Donating 150$ To a talented UI artist!
 

Ok ok i know im beating a dead horse with this one. But i really want to see a very accurate version of the classic UI. Ive seen all the current ones out there Fabbe's is the best and Yonu has been doing some good stuff on that UI latly but its getting outdated and I think it would be great to see a fresher one come out. so heres the deal If one of you guys wants to work on this do so.. send me pictures when you are done and ill send you 150.00 thru paypal. Then you post it on eqinterface for the rest of the eq community to use.

Heres a few things that might be cool

Getting as close to the classic interface as possible

cleverly hiding things that werent useable in the old UI

spell gems that work with the old UI

Ive tried to do some of this myself but i know nothing about xml and ive seen some of the work done by the talented artists in these forums and I know I wont ever compare.

If any of you are interested send me an email at [email protected]

here is a photo refrence of the old UI attached to this post.. if you need more refrences i have pictures of all the buttons inventory windows ect.. just email me at the address above and i will send you those pictures

picture of the main screen


Picture of inventory


spell gems


misc

xtightypantsx gota at least thank ya for the screens of old ui . was gona instal eq on old comp to get pics .theirs problems from old to new that would need more than code an photoshop.its more of how close do you want to get an still be playable in todays game.

6 hot keys just not gona cut it any more.spell bar would need to be over sized . a set screen resolution wouldbe best to make parts fit together better.think it was 800x600 back then.the persona pic would i think have to be a screen shot tho one could set screen shots to animation ,um spell gems would be somewhat of a problem .not to mention multiple chats ( love that ol chat window sigh )

forgot how effects on you was shown an where .im geting long in the tooth sigh.Some parts of the original ui i likes alot ( chat window ) ol gauges were cool to ..what did the old spell book look like?

Heres more pics of the old UI including the spellbook. I think i would want to get as close to the classic one as possible but still have a few things like having more hotkeys.. possibly a second chat window. But things like the window selector would go.. that little eq button be hidden ect.. the actions window would have buttons instead of tabs for the different areas. windows could be brought up using the ctrl commands..(thats what i do anyway) other than that not much of the new stuff needs to be seen.. things like shroud progression evolving items, the face and dye buttons and all that stuff thats more rarely used you could just switch to the default ui to use.. I think this Ui would be used Just for basic grouping because i know i never use shroud progression and things like that when im grouping.. I dont know.. tell me if any of that is possible.. And id like to hear people's thoughts on this.

P.S I think that screenshot idea for the persona is a good idea.. just have a stationary screenshot that people can customise i think it would work.. it could work as the area where you auto equip

If anyone has any cool ideas about this post here or email me..

Thank you.. here are the pics

oh and 1024 by 768 is the screen resolution i think we should go for.. its not too big and not too small.. ok thanks

Here is one more good picture showing how effects worked and also showing spell gems.. ok thats the last one i promise :)

I'll give it a try
 

I'm currently finishing making Thangor's Inventory fully compatible with the inventory tabs and new corruption save, so as soon as I'm done with that I'm game for this. May take a bit of time, however, as those graphics would probably have to be recreated. If you have good tga files of them, PM me and I'll give ya a place to email them; would save some time. Otherwise, dosnt look too difficult really.

Yonu is making regular updates to the beta default UI, why reinvent the wheel?

Ill pitch in with 50$ for this as well. I would also like to see the live character doll on the top right corner of the screen with the inventory. This UI would make my day.

On top of that, I would really like to see the original screen resolution as an option

You guys are nutz. lol i HATED that stupid UI when I first started playing. You can't see squat except UI windows!

Good luck with the UI. If you like the retro look.

Personally I hated that UI, It's like playing the game through a friggen tube. :confused:

90% of your view is the UI with 10% being your environment

exactly!

/boggle

Well the offer is there, my email is [email protected] if you are interested.
If the other guy isnt interested we will work something out.

I am positive that the original resolution was 640x480......I am not great at mods but trying to fit everything in 640x480 is insanity stick with 1024x768.

If you have a copy of the old EQ game, please zip and upload the entire EQ folder minus the EQGame.exe file. This will really be the only way to get this done properly. if the file is too big, then just upload the entire Default UI folder. You may have to upload it to the misc area in the downloads section since I think the forum limits the size of files.

Sounds like a really fun project, dunno if I will try it or not. Its very tempting though.

also upload a full sized screenshot of the old UI if you have it.

There would have to be some major compromises to it, aside from the obviouse stuff like 10 hottbuttons and 9th spell gem. The up and down scroll buttons on the old UI would not work since the scrollable code is hardcoded with the gutter and thumb button, but it may be possible to create a custom template that allowed horizontal scrolling using the up and down buttons. Its impossible to get rid of the tabbed windows, but a compromise can be worked out by fixing the image files for the tab border, and then painting buttons into the background for the window, the buttons would have to be where the tabs should be.

