Quick Change Performance Profiles. 4 out of 8 so far.

[Kosmos]

And are they working with the first click?

[Drumstix42]

If someone comes up with a way to "save" custom profile configurations I will love you. An easy one at least. If the devs would do this, I think it would easily make a lot of people happy.

[Kosmos]

Originally Posted by Drumstix42

If someone comes up with a way to "save" custom profile configurations I will love you. An easy one at least. If the devs would do this, I think it would easily make a lot of people happy.

DrumSticks.

This should be available to you in just a couple more days.
You can even have more than 'one' custom profile.

As far as the 'easy' part it won't be all that bad.
Bascically it will come down to modifiying a few numbers in the XML file.
I'll be making a guide for this.
It would only need to be done once, and would never get lost.
once you set up one of these buttons for your custom settings by changing the values in the XML file. that button will always set things to your custom settings.

Pretty nifty.
You can check the most recent file i posted with all 7 buttons and look at the
code for button number#1.
That is the one I'm working on turning into a custom button that never changes. The names of the variables can be compared to my chart so you can set the values you want. Save the XMl file and put it in your customUI directory.
I'm still working out the bugs, but it's jsut around the corner.

Eventually it would be very, very nice if they DEVS did put this in game, but until then. This will be the best bet to change things in-game.
As far as if you just want to keep savnigs that you set.
You can backup your eq2.recent.ini file that is where the settings are saved.
But that doesn't work for 100 precent of the settings, because of they way the game is coded. My way will work with 100 percent of the settings.
and will provide a way for multiple custom profiles.

I'm sure once I get this one working, I'll figure out a more streamlined way.
of doing it.

[Kosmos]

Originally Posted by Laffs

Try this file !!

This works for me , no errors or pop ups and the displays change np , I dont know how many of the settings change but there is a visable differance thats for damn sure lol

Sorry, but that doesn't seem to be working for me.
I think you are getting the popup I'm talking about confused with the one that comes up and says you ahve to restart the game.

There is another popup that says you are going into high quality mode, and might make the system run slow. YES NO.

None of the pre-defined profiles do anything to the resolution nor the refresh rate refresh rate, triple buffer, or sync.

Nor will mine.

[Laffs]

Well first time round it worked fine , had to click on buttons twice likes and the start menu didnt work in that file , but the mute buttons etc did along with the 1 2 3 4 etc, and nothing changed the sreen rez or ref rate...

But on my other char....


Sorry should have read the pop up more closely to me it looked like a standard one that changes screen size and rez , and I did click yes and then you get the time out pop up where you need to accept or cancel but point is it worked , and I didnt get any errors at all !

And I tried that with all the buttons..

What I am going to try and do is copy my profile into a button and then make a lower one into another button Both using same screen size etc and see how that switches.... That will be tomorrow likes ... I will let you know the results..

[Kosmos]

Ok! After a few hours of playing and some much needed relaxation I went back at this and figured out what a few of my problems were.
I have all 7 buttons working now for the 'pre defined' profiles.

I have a few cosmetic issues I want to correct, and a few tweaks here and there, but I suspect I'll have an official release verysion ready for testing by the end of the week.

If anyone has any suggestions now would be the perfect time.

I'm sure this will go under many revisions as there are a few things I will want to change, I just want to get a fully working mod out there. Then later adjust things to make it a bit easier for the initial setup.

As it stands now..
There will be '7' buttons attached to the 'StartButton' In addition to In'somn's 2 mute buttons.
These 7 buttons are going to be fully configurable by each person.
When you first download the mob, the buttons will be set for for 6 of the -pre'defined' profiles. Which come with the game.
The 7th button will be the custom one.
I'll have the 7th one set up the 'extreme quality' values.
I.E. Each setting will be the same if you had just loaded the Extreme Quality profile.
I'll provide a simple step-by-step guide on how to put your custome profile values in the XML so that button 7 will be your 'custom' profile, that will never get changed. I additon you can also turn the other 6 buttons into 'custom' profiles, or leave them as they are, which is set to some of the predefined profiles.

[Kosmos]

Originally Posted by Laffs

Well first time round it worked fine , had to click on buttons twice likes and the start menu didnt work in that file , but the mute buttons etc did along with the 1 2 3 4 etc, and nothing changed the sreen rez or ref rate...

But on my other char....


Sorry should have read the pop up more closely to me it looked like a standard one that changes screen size and rez , and I did click yes and then you get the time out pop up where you need to accept or cancel but point is it worked , and I didnt get any errors at all !

And I tried that with all the buttons..

What I am going to try and do is copy my profile into a button and then make a lower one into another button Both using same screen size etc and see how that switches.... That will be tomorrow likes ... I will let you know the results..

The reason your start menu was not working was because you overwrote all the information eq2ui.mainhudstartmenu.xml with all the information in eq2ui.mainhud.startbutton.xml.
These are two different things.
You will need to delete the statmenu file and let the patcher re-download it.

