Serenity UI BETA
 

The serenity UI suite has finally been released in a BETA form. Please use this thread for any and all issues with the UI while it is in the beta stage.

For more information about Serenity including development screenshots, please see this thread:
Pre-Beta Serenity UI Thread

hi, only had a couple of mins to try it out, will look further when i can have some time. really like the idea of simplicity and keeping original theme so keep at it!

first of all i thought that page down/up buttons on the left hand side of the hotbars could do with going, so you can get them together nicely, horizontally as well as vertically.

also thought that maybe the character window (if thats the right name, i mean the bit showing your own health/power) could do with being a bit smaller or resizable.

hope this maybe helps

Used this for a bit this afternoon, and one thing I found is that you can't close the quest window. :/

I would also like to request the smaller player and target windows. ;)

Good job on this UI. I look forward to the upcoming changes. ;)

Thanks for the comments!

Good point. I will look into some changes on that. I'll probably make it toggleable and have it on top of the first button so it doesn't take up any extra room.

The player window is resizable and can be resized to hide the effects (bottom row) and concentration bars (2nd to bottom row) if desired making it even shorter. The gauges themselves really can't shrink anymore, but I was thinking about maybe making an alternate version for peopel who don't need to be as aware of concentration.. the alternate version would remove the concentration icons and instead have a text indicator of current/max concentration up next to the name, thereby making the window slightly shorter without losing information.

Thanks again for the comments and feedback.

EEK! I had done the quest window just before releasing this.. guess I screwed something up! Thanks for reporting that. I'll get that fixed tonight after I get home from work.. first on my list.

You can resize both windows to make them smaller at the cost of hiding the effects icons. In the case of the target window, it shows 30 icons (3 or 4 rows total) which is a lot of space even though the icons are only 15x15. Unless you are raiding you typically only need the one row so you can resize the window down a bit.

Do you all feel the window is too big even with the optional resizings? Is it the gauges? I don't see any way to really make the gauges any smaller unless I abondon the gauge design and try somethign different. I may have to do that but I really liked the look of them..

HMMMMMMMM

Well i'll have to do some thinking on this while i'm here at work.


Thank you very much for the comments.

Just an FYI.. I'm home from work and going to spend an hour or so working up some alternate gauge styles to see what I can come up with to make the player/target windows a bit smaller so they take up less room.

When i'm done coming up with a few mockups i'll post them here and i'd like to get some feedback on them.

Ok here are a few mockups I worked on tonight. To the left is the mockup, to the right is the current player window for a size comparison. All of the mockups are shorter in vertical size than the current window and in most cases narrower in width as well.

Thoughts?

I really like #3 even though you lose the name. Its a nice info block over all.. I did it in the SARS general layout style because.. well I liked it :p

But i'd like to see what others think of them.

I like the second one mostly. I don't like the "floating text" deal with the third one, but I'm sure quite a few people like to have their actual Hit Points visible [I for one don't care, I only stare at a small bar that has Player, Target, and Implied (Profit's)].

Just thinking ahead, will you offer the group in horizontal format? I like to have mine as compact as possible (height wize) across the bottom, just above my chat and hotbars of Letterbox.

Also, not sure what you have planned for "fill", but when you do it, if you can, maybe put some kind of outline or bevel on it to make the complete guage stick out. It's easier to view the battle that way IMHO.

Name not realy important for a player window likes... But personaly I like the one's on the right still ;) , Why not just slim that down a bit insted?

lol everyone likes something different. I'm gonna go mad :p

If I go with that design, I was thinking of making the infobar part at the top a toggleable deal, and would provide 2 versions with the defaults each way. Since the infobar is the only difference between #2 and #3.

The group window will most likely be in a volume page so it will be flexible. If for some reason I end up not doing it in a volume, then it will be made in 2 version, one horizontal and one vertical.

Not quite sure what you mean by "fill". The gauges seem to stick out fine over my dummy screen there. Thats part of the reason I put those endcaps on #2 and #3, to make the bars more visible. IMHO in #1 they are kind of too subtle.

Well about the only slimming down I can do on the original player window is to remove the concentration bubbles and replace it with text up by the name. That does shorten it slightly, but it doesn't change the underlying problem of the gauges being nice but slightly too large. Which means that the implied target and target windows still suffer from being a bit too large as well with no real way to make them smaller.

But now that I think some more on it and look at my mockups.. it seems really its the TEXT that is the liming factor on the height. Even though the new gauges are smaller, the 100% text indicators really take up the same vertical height as the old ones, and therefore really don't save anything.

HMMMMMMMMMM

Thanks for the comments all.

My apologies for not getting this fixed last night but my server was down when I came home so I couldn't test, and then I just forgot about it. Sorry about that.

Here is a small patch to fix the journal problems.

player window
 

really liked the original design for the player window you had, looked really good and had everything i wanted. was just a little too wide for me, height wasn't a factor because like you said i could resize it.

love the ui
 

ok i had a few problems, first the player window is great dont change it. secone my problem is that i have 16 slot bags could not see all my slots. it cut off the last row. and that is my only problem. thanks love the ui

To me the conc bubbles is part of the style for that window lol, so replacing them with txt would look crap in your orginal hehe :p

AHHH so its the width not the height.. doh! lol

Thanks!

