the fight.

That's how I am as well. I have a chat chat window and then a combat chat window

2 chat windows.

1 covers actual chat I care about while doing some serious adventuring/raiding, i.e. say, shout, tells, group, raid and guild chat.

The other stuff you don't want pushing off chat or visa-versa goes in the second window.

In my case I've also split the second window into several tabs - Combat, Spells and Pets, Channels, Loot. What's displayed in the second window depends alot on what I'm doing at the moment, but its something I want to refer to frequently without having to click a control and also don't want interfering with my regular chat stream.

Absolutely a personal preference that has little to do with experience. I've been Raiding pretty hard core since EQ1 Luclin. I could live with 1 chat window if I had to... but I wouldn't like it.

It sounds like a good idea, but in practice what I find is the sheer volume of information in the combat scroll makes it impossible to use in real time. What I normally have up during combat is a window showing group chat, local text and mob speech for things like cues for the mob's attacks. I've got a combat tab, but it's normally used only post-mortem. I've taken to using tabs to separate chat, eg. I've got a "Chat" tab with things like level chat on it, a "Game" tab with the text that's important when concentrating on current play, and a "Main" tab with the text I pay attention to when just running around or taking care of things. Eg. guild chat is on the Main tab but not the Game tab, level chat channels go only on the Chat tab. Plus of course the "Combat" tab with the full combat-related scroll and no non-combat-related stuff.

IMO allow the UI to support multiple chat windows, but start the new user off with a single window with just a couple of tabs. Also, it'd be helpful if somewhere there was a description of all the text selection checkboxes and the kinds of text they control. Some are obvious, but other times it's not clear what falls into which category.

Old habits die hard, that's for sure. But like I said above, I was also someone who did the more than 1 chat window, and started out that way in EQ2.

While I do find it annoying to have to scroll over (say you have too many chat tabs in one window), it'd still probably work better for the implementation as Rothgar stated.

Personally I wish custom sound triggers existed in-game, rather than through external log readers. I simply just don't like turn on logging unless I really wanna test out DPS.

Another thing that I hate, is you can only totally filter out so much through options. The rest is controlled through Chat Filters, and they have to go SOMEWHERE. If you uncheck it from a secondary tab/window... it goes back to Main chat..... annoying to me...

Ok getting off track :rolleyes:
Hoping to mess with mock-ups here soon...

The workaround I used was that the first physical tab I have is the "A" tab. It has every single chat-text type and chat channel selected. I never look at it (except maybe when doing a /report), it's just a placeholder. I'm not sure it's needed for it's original purpose anymore (keeping channel numbering consistent every time I log in) but it does simplify keeping certain categories completely off the other tabs.

Curious as to what class you play? My class requires me to time CAs between AA rounds and I find the combat window useful for that.

Easiest solution for the two chat windows, ask Samejima really nicely to release his autoattack cast bar for the project ;) Or spend some coding time to recreate it.

I *really* like this idea. *Wanders off to Rothgar's office to bug him about it*

Berserker. Most of my CAs are one of two lengths, so I find it easier to just work out how many CAs per autoattack swing and then pause a beat at the appropriate count. I probably lose a few swings, but it's sufficiently close (especially since TSO with taunts and hate generation taking priority over sheer DPS for holding aggro). Part of it's that we tend to avoid things where it's absolutely critical that everybody be at 100%, I take being that close to the edge as a sign we need bigger guns. Old Shin'ain proverb: "If you find yourself in a fair fight, it means you screwed up somewhere in the planning stages."

If I needed better timing, rather than watching the combat scroll I'd probably just set up audio triggers in ACT (ding on auto-attack going off, dong at weapon delay - 0.5s later to cue me for the upcoming swing). That way I can get the cues without having to try and spot them in a scroll that's going by too fast to read.

I thought docking would be semi possible because i just noticed earlier that the voice bar docks on to the chat window.