[Kosmos]

In case anyone wants to play with what I have so far. Here is the file.
Button #6 is Very High Performance
Button #5 High Performance
Button #4 Balanced
Button #3 High Quality
Button #2 Very High Quality
Button#1 Will is being created for user-defined custom settings.
At this time, I ony have the variables entered for the first few sections of the display properties.

[Laffs]

Yeh I know that, Just wanted to see what the "mods" recation would be in a different location thats all...

I managed to get all the buttons working as well, And put my own settings into button 2 it all runs well untill you load up a profile that changes screen rez then you get prompts and stuff... anyway that much you know

It would be interesting to see what you changed to get it working lol or is top secret info untill its released now hehe (j/k)

Do you want me to send you the code for the button I made ? the profile is based loosely between Balanced and High with a few Vhigh settings in there (I think, they are the settings that I personaly use)

Just a thought as it would save you 20 mins of typeing lol the extra stuff in there is to reset the effects of pressing your button 1

Do you need me to help with anything more? Or have I got you confused enough already hehe

[Kosmos]

Glad you have been able to get it working the way I had hoped.
It's quiet nifty. I've got a few ideas in mind once i finnish this one to make things easier on people. But for now, this is alot more than we had.
I've pretty much got things covered.

It appears that the errors i was getting in the chat window was from editing I did up at work. The notepad was setup wrong, and I didn't double check the encoding. I think it was saving carriage returns or tabs or something.
Because once i got home I just removed all the extra spaces, and properly formated things and it worked like a charm. I also changed the values to 1.0 and 2.0 and 3.0 might have done the trick.
I'm still working on the issue of why the command has to be put in twice, but I think I'm going in another direction than using the OnPress key.
It's too soon to tell on that though.
I don't want to push out something sloppy.

[Kosmos]

Originally Posted by Laffs

Yeh I know that, Just wanted to see what the "mods" recation would be in a different location thats all...

I managed to get all the buttons working as well, And put my own settings into button 2 it all runs well untill you load up a profile that changes screen rez then you get prompts and stuff... anyway that much you know

It would be interesting to see what you changed to get it working lol or is top secret info untill its released now hehe (j/k)

Do you want me to send you the code for the button I made ? the profile is based loosely between Balanced and High with a few Vhigh settings in there (I think, they are the settings that I personaly use)

Just a thought as it would save you 20 mins of typeing lol the extra stuff in there is to reset the effects of pressing your button 1

Do you need me to help with anything more? Or have I got you confused enough already hehe

Also if you check the file I posted this morning. I figured out the problem witih the number variabls. You can use 1.000 etc.. or 0.500 or 500.0
You just have to have the decimal in there.
I was putting in 1000 and it wouldn't work. but 999.99998 would work.
But now I've discoverd that 1.000 works.
Check the updated file.
Anyway, this just the beginning that file probably won't look anything like that once I'm finnished.

[Laffs]

Kool I will look forward to the finished version

To add to what you were saying about the default settings not being added to the recent ini , untill they have been changed,
Yes this is true, So if one button changes a default value it adds it to the recent ini .. Oks ... so you choose another button that does not change that last value you are stuck with that value in the recent ini , even though the new profile may require this to be set at the default value..

(Hope this makes sense)

So may I surgest that in the custom buttons you should add every possible setting and value, That way you get no unwanted settings left from the last profile change and vice versa.

[Selae]

You are doing great work here There are TONS that will enjoy this

-Selae

[Kosmos]

Originally Posted by Laffs

Kool I will look forward to the finished version

To add to what you were saying about the default settings not being added to the recent ini , untill they have been changed,
Yes this is true, So if one button changes a default value it adds it to the recent ini .. Oks ... so you choose another button that does not change that last value you are stuck with that value in the recent ini , even though the new profile may require this to be set at the default value..

(Hope this makes sense)

So may I surgest that in the custom buttons you should add every possible setting and value, That way you get no unwanted settings left from the last profile change and vice versa.

I didn't follow you at first, but the lats sentence was crystal clear and I have already come to that conclusion. I think its funny that SOE Devs didn't see that problem?
There are some major holes there. I'f you have tweaked one of the sliders, and then go back to a predefined profile, it still leaves the slider as it was before. Very Strange that they would have coded that this way.

I do not plan to have those mistakes in mine.

[Laffs]

Yes it does make you wonder why / how they missed it..

I been asking friends in game about there settings and most seem to use the defaults set at either balanced or high and dont want to mess with the other settings..

I wonder if sombody here could make a utility that would read all display settings in your recent.ini file and add the default ones that are missing and alow you to tweek them a bit then if it could paste the new infomation into one of your buttons? That would save people having to change the button code manualy?

Just another thought

[Kosmos]

I re-created the list of commandsa and values today to be easier to work with. You can download file here, or just view it in a webbrowser if you prefer.
You can download the document from here.
http://www.geocities.com/ziggy_bock_...ay_Command.xls

[Laffs]

Nice one much easier to work with,

By the looks that is the full list inc the defaults?

[Kosmos]

Originally Posted by Laffs

Nice one much easier to work with,

By the looks that is the full list inc the defaults?