Hmm ouch that sucks. I'll take a look at that. Unfortunately I don't think I have any bags higher than 12 to test with so hopefully I can see the problem in the code without testing.

yeah i had the same problem with bags.

just another thought...

i really really like a little icon attached to the start button that enables you to open all bags at once, thought i'd put that out there.

Yeah I liked the bubbles too.. I'm working on a very slightly modified version of the original right now.. Keeping in general the same style but trying to slim it down by a few pixels in height and i'll make it narrower as well. While I like the gems I think they are too big overall so i'm goign to streamline those as well but keep the style. Once thats all done we'll see what it looks like.

That is on my todo list. The start button will have a few of the more advanced things like a bag toggle, shader toggle, and some other things.. haven't worked out all the speicifcs but things like that and defintly a bag toggle are in the plan.. Just haven't gotten to that yet :)

On the bags issue.. Has anyone tried any LARGER bags than 16? Like 24+ slot bags? Just curious if those work.

Ok like I Said I unfortunately have no way to test bags over 12 slots, and I didint' see anything OBVIOUSLY wrong with the code, but Idid change some things around that MIGHT have been causing the problem. So can anyone with the bag issue please try this new bag file and tell me if it works or not?

Thanks.

bags
 

ok tried the new bags. previously you could see 16 slots, then an overhang of the next four so you could only see the top half of these slots. the overhang has gone so the window fits 16 slots perfectly, but still only 16 not the full 24.

also now having problems resizing my hotbars, clicked on set icon size and a blank black screen comes up that i can't close so unable to resize these atm

So 16 slot bags work now, but 24 slot bags do not?

bags
 

yep i'm using 24 slots and can only see 16 atm

Thanks for your help testing. I've totally rewritten and cleaned up the autosizing code, so please give this a try and cross your toes before you open the bags :p

Fixed. Use this new file.

Sorry for the problems.

bags
 

yep all bags are spot on now!

Wheee :)

Thanks for your help getting that fixed.

Ok like to get some comments on this mockup. I went back to the original style but looked at how I could streamline it while keeping the same general look and feel and this is what I came up with.

Couple notes on this.
1) I knowin the mockup the text is hard to read, but in game it would be easier since it would have a dropshadow on it. Just like the original version. Since the colors i'm using are identical it shouldn't be an issue for reading.
2) There would be a couple alternate versions of this window all based on this style. The version shown here with the percent text would be resizeable to the rtight to drag the percents off the bars if desired. Another style would remove the percents all together and a 3rd optional style would add the previously seen info block on the other mockups to replace the name. Those would be the 3 styles so different people with different tastes for information should all be able to get what they want.

This same slightly streamlined gauge style would then be used in other places as well.

Thoughts on this style? Like I said it was designed to be very similiar to the existing style that people liked just a bit more compact.

Yay! ;)

Good work, Ag. ;)

hotbars are working great now thanks.

i really like the style and size of the percentage example above, thats the one for me i reckon!

Doh...any way to keep the target/implied target from resetting? :/

What do you mean by resetting?

If you resize them so that the buff icons don't show, etc....the next time you target something, they reset back to full size again.

Hmm i'll take a look at that.

Apparently the game does some autosizing on the darn window :( I'm working on it but a solution may not be available before I have to head to work. Its being very annoying :p

Ok I figured out a way to do it which works even better than the resizing thing.

Basiclly in a nutshell if I make the window the minimum size by default, then in game I toggle the showing of effects through options then the game will drop down automaticly as needed to display the effects.

So what i'm going to do is retool the window with a mouse over button that toggles the effects.

Ok here you go. New target and implied target windows.

These now use the new system. The way it works now is you don't manually resize the windows at all. Forget about that, this is easier and works better :) Now the window autosizes to show just enough as needed. IF you have effects OFF the window will autosize to me the minimum size without the effects window (The same as resizing the window to its minimum size in the old window). If you have effects ON then the window will autosize and expand as needed to show however many rows of effects there are.

To make this even EASIER (I love easy!) both the target and implied target windows now have a mouseover checkbox .. it only shows up when you mouse over the windows and is located in the upper right corner. Check or clear the check to toggle effects display. They can be toggled independantly as well.

NOTE: When you first use these new windows, please go into window options and reset to default location (which resets the size as well) just to be sure. Also it is possible that when you FIRST load this up the checkbox will be out of synch with your game settings... it shoudl synch up within the first use or two though.

Enjoy! and let me know how it works out. In my limited and quick testing it seemed to work fine though.

I need to start getting ready for work now, but if I end up with some time before I leave i'm going to TRY and get the new gauges into play and release beta 2. No promises, but if I do't get it done then it will get done tonight as amazingly I actually have tomorrow off! In either case once the new gauges are done and the windows which use the gauge style updated I will release Beta 2.. whee :)

Please everyone keep the comments, feedback and bug reports coming.

Well i'm out of time so I won't be getting Beta 2 fully together until tonight.. But I wanted to leave you with a little treat before I headed off. The new player window is in game (at least the default style is). Check it.