sinead

Okay gang,

I typed this WAY long explanation of my screenshot and then previewed it, found a misspelling, hit the back button by accident and BOOM it was gone. Sooooooo... you get no explanation on this one Muhahahahahahaha... just a picture of my idea and a request for feedback.

Thanks a ton

http://www.bjmay.com/images/UI_idea_01_explained.jpg

P.S. - Seeing as how this is only a quickly thrown together concept, there are precious few original images. In the final version, things would be much.... better.

Meatball

WOW!

I love your ideas. Some of them, mainly the vertical gauges might be a pain to implement but certainly possible. If you need help working on the XML once you have the graphics done, let me know, I'd be willing to chip in on the work.

__________________
-- Meatball

weawen

is it me, or does that make you think of diablo 1/2 ?

__________________

Inspect Me

sinead

Actually Diablo 1/2 was exactly the inspiration. Those globes are just SO much better looking than a line (--------. Wee.) Anyway, thanks for the offer to help, Meatball. I hope to be able to handle the xml part myself (/em crosses fingers), but I will absolutely enlist the help of the people who frequent this board when it comes time to troubleshoot.

aeluin

The globes are beautiful- many of us would LOVE to have them- but not doable. It would be easy to make ones that fill from left to right, but Diablo-style vertical ones, although technically possible, take SO much xml coding and so much memory to run that having more than maybe 1 on your screen is not an option. Somebody did a vertical casting gauge a while back and it worked but just that one gauge, when it showed up, lagged most of us into unplayability.

Edit: A couple of suggestions, I don't know if you'll like them or not. First, make the circular sideways gauges; we're all hoping that Sony will code vertical ones in for us but in the meantime sideways ones are decent enough once you get used to them, certainly a lot better than ugly bars. Second, think about changing the layout of the UI so the bottom arc curvers down in the middle and the top arc curves up (so most UI stuff is in the corners and you see more of the game in the middle).

Edit 2: I adore your idea, don't get me wrong, it's stunning and I would gladly use it myself.

__________________
"All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king." -Aragorn's Theme by J.R.R. Tolkien

sinead

Any way I could find out who it was that made it happen, however memory intensive it was? There are usually ways to cheat and make things happen even if they shouldn't. If someone got it to work on one globe, then there should be a way to both clean up the code, and figure a way for all the globes to reference a chunk of code, so as to prevent extreme lag.

On the suggestion of having the UI curve away from the center of the screen, I understand the point, but I guess I never explained my reasons for not doing it in the first place... I wanted to make sure that the UI would be scalable, meaning, I wouldn't have to do 9 versions of it to satisfy differing tastes in resolution. The only way to make a UI scalable is to have floating content, and I wanted to have as much of the "heavy usage" as possible appear in one grouping. By having the UI taper at the edges, it allows both UI sections to remain centered at the top and bottom of the screen. The example shown is at 800 x 600, so most people would have still more room in the middle to see the "game world".

I very much appreciate the suggestions, and please, if you know where/who it was that made the vertical gauge happen before, please let me know. I'd like to talk to them and take a look at the code.

*EDIT*

Found the thread where the gauge was done - I'm gonna carefully review the code to see if there is a way to clean it up. There's gotta be a way to make this happen without 100 separate "fill this gauge" commands. I'll work on a way to loop it.

http://www.eqgui.com/showthread.php...=vertical+gauge

*/EDIT*

Littie

Awesome!!

__________________

fullsize

Toggan

i love this UI, i know it will be one i whould use, except the circles are very bulky, if you made them normal exp bars then it whould be perfect

sinead

Heh heh heh...

With all due respect, Toggan, the circles/globes/whatever are one of the only things that will set this UI apart from others. The point is to create a way of presenting the Health/Mana/etc WITHOUT the standard ----------------- . Also, the picture shown is of what the UI might possibly look like at 800 x 600, which would be the minimum resolution. At that size, almost any UI looks crowded. I've found that most people use 1024 x 768 or higher, so the UI will be designed to look best at mid-high resolution. For the few people who use 800 x 600, it will still work, but as with most UIs, it will seem more crowded at that resolution.

As an update, I'm getting more and more optimistic that the literally thousands of lines of code required to make the vertical gauges can be reduced signifigantly using loops. I'm working together with several very good xml coders to try and make this happen. In theory, we will be able to set up one medium sized block of code for each different SIZE of gauge, and then have each gauge just reference the appropriate block of code. The example shows only 2 different sizes of gauges, and I am confident that this will signifigantly reduce the strain on everyone's systems.

I will keep you all posted.

jobeken

Sinead, call me a pessimist if you want...But there is NO WAY, no matter how much of a GOD you have coding for you that vertical gauges in a sphereical shape will work without lagging out damn near anyone who loads them.

Until Sony Online Entertainment provides the COMPILED base to deal with vertical gauges, not using a series of horizontal gauges to create what looks like a vertical gauge will vertical gauges that are useable in a full time playing environment be usable in EQ.

On a second note, that mock-up looks great, I really wish it were possible.

__________________
Jobeken Xoner

sinead

Ahh, jobeken, I appreciate your bid of confidence heh heh.

First, I'd like to say that I very much appreciate all the feedback on the idea, both negative and positive. The pointing out of the difficult (and potentially impossible) portions of the interface have challenged me both from a design viewpoint and from a coding viewpoint.

To those who doubt this can be done, please know that I understand the doubts - I've looked over pretty much the entire SIDL.xml file, and I'm well aware of its shortcomings. I assure you, however, that every option will be attempted. Call me foolish and optimistic (though I personally prefer "driven by a challenge"), but let me give it a shot. I expect the UI will take at least another 2 months to complete, as we're creating completely original content in all aspects. New spell gems, icons, everything. There will be nothing taken from Vert or any of the other excellent mods that are out there.

In our defense, there are several mods that would tend to support the belief that this is possible.

For a spherical gauge, please see:
http://uibuilder.eqinterface.com/
It's item #13.

For a vertical gauge, please see:
http://www.eqgui.com/showthread.php...=vertical+gauge

I've tried both the vertical gauge and the sperical gauge on my machine, which is nothing spectacular, and both worked perfectly with negligable frame rate loss. My hope is to combine the two elements and clean up the code a bit. That is all.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding. And seeing as how I have no pudding at the moment, I'm left with a lot to prove. Just be sure that I will either make it work, or I will be able to say that it is absolutely impossible... but not until I've tried everything.

(Come on... you know you're hoping I can do it...)

Arimus

Loved the concept when you posted it... Still do.
BEST of luck to you !!!!
I'm betting that this thread will be pages and pages long before you ever get the UI out for beta... hehe

Toggan

i guess ill have to deal with it, i spose the spheres arent that bad

Kelric

Very nice... one of the things I LIKE is the fact that the sides are left open and free. Keep us up to date, eh?

__________________
Kelric Stormwolf

[ F.A.Q ]