ColorStyles
 

I have an early Christmas present... ColorStyles!

Anyone interested in trying out the new UIBuilder and beta testing them for me?

I am!!!
[email protected]

You know I am.. I can down load it at the normal spot?

Yes, if I've sent any of you a URL recently, you can get the updated version from the same place.

Let me know what you think and if you find any problems so far. I hacked it all together in just a couple of hours, but it seems to be working fine from the limited testing I've done.

I havent found any problems in UIBuilder and I have yet to test them in game.

As a suggestion - you should have a new file like eq2ui_colorstyles.xml that uses the colorstyles. The window's titlebar, and other window elements should use their own colorstyle within eq2ui_colorstyles.xml that corresponds to their category (ie header, titlebar, info, etc etc). This would probably have to be a long term thing for you because you would have to edit each file to use eq2ui_colorstyles.xml and I know how long that would take.

If they do that, they might as well template the entire WindowFrame Tree and just have the client copy it form one spot to all windows. Then you would really only have to make a couple of WindowFrame trees and use some sort of template object (node) to tell the game what template to use.

I can't speak for anyone else but I'm blown away by all the new features that Rothgar is adding to the UI. It seems like at least once a week Rothgar is adding some new thing in the way of updates to the UIBuilder or some added feature to an interface piece. I wanted to take a minute to just say thanks for the work you've been putting into this.:D

But there's so many different combinations, yeah?

Not really. 90% of all windows use the basic WindowFrame Tree. So say we hade a Object (I'll use <template>) that would copy a source Object in its place. Think how easy it would be to mod/skin all the windows then. The node could look something like:

<Template Src="/WindowElements.WindowFrame" Align="None|Client|Left|Top|Right|Bottom" Top="int", Left="int", height="int", Width="int"/>

Then you could just toss that in the window to replace the WindowFrame tree and you would only have to edit the Src Object to Change 90% of all windows in the game.

Of Course you will have your special case windows that will have their own unique WindowFrame, in that case you would just use the WindowFrame tree/WC_X and the new ColorStyle instead.

This wouldn't have to apply to just the WindowFrame tree. I could be use for any repetitive Object. Like the Group clusters in the raid window, the Icon pages in the maintain window. ect. The code is really already there its just hardcoded for windows like market, merchant, Guild, ect. All these use a template that gets copied over and over as needed. Same principle but on a larger scale.

Why a new element, just use an <include> (Rothgar would only need to allow the same path/file to be included more than once). But whatever way i's done I support the suggestion as such.

PS: I know Rothgar posted something on this recently, not sure where it ways (likely in the raid/group window threads, or maybe it was in a PM).

Unless they add an align property to the Page object <include> wouldn't work. The client would need to know how you wanted to paint it into its Owner.

Yes he talked about it for the raid window witch gave me the idea to brake it out as its own type of Object and not have it just some hardcoding for individual windows.

Yes, I would like to do this a little overtime and you're right, making an eq2ui_colorstyles.xml is exactly what I would do. /gu noUnfortunately you won't be able to test these changes in game yet because the client would need to be recompiled to use the changes I made to our UI library.

I'm looking at getting this out for the next game update coming in January. So you have some time to play with UI builder. If you find any issues let me know asap so I can get them resolved.

I really appreciate that! Some time during the holidays things slow down a little bit assuming we're not working on a big project and its easier for me to work things in around my other tasks.

If you did that with colorstyles, I think you should do that with text fonts as well. For people who want to skin, it's virtually the same thing with fonts.

I'm sure it has something to do with the expansion launch as well.

Well, we already have the /TextStyles branch and I've been trying to make objects reference a style there. So is that what you mean? I know we still have lots of objects that reference fonts directly, and those just need to change as we get around to them.

Believe me when I say that part of me wants to start with an empty eq2ui.xml file and restructure the entire UI from scratch. :) Anyone want to help with that project? hehe

Yeah. They just need to be referenced.

Yes

I'd love to see the new UIBuilder, Rothgar.

lordebon (AT) gmail (DOT) com