Community based project: Creating a new default UI
 

I've had an idea for a couple years now that I wanted to pursue. I really wanted to create a community-based project with the modding community to create a new UI from the ground up that could possibly be packaged with the base game; sort of an alternate Default UI. The target audience would still be new players as well as existing players so I wouldn't want to fill the UI up with a lot of advanced features. The main point would be to redesign the UI in a more intuitive way, a fresh look, and a more organized configuration of styles and elements. I was thinking of this project back when I created the window manager because I thought that I really wanted the new UI to have minimizable windows. But part of me would really like to see a more integrated UI that isn't based as much on floating windows like the current Default. Something that has a more "HUD" feel to it. Another thing I wanted to do was create a "drawer" system for hotbars so pressing a hotbar button would popup a drawer with other icons in it. This way you could layer all of your potions/poisons behind a single button for example. One of my biggest gripes is that our players have to open 6+ hotbar windows in order to play the game.

Anyway, I've gotten off on a tangent. But seriously, if the idea of this project sounds good to anyone, we should talk about it.

That definitely sounds like a good idea. If you try for a community based project like you were talking about, it would open up a whole new spectrum of things we can do. There are so many different minds that could contribute. You, the modders/players, perfectionists, me :D. We could make the UI much better by doing this.

I would be up for it.

I agree, it sounds like a lot of fun and a chance for us to do some really cool things together. The biggest hurdle will be soliciting feedback from people but not end up with the "too many cooks in the kitchen" syndrome. You also don't want to make the project take 10x as long to complete by putting every issue up to a vote.

In order for it to work well, I think there needs to be a small group of people that actually do the work and make the final decisions, but involve the entire community via screenshots and forum posts throughout the process. This way if the community has an idea or sees something they don't like, we can talk about resolutions during development.

I can provide code support for special needs on my own time so it doesn't interfere with my normal workload.

The biggest thing I ask from the project is that everything we do from top to bottom is professional looking and doesn't cut any corners in quality. There are a lot of niche custom interfaces out there that look cool and will be popular to a part of the player base. But I'd really like to do something that's traditional looking that will have a wide appeal to the most people.

If we're successful in making something that's leaps and bounds beyond the Default UI, I would push for making it the new Default or at the very minimum having it shipped with the client and marketed in a way that players will know how to try it out.

I really love the idea of doing something of this caliber with the talent that you guys have. It certainly would not be meant as a replacement for the UI's that you guys are already working on. A good example of functionality is the click-to-cure feature that has become a part of several UI's. I think this is a really awesome idea and a great testiment to your ingenuity, but I'm not sure if its something you'd want to include to the mass player-base. I guess the first step is to determine what the goal of the project is. Are we creating a replacement for the Default UI that should be easy to learn for new players? If so, advanced features like those should probably be left out. However, if we think that what the game needs is a Default-style interface, but one that caters to the more advanced players, then maybe those are the type of features we should include.

There are lots of things to talk about obviously. I guess the first step is find out who is interested in doing this and put together a team. Then we can hammer out the details over chat. =)

So involve the whole community, but only a group will determine the final decision based on logic/reasoning. Sounds reasonable.

Aye quality is important. If it's done right the first time, you don't have to go back and edit it several times. For me when editing UIs, it has to be perfect on each side with the same amount of pixel deadspace otherwise it bugs me.

I'm not exactly sure. What does everyone else think?

I agree with Rothgar, that windows should not have elaborate scripting in them.

Yeah. The elaborate scripting is for the us :D

Otherwise what are we here for?

Though I am not a code wizard by any means, I would be very interested in being a part of this project, perhaps in a testing capacity or with the look/graphic elements involved.

Sounds like a job for Landiin to me. ;)

1. A community constructed alternate default UI would be awesome.

2. We need to think even further back to the basics here first. I really believe there needs to be a way for users to select their UI from within the game, and have the setting saved. I know that this is the PC age, but I think it would help out a lot of players if they didn't have to setup a eq2.ini file and then set a variable inside it.

3. I know this post is sorta off topic from the original post, but to go along with my #2. I would really like to see the UI INI layout files be in a readable format, editable by a text file, rather than in a compressed/strange format that we can at best, backup the files because we know they're working from with in-game.

