Nice necro UI. I feel honored that my timers have been included in the mod.
I'd like to make some clarifications about how the timers are used, however.
Quote:
Originally posted by Infectar
The timers kind of threw me for a loop the first time I used them too. The colored bar is going to keep moving until it reaches the time limit for the particular timer bar then it will reset and start moving from left to right again. The way the user marks time is by moving the slider to the point on the time bar that an event is set to happen and wait for the colored bar to reach that point. Once it does you move the slider again.
For example let's say you have just killed a mob that respawns every 12 minutes and you want to know when it will spawn again. On your one hour timer move the slider over 6 ticks (3 ticks on a 2 hour timer, 1.5 on the 3 hour) from where the end of the colored bar is currently at. When the color bar catches up to the slider 12 minutes will have elapsed and the mob will pop. If you want to reset the bar before it reaches the end of its cycle you can do so by reloading your skin but this gets to be a bit of a pain in the butt and in hunting situations can be down right dangerous.
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While that is certainly a valid way to use the timers (whatever works for each individual), that is actually not the way the timers were designed to be used. The method I personally recommend is easier and does not require doing any math addition in your head.
Instead of making a lot of general timers with 1- or 2-hour durations, make some task-specific timers for the things you want to time. Set the duration of each timer to the duration of the event. When that event happens, you simply move the slider to point to the current position of the bar (no need to calculate or move ahead). It will take the bar exactly the duration of your event to reach the slider again.
For example, as a necro, you might want to time your current darkness spell, for example Cascading Darkness, which lasts 1 minute and 36 seconds. You would create a timer with a duration of 1 minute and 36 seconds, and name it "Cascading Darkness". Now, whenever you cast the spell, you simply point the slider to where the bar happens to be at that time. The bar will continue to fill up, starting over when it reaches the end. The spell will wear off exactly when the bar reaches the slider again.
The task-specific timer is the most typical use of the timer, good for buffs/debuffs, DoTs, abilities, disciplines, etc. However, along with your task-specific timers, you can still include just one general-use timer (like the ones shown in this thread) for timing spawns. Since spawn times vary from area to area, make this general-use timer a round number as Infectar has done. For example, with the duration set to one hour, each major tick mark represents 10 minutes, so you can use that to determine how much time has elapsed. When you want to start timing, you can either move the slider to the current position of the bar (like in task-specific timers) or you can move it ahead as Infectar has suggested. With general-use timers where the duration of the timer does not match the duration of the event, either method will work.
Again, any approach that you take is great as long as it works for you, whether you use all general-use timers or if you use mostly task-specific timers. Task-specific timers are strictly easier to use, but requires you to know what you are timing beforehand. Also, as a side note, you should never have to reset these slider timers. Since they keep cycling over and over, and the slider pointer can be positioned anywhere, there is no reason to reset them.
If you want to generate your own personal custom configuration of the timer, visit the timer home page:
http://www.horizonsoutpost.com/eq/timer.asp
Using the XML generator, you can specify the name and duration of each timer. The file you generate can simply replace the timer file included with this necro mod.