pipe dream: a preview program!
 

a typical modding session -
lets see if i put my health bar in the right place:

-double click on the eq icon
-wait for the patch server to finish
-click accept
-click connect
-enter password
-hit enter
-pick server
-wait....................
-......................
-pick character
-wait............

nope.

-tweak x,y coordinates
-hit save
-repeat

there must be an easier way!! can anyone make some kind of preview program, an xml compiler or something?

this is gonna get deleted
 

I know a post like this will get deleted, but if you play in windowed mode (thanks to EQW from link removed open google and do a search, or send the link via PM) you can leave EQ running while you change things and just switch back and forth.

my modding session:

start eq
start textpad
change xml
/loadskin
change xml
/loadskin
change cml
/loadskin
...

PS: Sorry in advance to the admins, not sure if this is allowed here. If this gets deleted I wont post it again.

Well what I do is I load a screenshot with the game w/o the windows (hit F10, that's what I'm talking about), then I just start drawing what I want to see on the window. If I have a very clear image of what I want, I make a new picture and start drawing out what I want to see, like a new gauge or something. Then I take that picture, cut and paste on the screenshot and see where I want to place it. I take note of the XY coordinates of the picture, the size of the picture, the XY coordinates of where I want the gauge to be, the size of the gauge, then I put those coordinates in the EQUI_Animations.xml, do a little math, put the gauge where I want it to be on screen, voila. I think the number of tweaks that have to be done at the most was like 3 or so for me, mostly due to spotting logical errors in the XML file.

Good luck

-TJ

Not sure how good this will do you. But have you tried EQW?

Allows you to run EQ in a window. Hence you can jump back and forth from your notepad save it and then reload skin in EQ



Just a thought

haha
 

OK, no linkage for me, sorry mr Admin.

WixenDaBomb, do you even bother to read the thread before you reply?

It would be great to write an editor for this. Something that could show what the elements look like, not just the code. I have been using xmlpad to edit them in conjunction with ultraedit... but thats far from good enough.
I think something like this would not be to teribly hard to write, perhaps in php or something so it can be a web app... One potential problem i see is the tga's a lot of web viers dont view them... You can only do so much with just the xml...
Another concern is that it would be a waste of time right now, I suppose prototyping and getting some of the basic stuff would not be, but I am guessing their may be a revision or two yet on the new gui....

just my thoughts.

heck if verant would just update the tutorial to use the new ui it would make things easier