I made a new thread out of this discussion. I'm sure you'll forgive my editing of posts where necessary to achieve that. :)

The hotbar idea is interesting for all the extras we like to have quick access to. But if you are thinking of redesigning hotbars a new issue has come up with TSO. I swap mostly between a swash and brig and play 95% from the keyboard. The problem is there are only 3 keyboard driven hot bars and all the of mine are used for combat, no fluff in them. TSO has added 4 new combat arts i have no place to put except in clicky bars and swapping the primary hotbar in fights is a pain. Setting up 2 spell macros doesnt work well since you can't see the status of one of the spells. A 4th keyboard hotbar using Shift-1, etc maybe would help.

You set the spell with the longest recast timer to the primary. When you see the icon "ungrey" you know u can chain the two ca/spells. Thats they way I do my chains any ways.

2. I agree, this should be easy enough.


3. I've wanted to do this for awhile myself. In fact I sort of already started on it about 6 months ago writing a replacement for our streaming class to stream to XML instead of the binary format it uses now. The problem is that every single window in the game needs to change so that it not only outputs the value, but the name of the value. Currently we rely on the position of the data in the file to know what it is. To move to an XML format, we'll need to send more information about the data. We also need to remain backwards compatible with the older format since we never know when a player might log in from an old installation. So behind the scenes, our deserialize code will look kinda bad supporting both. However, I still think its something worth doing. It would be a tremendous help when it comes to troubleshooting issues related to ini settings.

gm9, thanks for making the new thread!

i would prefer to add this community UI as an advanced UI and keep the default UI as the basic / beginner UI like in many Tools (software) there are often basic settings and advanced settings. The player can decide wich fits his need best. Or if possible doit like the Con-System, switchable?! GroupWindow with C2C and without. On a Raid i prefer C2C, on a casual Group i don't really need C2C or at soloing.

At the beginning of the Game there are several hints displayed, maybe display a hint to switch UI if the player reaches a level? (30/40?)



I also vote for the fourth "keyboard-hotbar"!

kind regards,

Nimda

We've been kicking around the idea of creating hotkeys for the 4th hotbar. They would be Ctl-Alt-#. Probably a pain for abilities you use all the time, but for lesser-used things, it would be easier than reaching for the mouse.

I agree. I gave this some thought last night, and there are lots of resources that we will want to use from the Default UI, namely all of the icon textures. The client already falls back onto the Default if a file is missing from another UI folder. So we'll want this new UI to work just like the other third-party UI's so we can exclude files like the icons and they'll still be found by the client.

Funny just cracked open UISettingSpy source today to fix the addition of the voice channels. How soon will this be implemented? If soon I'll just trash the stream code and start tooling it for xml.

ONly for bonus points, I'd happily have my entire UI reset if the uisettings.ini files were easily editable in return (and I could finally keep the ProfitUI default settings easily updated).

Yeah, me too, but I don't think we're in the majority. Some people just don't care how we store the INI files and would probably be upset if all their window settings were lost.

Maintaining backward compatibility isn't really a problem, its just an inconvenience in the code.

Landiin, I don't have any time frame for getting this done. This is not something that is actually on my schedule so it would most likely be something I have to do in my spare time.

Do you think you will support <include> statements therein?

file: ProfitUI_1280x1024_eq2_uisettings.ini

<setting1/>
<setting2/>
<setting3/>
<include>ProfitUI_resolution_independent_uisettings.xml</include>

Also if you work on the file already, could you store the UIfolder in it?

<UIname>Default</UIname>
<setting1/>
<setting2/>
<setting3/>
<UIname>ProfitUI</UIname>
<setting1/>
<setting2/>
<setting3/>

That would be sweet.

Woot, feedback on INI files :)
Thanks, Rothgar. I think anytime frame of "the future" works well enough for me. Been 4 years anyhow :p

Suggestions/Food For Though/Requests

1. [Think this is what Gm9 was saying...] Have configurations saved separately per UI (or in the same file).

