Aaumdaen

I see alot of UI's that have the name of the buff next to the icon in the effects window. I know that the name of the spell and the duration remaining is available now when you mouse-over the buff or hold down the alt key. Is there a way to display the duration remaining on buffs so as to not have to mouse-over or hold alt? That would be nice. I haven't given up on figuring this out myself, but figure there are ppl here that know much more about this than I do. Any and all help is appreciated.

Thanks

Weskat

To the best of my knowledge this is not currently available in game.

Aramil Dannodel

Hmm...haven't seen this question crop up in a while. Had almost forgotten the standard response (had to dig back a good bit, for this one, hope you enjoy it):

I am now redirecting you to THIS THREAD...scroll down to my post there to find out.

Yes, I realize that was some time ago...as of now, the timers used for the Buff Window and Short Duration Buff Window are still hard-coded, and cannot be modified to actively/always display on-screen. That is, unless you want to keep your mouse cursor in the confines of the Buff Window and jury-rig some sort of tool to keep your ALT key permanently depressed. But then, I think that'd hamper more than help. Heh.

Sorry again, but until SOE decides to not go rigormortis on pinning down near everything on the UI so we cannot modify it, we're out of luck in this matter.

Ameril Dan`nodel
Warder, 57th season
[ Lanys T`Vyl server ]
Bitch at Amiez!! -- in the words of Spleen.

Aaumdaen

Okay, I did read that. Thought maybe something had changed since it didn't use to be that you could display the duration remaining of the buffs what-so-ever. It was a patch since OoW came out that permited the mouse-over / alt key display of the time remaining. It also shows the names of the buff there. So how do ppl get the names to show up? Why would there be a difference between that and displaying the duration? Oh well, maybe someday someone will figure this all out.

Aramil Dannodel

Actually, the patch that put in the buff timers also allowed the "ALT key trick" that lets you see the timers on all your buffs while your mouse cursor is in the window itself. It was introduced quite some time prior to the Omens launch...mid to late July, if I recall correctly.

As for your second question, on why it isn't modded is 90% because it cannot be. SOE has allowed us EQTypes and proper coding to set the buff names themselves to display within the confines of the Buff Window, but they have hard-coded the timers (they have a wicked sense of humour, hard-coding every new UI change once they come out with it, and letting us bitch and moan for a bit) so that they cannot be modified whatsoever.

Also, it's a touch harder to code something of the like than it may appear. Every spell has a specific set tag in the data, so it's rather simple to have the Window do a reference to that number and display a line or two of text to correspond to it. However, although the buffs themselves do have a specific, set duration, those timers do count down accordingly. That -- although I promise I am no expert on the matter, and just speculating from what little knowledge I do have into it -- would be a much more elaborate string of code...it'd have to pick up on the base amount of time the buff runs, then adjust it according to the extension through your character's items/AAs, then continually count it down, refreshing the count every six seconds. It seems simple, but in reality, a string of things as such would be pretty complex. This is why they hard-coded it to only display as long as the cursor is over the buff icon, or why the ALT key is depressed with the cursor in the window (to show them all)...because it's something that may cause too great a strain to continuously maintain. And we all know how straining the game is in the first place.

Anyways, I hope this enlightens you a bit to your concerns.

Ameril Dan`nodel
Warder, 57th season
[ Lanys T`Vyl server ]
Bitch at Amiez!! -- in the words of Spleen.