Third Community Summit - EQInterface going
 

Brenlo has invited me down to the third guild summit.

It is next week thur/sunday I am going to be gathering questions in this thread to take with me for the two round-table discussions.

so please post your question/concerns or feedback you want to share and I will do my very best to get that relayed to SOE.

/bow

Direction of UI
 

I know I could list a lot of Came play questions, but after three hours of UI modding I would really like to know what direction, if any, SOE is taking the User Interface. The last patch made a lot of UI changes, yet it seemed to me that there wasn't a whole lot of thought given to it, more like we need to include this for the new expansion so throw it in.

Just my thought and question.... ;)

The "reload UI 10 times and crash" bug has been around for years. Could we get this one addressed?

99.9% sure this was asked at the previous two summits but gonna throw it out there again anyway.

UI editor would be a huge timesaver.
(Somehow I don't think that SOE is editing window pieces in their favorite text editor and then /loadskin ad nauseum.)

Weskat

Yeah, i heard EQ2 has an editor for the UI too?
Why not one for the EQ1 UI :)
Would be a great help.

Actually we do edit our XML the same way you folks do. We'd like to improve the situation as much as you do I'm sure :)

If there was some small program add on you could put in that allowed us to CHECK the interface without having to completely load EQ - even if it were a web based application on SOE's site - something that had a really good error check. I only rarely get anything helpful from my UI Error logs. More often than not it just reverts to Default with no reason given.

Doing this would completely bypass the 10 reloads and crash issue when rebuilding a UI after changes made in a patch.

A WYSYWIG UI editor would aslo be really sweet - drag and drop elements of windows to create the UI and the ability to change themes with one base image file (ie you want a metalic pink theme for borders and buttons - just put in your metalic pink bmp and hit the button - plug n chug). People who wanted to do the really specialized graphics with custom skins would still have to create the image files themselves (like spell bar skins, Give window etc). But for those of us who are just really wanting to make sure our most used elements are immediately to hand in a well organized and intuitive interface, WYSYWIG would help so much!

As for any other UI issues - I would like to see SOE institue better doccumentation concerning the syntax of thier files - how to build certain features (like tabs) and what to keep in mind considering creating stable files. Very little is provided now and what IS provided assumes the reader has an integral background in programming.

Maybe what would be cool is if SOE would authorize a monthly UI author's newsletter that can be posted on thier or even this site - something that might feature a walk through on adding an element to a window (like putting the HOTT in the main target window, for example) or an in depth discussion of how the <location> works within a window and how anchors work (such as in the Evolving Items tab in inventory where the buttons are placed using anchor tags rather than location tags). I would love to see a discussion by the devs on how they build the image files and take the frustration out of trying to get the borders and pointer to show up when I mod windowpieces01.tga. Just have every newsletter have a discussion of one thing or another about making and modding UI's to help us create stable files and take the mystery out of it with communication and understanding.

God Bless,
mik

How about an 8 person group.

Had some suggestions

1. The new HotButton windows. Would be nice if they could be tabbed. Currently the buttons only work in their own screen item. In other words, you can't have hotbuttons from 1 and 2 in the same screen piece. Only 1 set will function. They have to be in seperate screen pieces currently.

2. Verticle Gage Fill/Left to Right Gage Fill. Been waiting on this for years.

3. An "Always on Top" flag for windows. This would be extremely useful for stacking windows and making use of transparent sections. IE if I want to make window A.. wrap around window B. Crappy illustration INC!

-------------
|A ------- . |
|..|....B...|..|
|..|.........|..|
|...-------...|
------------

I could turn "Always ontop flag" on Window B.. that way when window A is clicked, it won't pop to front and completely block window B.

Alternately a "Do not Pop to front" flag would work better :)

This is useful for things like hotbuttons/spellgems which can't me moved outside their current window.


4. A "Framer Per Second" counter. Most modern games have this built in. I don't see any reason EQ shouldn't. It would be nice to see how different UI's affect the performance of the game.


5. I don't know if this suggestion belongs here or not, but it has to do with the client and indirectly affects the UI, so I'll thow it in. Ask them if it would be possible to release the percent mana variable to the client. IE.. %t= current target...possibly %e=current mana percent. I don't want to see mana gages for group like eq2. But mana percentage is called upon so often to be reported in raid/group, having that variable could be very useful.

Thanks
Soran

I never would've guessed this in a million years.

Rephrase - A UI editor and preview / code checker for EVERYONE (devs included :) )

Weskat

Dunno if this has been addressed further than the original reply we got from SoE after DoN was announced..

Has there been any further discussion around the new player models which SoE was said they would put into the game before their next expansion (at the time after OoW was released)

An update would be good :)

An Interface editor for us XML dummies would be a great asset as well :)

The bug/Change that causes us to no longer be able to make inventory spots that link to the insides of bags without crashing on death would BE so nice if they would somehow fix that I really miss my old UI with the easy access to all my clickies and I know allot of others do too ...

During Log Out of Game My UI Error log is dumped. I understand from the Tech Forums this happens to a good many users. Could that be changed ?
The only way I can use the error log now is to use the game in windows.

I thought of something else.

Now that the EQMain Button replaces the selector window. There is no button/icon we can put on screen that glows or changes color when we have ingame mail. Ask them if they would make the old Selector window buttons useable in the EQMain window. So I can put the email button back on the screen in an interface.



thanks
Soran

customizable merchant windows again would be nice. i personally liked the old style better. maybe an option to use one or the other would be the best route.