2. Have the correct (last used) UI load upon logging into a character. Many people would like to have different UIs for different characters (IE: from templar to an assassin)

Nothing else comes to mind off the top of my head.
I really think open discussions like these are the best starting point for any additions to the game. Lets do it more often :D

:nana:

This entire post has me excited Have a lot of typing and mock ups to do! Also nice new avatar gm9 :D

Sounds great! The art and style of the UI is obviously something that needs to be determined as early as possible. So if you've got some ideas and want to submit some screenshots, that would be excellent!

Off topic, but his avatar is a result of him pointing out that I'm awesome.
:D

I was just going to jot down everything I could think of Id do if I built the UI that's essentially what you want right? then we could discuss all the different ideas ect.

Any specifics that are off limits?

Suggestions
 

I don't really know how to do much to the UI beyond basic modding but I do have a request...if this awesome idea takes off, please design it with two things in mind: cleanness and function. I prefer a noncluttered, minimalistic look that will take as few resources as possible on old computers (I still sometimes play on my old laptop, for instance.) However I prefer function over style.

I'm not a huge fan of Profit UI due to the looks but man do I love the functionality....especially the broker window. The broker window is a great example of something I'd like to see in this UI; it has lots of info presented at once but you can minimize half of the window via that uber clicky arrow to save screen space if needed! I'd love to see something like this for tradeskills where you could open/close your recipe list via a similar arrow, even while crafting.

Other misc ideas: smaller/compact windows (especially raid window, yeesh is that thing big), I'd say include click to cure because most people probably won't figure out what it is until they need to use it anyways...I see enough bad curing healers that I think this training feature is needed in game haha. If I think of anything else, I'll post it later. And also, I might be interested in testing out this UI when it makes it to 'beta' phase hehe. Good luck guys :)

Not wanting to derail this, but the ProfitUI tradeskill window in fact already has what you are asking. :D

I think you bring up some great points. I too agree that the look should be very clean and uncluttered. We should reduce the size of the UI as much as possible when we can, but we still need to leave enough space for translation into other languages. Some languages like Russian and German can take up to 30% more space to display the same text in English. This is why some windows look like they have too much whitespace.

If we did decide to include click-to-cure (and I'm still on the fence about that one) the upcoming changes to the raid window will at least let us hide that functionality under the advanced mode.

I mainly see this as an opportunity to come up with a fresh design and to clean up the UI files removing old styles that aren't used and to better organize the data. Also with the addition of ColorStyles, we can provide an easy method for players to tint the UI on-the-fly giving everyone some different color schemes to choose from. (If it makes sense for the design)

Unless we just stay srticly with the usabilityonplayer cure command on the OnPress event Im ok with it. But I don't think we should use advanced scripting that is in Fitesh, Profit UI or Henchmans C2 Cure/cast system. Even then I'm thinking it should be hard coded for in-house class detection. Just have the hard coding look at the event properties and if they are populated defer to the user script and not the hard coding.

It should not even use useabilityonplayer - the current default UI already has instances of code that don't work for international users (non-ASCII characters in player names), it does not do to introduce more, so this should be fully hardcoded if you even want to go there.

But then there is still the question of which spells to use, and will you do click-to-cure with potions also (in which case you would need to hardcode it also because /use_itemvdl is also buggy if you have items in your non-shared bank)? As much as I agree that it is an essential feature for many players, but if you start adding it to the defaultUI you can't have all the problems that are accepted in custom UIs because that's the best we can do. DefaultUI needs to be better IMHO. Of course fixing all the bugs would be best. ;)

Yes I agree, that is why I suggested hard coding to just cast cure if the class being played had a cure for said effect. After all these are the 5 detrimental icons we are talking about, so they should strictly just use the class appropriate cure spell. If the user wanted to use potion or other spells/CA they would need to script it them self or look at a 3rd party UI customization.

I as a healer think that click to cure is useless. I coded it into my UI because a lot of my friends use it and asked for it. Potions on the player window is huge but I do think that should be left for third party customization. The idea of a a potion bank might be nice but its something I can't imaging being used very much.

I think a huge thing from my perspective is Visions. Being colorblind during raids when I get colored vision its hard for me to tell if at all. If we were given the info for detrimental names we could code custom messages to say YOU HAVE BLAH BLAH!

