Inokis

I don't know how many ppl wish this was part of the default UI or not. The last couple of days I've been mulling over how to implement proper combat feedback as UI elements rather than chat spam elements.

First of all, I think we need more ability to break up the chat messages. Theres just too many messages lumped into categories.

Fore example: Non-melee damage is lumped into the same category for damage you take, as well as damage you give. Non-melee damage should have sep filters for - 1. damage you do 2. damage you take 3. other damage to other 4. pet damage to other 5. other damage to pet.

There are many examples of these I can come up with, but you get the jist of my thoughts. Every item type that is presented in the chat window should have its own category to be filtered by for chat window parsing.

Now on to the meat of the topic...

Last night I started experiementing with /chatfontsize and filtering/parsing damage text. Orginally I decided to try putting a very small window at the bottom of my screen for damage I take, and a window at the top for damage it deal. The format was number only, font size 5. This worked except the bottom window gets in the way of looting.

I added a couple more windows, One window for spellcasting/spelldamage, and the second window for non-melee damage. I now had 4 windows on the screen parsing these damages to monitor. Now this is all fine and dandy but the problem is finding space for all of these to fit.

I started fiddling around with how to make areas designated for this feedback as part of the UI. The main problem is that the chat windows are not very customizable. You either fade all or nothing. Theres no ability to hide the input frame, or the title frame. This is the primary crux of the parsing dilemma.

I tried setting up a screen item STMLbox to frame invisible chat windows, but locking the chat window over the stmlbox will not keep the chat windows on top of the box on zoning/logging in. The chat windows continually fall behind the stml box. I decided that the only real methodology for accomplishing this was to use the Viewport command, I was hesitant to do this because for this it destroys the immersion somewhat and the cohesiveness of UI elements.

In the end this is what I've come up with for the UI layout and customization of combat feedback:


I ended up nesting the transparent chat windows with the parsed text in the Viewport area. I then lined up the chat output with the viewport areas by sizing and moving the chat windows around.

The chat input frames still overhang the viewport but I'm not clicking at the top of the screen for anything so I don't forsee much of an issue with that.

I'm just curious to hear other peoples thoughts on how best to customize the UI for combat feedback, and how best to feed the people using UI's the combat feedback settings without breaking the rest of their .ini settings how they wish to use it.

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