If nothing else, those old image files need to be available, I love those old style chat windows and im a real sucker for portal style UI's even thogh they waste too much space.

By upgrading the resolution to 1024x768 I would think that the pieces could be made to be the original visible size. in other words, keep them at their old set widthxhight. this would effectivley double or more the size of the portal, and the extra vertical space can be used to add the new features such as hot buttons and the like.

There was never 1 solid forced resolution for EQ. It simply defaulted to 640x480 and required a change in either the INI or later the options window from the login screen. No amount of talent can give you that resolution in a UI if you do not already have it available. Playing at that resolution would be very very difficult as well, EQ has grown to the point where even 800x600 just doesn't cut it like it used to.

The character preview is impossible. Closest you could do is put in a screenshot of your character there now. Have no clue why they removed that from EQ but they don't seem like they'll be implementing it again.

Wow... i dont remember that ever being there.

Definately a shame they got ride of that.

Hey guys sorry i havent posted in awhile! my offer is still on the table email me at [email protected] if you are interested in taking on this project!

Yeah it was a very long time ago, before Velious UI system revamps. Showed a 3rd person perspective of your character. At the time with the low resolution EQ used it was sort of required if you required to see what your character looked like with a specific weapon/armor since the inventory covered almost the entire screen. Farther back it was the only way you'd see your own character short of 2boxing or trading a friend accounts, there wasn't a camera system for awhile.

OMG please im not even kidding someone im begging you to put this together in the 640x resolution he has all of the set files.

did i say please??

I'll explain this to you.

Roughly 20% of that UI's behaviour is no longer possible, this isn't laziness or lack of talent speaking, it's cold hard fact.

With all of the files that would need to be changed for it to work. It would most likely break every patch that modifies the UI system in the least bit. The amount of upkeep would be fairly large, most UI artist are to busy keeping their own UIs working.

He has yet to state just how much compromise he is willing to endure while still keeping the initial payment as well. So that turns away a lot of folks who would consider attempting this.

I'll gladly throw in 300$

Shillingworth's right. It's just not possible to make the old UI work now like it did back in the day. It simply doesn't function the same way.

With tabbed windows, separate chats, larger banks, hard-coded window elements, etc, etc ... you just can't do it and please the people that want it exactly the same.

The best you could do is make a whole new UI using elements and styles from the old one that is compliant with today's code. It wouldn't be the same, but it could have that nostalgic feel and look.

Personally, I don't miss that old cramped UI one bit. The only thing I do miss is the old hitsmode settings and the way they'd scroll off the screen and fade away, heh. That was very nice, and didn't require a separate chat window for filtering.


Edit -- Here's a link to one that's been made and is still updated, I think, if you wanna see how difficult it is to do, heh ... LINK

Well I am still considering it. I have some ideas to get it functional with alot less compromise than I had thought originaly. I never played with this UI so I have had to kind of piece it together in my head. Most of it I can see how it worked and I think I can at the least get the visible portion fully functional along with the bank and inventory. some stuff like the tradeskill window simply wont backdate I think.

Here is the thing, as already stated 640x480 would be really hard to do. This was even getting a bit stretched on old 15" monitors, and will be awful on 19" monitors that are common now, let alone widescreen format ones. Running it at 1280x1064 would cause scaling issues with the fonts. 1024x768 would probably work for keeping both the original look of the UI being a portal and still have fonts that are the right scale.

I need the full set of image files though before I can consider it any further. So please upload as a zip every thing you have. There is too much degradation of the images posted already for me to "rightclick and save as".

http://www.eqinterface.com/download...nfo.php?id=2200

Well I have fooled with it a bit and here is what I am comingup with.

My initial idea was to dedicate 3 hotbars to being the buttons to operate the other features in the UI. Doing this will give a working "spells" button, but as near as I can tell, there is no command that will work form a social to open the socials or abilities windows. Even remaping the commmands does not work.

I had also settled on 1024x768 as the best compromise, on a 19" monitor, this yeilds a large enough veiw to play and still gives it the old UI feel. The propblem I have run into here is font scaling. The size 5 font is simply too small and seems lost. I will have to go down atleast 1 notch in res to get better font scaling, but it may be that it will only scale right in 640x480 which s simply too small. I tried playing as an experiment at that res and it was like playing tombraider 1 all over again, even the colors get really drab at that res.

I am putting this aside for the time being, but I may go back to it again at some point.

Huh? Theres already such an UI.
Look at this thread.
http://www.eqinterface.com/forums/s...1&page=11&pp=15