That being said I think names duration and target/who cast should be on detrimental maintained and spell effects. Spell effects should also be split into two windows temporary buffs and ones until canceled buffs, that way seeing item procs or temp buffs is very easy as many of these don't show in maintained.

Also sorry to double post! I don't think hiding all detrimentals together is a good idea, it should be curse only or all five.

I haven't heard of this bug before now. I'm assuming if you have a specific item in your bank it attempts to use it and then fails? If you want to PM me the details on this bug I'm sure it would only take a few minutes to fix it.

Yep, if you have a stack of 50 potions on you and 10 in the NON-SHARED bank, it will try to use the ones in the bank.

I think this is the realated to the issue of L&L clickly items. If you have one on you and one or more in the bank, and you examine the one on you, it will take one from the bank.

Alright, I'll throw a new idea or two out on the table:

1. UI file-write capabilities.
Imagine being able to edit buttons on say the player window, just like a macro button, and the UI would save this customization.

... Maybe you wouldn't even call this file write capabilities as much as you would call it "custom" variable saving within a UI window.


This one has been brought up before:

2. Single-window bag.
I honestly believe at this point, with the number of bags and all, that this would be a GREAT option to have available to users. And if it were a toggle like function, it would be even more superior.


3. True custom binds.

I'd love to, by config file, or in game... be able to set a custom bind to open windows. Now, the easiest way off the top of my head would be able to bind a key to any command you want.
Safe? I don't see why not, you can already do this on the hotbars if you wanted to. But what I mean by "True" custom binds, is being able to set any key you want for any function you want.

If I want to open of my 3 custom, non-default windows... I wanna do it at a key touch.

How many keys do I have available on keyboard, versus how many keys aren't being utilized. Seriously. It's 2008 :) Lets make with the customization!

Didn't mean to be forward there.... just trying to get that last point across :D

1. I think I understand what Drums is talking about. A good example would be a notepad window. You can type what you want into the typing field, but once you logout it is not saved. We want to be able to save custom windows/variables whether it be a notepad window, or not. My 6-Way inventory window is another example. You can click the button to change the inventory state, but it never saves (Currently the only way to do this is by changing a text file that the UI loads manually).

server_name_eq2_customuisettings?

2. Agree. With that I think there should be a sort option to sort each item in its own bag, a list instead of icons, and bag minimizing (see SS). The sort options would come like Quest, Armor, Weapons, Poisons, Potions, etc. Also with that, the ability to toggle for it to automatically sort your bags by specified options. This is an example of WAR Online and how they did their bag window, similar to what I'm describing (I hate using examples from other games):

All in one window

Oh man would I love to have a built in notepad window that saved! I'd make to do lists, lists of masters I still needed, quick things to copy and paste (URLs for example), notes about in game things (how many of fertilizer, water, and bones it takes for a power root), etc. Hugely useful idea. I wouldn't even mind if it was saved on your hard drive...you could add an 'export to desktop' button that saved stuff like friends lists, notes, etc to a file, and you could email it to another comp or transfer it on a USB drive.

While I'm talking about friends lists...please pretty please give us a way to import friends lists or share them between characters :)

As for the click to cure thing...I admit I rarely use it myself but that's because I'm an experienced raid healer. I find it much faster to simply use the F keys to target then click in one spot, rather than clicking in 6 different spots. But like I said there are a lot of newb healers out there that just don't cure like they should. I think if there's a satisfactory nonbloated way to include click to cure, it should be put in as a training tool. (Speaking of which I don't remember a tutorial popup explaining what a status effect was or the different ways it can go away. That's a kind of important oversight.)

These types of issues are easily fixed so I'll take a look at it when I get back in the office after the break.

All very good ideas and I agree with most of them. Its just an issue of time. So before this thread turns into more of a wishlist for features, lets keep it on the topic of creating a new UI without having to add too much new functionality. The other things can come when we have time.

I definitely like the idea of a list view for the bag window. I tried WAR for a little while myself and their inventory interface was indeed nice.

We've kicked around the idea of allowing you to save data and I think that's pretty doable. It becomes more of a possibility if we convert the UI files from binary into XML. Then we can serialize all of the properties on an object. So if you wrote in script "test=hello", then it could save the property test with the value of hello and automatically be reloaded later. I think this would be a lot harder to implement with the current system.