Arista

I've added some more enhancements to the timer:

1) The slider timer's duration can now be specified in one-second increments. Useful for those who want to time special events that don't necessarily happen in ticks, like CH rotations. Thanks to Myysst for making this suggestion.

2) The maximum duration of the slider timer has been increased to 4 hours (actually, 3:59:59). This will allow extra long buffs/abilities to be timed. Thanks to Tils for making this suggestion.

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Arista
Former Enchanter of The Seventh Hammer
TimerMod - Timer Utility for EverQuest UI

Paradox

I am by no means ay type of XML coder or programmer, but is it possible to make a clock to display the actual real life time as part of a window or tab?

Perhaps setting the current time you first log on and then the clock/timer will count up in hrs:min:sec?

Just a thought. Would be better than having to keep looking for a clock, watch or cell phone, when I could just look at the screen.

Nice work, keep it up!

Arista

Unfortunately, there is no way to set the time on the digital timer, as that would involve forcing the animation to start from a particular frame. Short of reloading your UI at midnight/noon, or editing your XML file to modify the animation frames/durations before each login session (not really feasible), there isn't a way to get the timer display to match the real-life time.

It would be a nice feature to have, though. Hopefully Verant will add a new EQType for UI labels, one that shows the real-life time. I know that this has been requested by many others as well.

Elwyn

Would it be possible to add a reset button? I don't really like messing with sliders and trying to match them up to the exact location of the bar. I'd rather just click and have the bar reset to zero. When it's full, I'd know the time's up.

Arista

Due to the limitations of UI mods, what you are asking is unfortunately not possible. UI mods can only alter the appearance of the UI, not add new functionality. Therefore, the timer is not a program, it is just a collection of animated images.

Once the EverQuest UI loads up, all animations begin cycling through their frames - there is no way to pause an animation or force it to start from a particular frame at a particular time. Reloading the UI will reset an animation, but it also resets all the animations at the same time (no way to reset one individually), and it can take a while on some systems. This was the main complaint many people had with the digital timer, since reloading the UI was the only way to reset it.

The bar-style timer was introduced to address this limitation. Because individual animations cannot be reset, and cannot reset without a lengthy reload of the UI, the timer needed to be designed in such a way that allows the player to keep track of time while the animations continue cycling indefinitely. That's why this timer uses a slider, to allow the user to mark the bar instead.

Elwyn

Bummer. Thanks for the reply, and great work on the timer!

Ahzurdan

Arista,

The casting bar seems to be able to retime itself in conjuction with the specific spell being cast, going from approximately 0.1 seconds to around 10.0 seconds depending on the particular spell.

Have you done any research into whether or not you can leverage this functionality to get a bar-style timer that pops up, unfills itself over a set duration, and then goes away once the bar reaches empty?

I'm not too hopeful, as I have a suspicion that this is hardcoded to work specifically with casting times (with no way to supply our own duration for the casting bar event), but who knows?

-Ahzurdan

Arista

Certainly an interesting idea, but as far as I know, it isn't possible because the casting bar is a gauge that is hardcoded to work with spell casting times. Thus, there isn't a way to set a custom duration on it.

Gauges can only be one of the the hardcoded types below (from this thread):

Koradin

I know this may sound like a pretty lame question but here goes. With the digital timer once it gets to 0:59:54 and after the next 6 tics pass iti rolls back to 0:00:00 and doesn't display the hour that has just passed. Is this how it was intended to work or is it a bug or did I screw something up during the installing etc?
Sorry I am xml illiterate

Arista

If you downloaded a 1-hour digital timer (the default), then yes, that is intended, since 1-hour timers run from 0:00:00 to 0:59:59. To increase the duration on your timer, specify the desired duration in the digital timer generator. You can choose up to 10 hours. Any timer that is 2 hours or more will increase the hour in the first digit.

As a side note, the digital timer counts up second by second, unlike the dial, which counts up tick by tick (6-second intervals). So it should update every second.

Koradin

Aye I did download the "default" timer which was only set to 0:59:59 so that was my mistake. Thank you so much for the info. I'll go create and download the 10 hour one which I wanted in the first place... thanks again

Solskjaer

I've read through the faqs multiple times and quaddruple checked file names, folder names and ensure I downloaded the entire XML file and named it and the the tga file correctly. I used the friends window. Once in the game I type /load time 1. 'time' is definately the name of the folder, which is in the uifiles folder. Despite this when I load it nothing happens, it does its load thing but when I open the friends window via the options window at the top just my friends are there.

Any other ideas what I could be doing wrong? If not, I simply must be just doing something stupid wrong, thanks for your time.

Arista

Checklist (just to double-check):
1) You have a directory named EverQuest\uifiles\time
2) There are two files in this folder: EQUI_FriendsWnd.xml and Friends_Timer.tga
3) The XML file is not empty, and has </XML> as the last line

If the above items all check out, post your saved XML file here as an attachment (or mail it to me at [email protected]) and I'll take a look at it.

Also, when you type /load time 1, does the chat box show any red error text? If so, look in your EverQuest\UIErrors.txt file and look for any line that says "Error" (and post it here if you find one).

Solskjaer

The names are correct and there are no errors. When I attempt to view the xml file though it will not open, and upon checking the properties it actually has a file size of 0. Obviously my problem. I repeated the generation and download of the file, and made sure that generation completed before saving it. /xml was the last line. Unfortunately it did the same thing.

I also tried to view source and save it that way but it said, source of xml file not available for viewing.