The 'recent' list that I posted last night is the commands including the labels that you see in the display options window when you are setting your choices.

The commands are 99% accurate. The 'values' and ranges I still have a few to test. For instance. the Spell Particles Close to Me. r_point_particle_near_plane value is giving me some problems.
It wants a negative value. and I'm having trouble formating the syntax in the code to accept the variable. I've tried =(-0.001) =(0.0) =-3.000 etc..etc..
I can't get that slider to move at all with my code.
Everything above that is tested and works. Everythign below that I still have to code. i didn't get work on the project at all last night.

This mod is going to be much more than what the average user wants.
I plan to attempt to make a couple of other mods for the casual end user that just wants a reliable jump in FPS when things get laggy.
For example a button you can hit when you head to town, then can unclick when you leave town.
Perpahps just maping a few of the big pretty features like shadows etc.. to single click/unlcik button for those people wold do the trick.
I may also attemp to create a slider type button that is maped to complex shader distance and stays on screen all the time.

At the moment I'm realy gonig to look at how the whole project is giong to work, I'm not happy with the method I'm using and would prefer to code these things correctly, rather than just forcing these changes on the OnPress event as I'm doing now. I think if I can get them coded correctly I will get past the double-click thing of the buttons.

Anyway, a bit of work to do, but it's a fun puzzle.
The main thing was figuring outthat it could be done, which before I didn't think any of this was even an option.

By the way.
You can type those commands ingame.
For example in your chat window
type

/r_performance 4

That would put you into balanced mode.

You will also notice that i took out the commands for the screen res and refhresh rate and triple buffer etc..
Those are on the previos table I put up.
I wanted to have only the specific commands that deal with the dislay options that change with the pre-defined profiles.

[Laffs]

From what I have seen in the mods I have looked that they all use the "on press" whilst that does work I know what you mean it is a bit messy when you have lots of varibles to put in there.....

I am new to xml , So not a lot I can do to help at this stage,

But I am going to have a snoop about on the net and see what I can find out, if I find anything that maybe of use or interest I will send links.

[Kosmos]

Originally Posted by Laffs

From what I have seen in the mods I have looked that they all use the "on press" whilst that does work I know what you mean it is a bit messy when you have lots of varibles to put in there.....

I am new to xml , So not a lot I can do to help at this stage,

But I am going to have a snoop about on the net and see what I can find out, if I find anything that maybe of use or interest I will send links.

This is about the best place I've found so far for information.
Especialy the section on XML Events, Targets, and Observers.

http://www.informit.com/guides/conte...xml&seqNum=101

[0ctavius]

Just a thought, but you might consider making a subdirectory in the ui directory called "profiles" or something, and then put each individual number setting in a separate xml file contained in that directory. You would then include those files into the main file that you have your code in.

This makes the profiles pretty much plug and play without breaking the main script. They can edit the actual profile paramaters in a spearate file meant only for that profile...

Makes your mod much mroe modular doing it that way...

[Laffs]

Along the same lines as this (I have no idea if this would work or not)

Make a new data source container, then make data containers for all of the profiles and call them via the button somehow?

(but would this make it dynamic data then?)

Just throwing some wild ideas onto here.


P.s I went through pages and pages of basicly rubbish there isnt much out there on implementing xml in a control ... lots of stuff relating to web desigin, very frustrating.

[Laffs]

No news must be good news then lol

[Kosmos]

I didn't get as much time to work on this the last couple days as I would have liked. Other than that things are looking good. It's slow going beccause of the fact that I know almost nothing about this stuff. So each little step takes alot of learning. The good news is that after that it gets easier.
The UI buildier alone is a best, there are so many things about it that can scew you up if your not careful.
It's a pretty neat tool, but the learning curve is a bit steep because the documentation is pretty flimsy. But it's better than nothing.
I was avoiding the UI Builder at first, but have since figured out the things I was doing wrong, and I'm finding it pretty useful now.
I would expect a working version of the mod to be ready within a week.
It won't have all the goodies I would like, because I still have to find out how to write the scripts to do what I really want it to do.
But as far as the release version.
It will have probably 3 buttons that will be set up for three of the pre-defined profiles, as well two mute buttons. It will also come with instructions on how to turn those three buttons into 'custom' configurations.

After that is released, I will concentrate on finding a script that will read the current profile information and save it to a .txt file. So the values will not have to be manually set. It should be pretty easy, I just need to find a good source. I'm going to hit the book store soon and pick up a couple of books. I'm not finding what I need online. Of course that mod will be more involed than the one I'll be posting soon.
I've also come across a few ideas in my journeys, so expect some future mods.

I would still really like to know why the commands have to be done 'twice' for them to work.
For example the 'start button' doesn't have any OnPress event.
I'm assuming they use the OnEnable, or OnActivate event or something, but I just can't seem to piece that puzzle together.

[Kosmos]

If I'm really, really lucky and things go as planned and I don't run into any hick-ups I'll have something ready tonight.

I'm crossing my fingers.