A cleric's perspective...
 

I'm working on a skin for a cleric friend, and I need a cleric's opinion of this one. Is it more functional as far as group health and spells and such?



-Cormanth

Neato! Certainly interesting design you have there.

Well, I'm not a cleric.. actually I'm a Wanderer(druid), but I've always liked to have my spell cast and hotbuttons as close to the group list as possible. That way if I need to use mouse to click on a member of the party (in a flustered situation, as I normally use F keys) I can do it with minimal delay.

In my opinion the chat window is too small. Other thing that you might ask your friend if he rather uses the mouse or keyboard. When he says keyboard, I would add the actually Keys to target some player or use a hotkey. I found various postings from priests that do use keyboard to cheer at that.
Personal I am doing 95% with the mouse. My skin in the class->priest section was optimised to that, but doesn't look nearly as good :). Basically I wouldn't use yours with a mouse, because things are too much scattered around.
Last thing I would try to consider is to go to a higher resultion, but reduced viewport. So you can add more information without loosing the view

I like the gauges, they look cool
Glad to see people making more unique approaches to the gauges :)

Ok, so when you say add keys to 'target some player' are you referring to the F keys? If so, no thanks. I figure if people who actually use the F keys don't know by now which group member refers to which F key... then it's not going to help them to put up labels. I might as well label and number each of the spell gems and hotkeys.... too much information is too much information.

I agree about the difficulties of using a mouse with such an interface mod. Things are fairly scattered, but I'm having a problem deciding how to remedy that. I figure I can shrink down the hotkeys to closely match the spell gems, and that would alow me to move things in. But I don't want to do what everyone else us doing and have a cluttered screen. Most of the other 'popular' mods have everything condensed at the bottom of the screen into this little block. Sure it opens up the display, and brings everything together closer, but... it's a block at the bottom of the screen.... ewww

As for the gauges, they were not easy. I had to alter the original XML for gauges so that I could add a top and bottom 'EndCap', so my gauges are now 5 part instead of the original 3 part gauges.

Keep the comments and pointers coming, please. This is still a major work in progress, and all of your suggestions make me work harder to come up with a better solution.

-Cormanth

Super Dig it...as a cleric I would want those Hot Buttons on the bottom of the screen instead of along the right side ( its easier to slide the mouse left to right than up and down.

Simpley awesome though.

MOD
 

As a cleric like the mod would like to give a test run but it look great . I like to see labels on the spells and have the tking ver 4 icons for the spells, make it so you can you at 1280 by 1024 mode. Allso like to see what the spell book look like. Need to had some color to hot button like you did to the other stuff . You are doing a great job. ;) :nana:

Coming from a cleric... I think those gauges look fantastic. I would love to get a hold of them! Hehe. :)

Favor...
 

Can you link to the pic instead of posting it here? It's a pain to scroll to read everyone's notes on this.

:)

Danforth, just in case you weren't aware of it, in your user options you can opt to have this board display a link instead of the actual image. Very handy. :)

Thanks....

Hm.. I reckon pet health is incorporated into the setup? I, at least, do tend to heal pets as well.

Interesting
 

I like the drain gauges... Kinda gives a Playstation RPG feel to it. A new (but old school) twist to EQ... Keep up the good work!!

Oopaa! :nana:

Zantaklawz

I love the gauges as well, like the whole thing pretty much. Only thing missing to me is some righ clicky buttons :) Maybe throw 4 or 5 under the spells? So far tho this is my favorite for the "outside the box" type skins. ;)

Very interesting approach, can't wait to see the finished product

Hm..
 

Your guages are awesome ... a nice approach to the mundane simple ones i've seen

But - I dont like the hotbuttons on the right side going from top to bottom ... i see it at unnessessary clutter ... i hope your in 800x600 rez because those buttons are big too - i play in 1280X1040 or 1600x1200 depending on what computer im on so i hope that does shrink a little

Personally - i prefer a horizontal spell bar over a vertical .. but thats me

Main Text is restrictive ... you should at least put a spot in for a secondary window for battle text ... i dont care what everyone is hitting me for but if someone is yellowing for a zing or buffs are down i dont want it to disappear before i can read it ...

But .. I do like it ... the guages are nice ... the overall design (the actual thought behind it) is great ...

Hopefully you dont lose focus and continue work on it ... would love to see this one hit beta

Plus i'm tired of using Vert's mod allready ;p

Keep up the good work

To sum things up:
 

Ok, so people want:

1) horizontal hot buttons
2) horizontal spell bars
3) larger icons for hot buttons and perhaps spell icons(?) to account for larder screen resolutions
4) a seperate window for some of the chat because
5) my idea of the chat window appears to be too small

What I am working on, before I even begin to release anything, is a working version of this mod for atleast 3 of the common screen resolutions (800x600, 1024x768, and 1280x1024). This means that, in theory, all of the bars, icons, gauges and buttons will be approximately the same size in whichever resolution you use.

As for the spell buttons and hotkeys... I think I am going to have a vertical version, as well as a horizontal one, so that you can decide which you want to use.

At lower resolutions, there will be spacial limitations to deal with. Therefore, some sacrifices have to be made.

- For one, I am designing this is a cleric mod, so a pet window is not needed and well not be displayed. If you wish to use this mod and do have a pet, you are welcome to show the pet window. However, I am not at this time anticipating a pet window to go along with this design.

