Second player window woes.

[Solf]

Cross-posted from: http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/e...ssage.id=13602
(because I have no idea where there are more people with in-depth understanding of EQ2 UI mechanics)

I also found this thread: http://www.eq2interface.com/forums/s...ead.php?t=6146
(this seems to confirm my worst fears)

Nevertheless perhaps some of you could suggest some tricks to resolve some of the issues I've been having...



So the other day I decided to create a second player window for myself (the one that shows my own hit points/power). Why you ask? Because I prefer to have one in the middle of the screen for soloing and another one near the group window for the cases when I heal in groups (so that I can see both my and groups' hit points in the same spot).

Looked simply enough -- I just copied original player frame (eq2ui_mainhud_player.xml) into another file and modified the name of the page so that they wouldn't clash. I also included this new file at the top of the eq2ui_mainhud.xml file.

Unfortunately it didn't work as well as I hoped it would. Here are the problems that I've encountered and if someone can help with them, it'd be greatly appreciated


Auto-showing custom windows on entering the game

The first problem I encountered is the inability to have my custom window (second player window) to automatically show whenever I enter the game.

I tried embedding "show_window" commands into OnShow handler of the default window (Compass) as suggested in several places, but it didn't seem to work.

The best I've managed so far is to execute show_window in Target's window OnShow handler -- meaning that as soon as I target something, my window shows up. This is "ok" from the gameplay point of view (for this type of window). Still, it would be best if the window was shown immediatelly upon entering the game. Any advice?


Tooltip and click-targetting

After sorting out issues with window showing I've found out that custom player window sort-of works (it displays player's health and mana, updates correctly, etc.). However tooltip, click-targetting, and right-click popup menu do not work (i.e. if I hover my mouse over second player window, tooltip with hit points and power values is not shown; similarly if I click this window, my character is not targetted [unlike what happens with standard player window]).

I though that actiontype="Player" in page declaration is responsible for tooltip and click-targetting behaviour but apparently it is not enough. Is tooltip and click-targetting hardcoded into EQ2 somewhere? Essentially meaning that you can't have fully functional player window except for the default one?

On the other hand "concentration bubbles" which make use of DynamicData declarations seem to work.


Debuff display

Similarly to the tooltip & click-targetting issue above debuff displaying (the four icons in player window for trauma/arcane/noxious/elemental) doesn't seem to work properly. It does show icons when appropriate, but it doesn't render proper image on those icons (i.e. doesn't show proper debuff icon with a count) but instead simply shows them as gray areas (the way those icons are setup in interface files).

I was able to somewhat work around this problem by replacing default "gray area" image for those icons with the images appropriate for each debuff type. But needless to say this doesn't solve debuff count issue.


Summary

Overall I'm trying to understand -- is A LOT of stuff brutally hardcoded into EQ2 implementation and you can't do much except for changing style somewhat by modifying default templates or am I missing something obvious here?

I don't think having two separate player windows can be considered an exploit or something


P.S. I also took a look at the raid window implementation... It doesn't contain a single DynamicData declaration! I guess my worst fears are true and one can't do much besides altering color scheme and layout of windows?