- Some other things not to look for with this mod are, a tracking window and possibly the actions window. I may incorporate some features of the actions window into another window or tab section.

I've also recently made another startling revolation... my buttons and gauges look really cool when you make them different colors. So, I've decided to turn the borders graphics around my buttons and gauges into backgrounds. This way you can change the background tint of your windows in game, and get different colored buttons and gauges. Not a bad idea, eh?

Please, keep your suggestions coming as they help me to make an all around better mod.

-Cormanth

OH ... and i forgot ...

Clerics usually have clicky armor effects ... so maybe some hotbuttons for the armor slots ... or - look at the Cake program that Vert packs w/ his mod .. where people can assign what the hotbuttons are by a GUI interface ...

Just another suggestion ...

The comment about pets was not referring to the pet window but to party members' pets. They are often viewed as additional party members and having a indication of their health is quite handy.

Personally I like F-key labels.
Group member's positions tend to change as some leave, new ones return, people go LD, etc. It's not *strictly* necessary but its a nice little addition, particularly in high-fluster situations or at 4 in the mornin' ;)

If I might make a suggestion? My cleric is only level 45 currently, but I also have a 55 pally who has on occasion played back-up healer in some groups, and it has generally been my expereince that I use both F-keys and hotbuttons to heal and also the mouse to click on names and spell icons, depending on lots of things (my mood, the craziness of the situation, the position of the moon, whatever.) With the new UI, I have moved the group window over right next to the spell icons, so the travel distance between the group names and the spell icons is as short as possible, so I can click-click and cast heals when I am using the mouse. While I really like a lot of the UI's I've seen, almost all of them have the spell icons and the group window on opposite sides of the display, which is precisely what I *don't* want as a cleric. For me, personally, the player window/group window/spell bar would be optimal when they were directly next to each other. Just another perspective.

Looks like a GREAT mod! Can't wait to get a hold of it. I would suggest a few things:

1) as a cleric, fatigue just doesn't come into play that much, I would think it can be removed.

2) have the breath bar double as a casting bar

3) the hotbuttons down the side... maybe a little smaller? or more detailed? they seem a little obtuse next to the rest of the mod.

In any case, this is a fantastic mod. My hat's off to you!

I love it! My main isn't a cleric, so I can't give proper insight into that, but the look and feel of this is awesome. The only problem is, there are so many awesome mods out there, this one included, I'm going to have to open up 6 or 8 more accounts to accomodate them all!
I'm straying from my comment though; this is gorgeous! Keep it up!! I hope you can get it posted soon.

Just wanted to post a quick progress update...

I have been working on this UI quite diligently for the past 2 weeks, trying to make everything work as close to what was requested as possible.

Here's a little snippit: http://eq.zyberwerx.net/EQfiles/Steel.jpg

I know it's not quite what I had originally planned, but some things just weren't working out. and some things didn't work with what people wanted. However, I was able to get most of the clicky things as close to one another as I could, and I did add right-click equip items to the hot buttons.

And tho you can't tell from this pic, the buff window icons are actually animated.

Also not shown here is a greatly reduced inventory window which just shows your equipment, bag slots, coin and buttons. There are no stats on it nor any sort of title. Actually, here is a link to an unrefined version of the inventory window. http://eq.zyberwerx.net/EQfiles/Inventory.jpg

I am still having a bit of trouble with a few things, such as the experience bar. And I haven't decided how to deal with the containers and some of the seldom used windows.

However, if all goes well, I should have a beta available by this weekend.

Oh, the screenshots don't really do it justice, but I gave the chat windows a mild make-over. They have a gradient metallic background (which looks really nice with different tint colors by the way), and it kinda fits with the name I'm considering giving this mod.... 'Holy Steel'.

-Cormanth

P.S. The tri-colored gauges are just something I am trying. Not sure if I like them yet or not.

oMgg!!!! i want DL for the 1 u posted screenshot of 1st!!

that totally r0x0rz

DL !! plzzzzzzz

NicE
 

Very cool UI, both the new one and the old one , dont wander to far off of what YOU want because of what others think tho... See that the new one is totally laid out different then the first when all i saw wrong with the first was that the hot buttons were very far from the casting gems.

Cant wait to see the download.. will definitly use it

/b
:nana:

Anyone have any comments on the details of this mod before I make anything permanent? What about the tri-color gauges? Or the casting bar? I know the hot buttons look like crud, but I've already changed them by adding a tab. I want to get some final feedback before I submit this for beta.

-Cormanth

well...
 

actually I have to say I like your first one better... the little pipes going everywhere and all.... I really just wanted the sizes of the buttons fixed.

I hope you saved that first version... if so could you post a link for that as well? thank you so much, and it really is terrific work. The second one is cool as well, it just doesn't have that same clean feel as the first one though.

Thanks!

I like the original a lot. I really like the unique UIs over the plain ones. My suggestions (as a cleric) would be to put f2-f6 in the group windows,group all the status windows together (self hp,mana,sta,exp,aaxp), have the target window directly over top of the group window, put the hot keys at the bottom or along the top in vertical setup and also where do you plan on having the actions window? Maybe im the only cleric that likes to see my overall stats like sta,dex,hp etc but that would be cool to add also. I love the pipes and stuff really cool just a little more praticality would be nice.

b000mp