casting bar without the error spam messages

[snowline]

I really want a cast bar that only ever shows me the casting speed, progress and name of the currently casting spell/item - and never ever covers that info up with the spam messages about "in recovery" "item not ready yet" "target not available" "interrupted" and so on. It's not currently possible to move those junk messages away, they're welded ontop of the useful information.

[gjsi]

The only problem is, those message are not junk. They give you a reason the spell did not cast, so you can fix the issue and retry instead of hitting the button until it breaks because it won't cast.

[snowline]

They most certainly are total garbage for how I use the interface.

the spam messages are welded ontop of the useful info: what's casting, how fast it's casting, what did the interrupt do to it's completion etc.

With regular cast speed debuffs in harder encounters for example, the "interrupted" message spam is vastly inferior to visually seeing once more how your cast is actually progressing.


It's like building a speedometer and a rev counter into your car, and then covering over the useful figures they display with useless spam messages like:
"Your Engine is ON!!"
"ATTENTION: Your Wheels are Turning!!"
"LOOKOUT!! Your car is in Motion!!!!"

[Drumstix42]

Not sure I understand really. The only time I'm ever seeing "Interrupted" etc is when I'm not casting any more, soon as I start casting again I see the cast bar.

When exactly is anything being covered up?

[snowline]

Using profitUI the cast bar shows the name of the current ability/item being cast, and a graphical left to right colour change to display progress - this info is overwritten by the "interrupted" "item not ready yet" "already casting" "in recovery" "target not available" etc etc messages which pop up in a 'comic style' font on the bar. These messages prevent reading which ability/spell/item is casting and seeing clearly what progress it has.


Here's an easier example to duplicate than being interrupted a lot.



1. Make a macro with a few casts, (for example one of the dps macros a priest like myself uses because selecting dps rotation is far less important than watching everything else we watch e.g. raid for hp/curses/dets, ward amounts and debuff times remaining etc etc).
2. add an item use to the macro, for example manastone. Use the manastone then try using the macro.
3. you now cannot tell what ability is casting or how fast properly, because the item part of the macro causes these useless junk messages about "item not ready yet" to endlessly spam the casting bar itself covering over the really useful name & progress feedback of whatever is casting.

I've used profitUI for so long it's only just occurred to me this might be a profitUI problem, but I believe the standard UI includes the same junk messages.

[Savie]

I don't use Profit, but I DL'd it to see if I could work something like you seem to be talking about. It's rough I'm sure and I can't log in game atm to test it. Perhaps someone more familar with Profit can clean it up if need be...

[DiggityMan]

its part of DynamicData="/GameData.Spells.Casting" which if removed will not show anything progress or so called spam. One way to change it is to move the spam to a diffeernt location. but when tested it still stoped the progress bar and showed the spam in a new location. Far as i see it cant be done. I will continue testing this with drums(what i use) and profit but both casting bars are very similiar

[snowline]

Savie thanks a lot for your effort, actually you may be onto something - you see the casting bar element you made does the exact opposite of what I was after

trying it out, I never see any spell name or progress at all - I only see the spammy error messages "in recovery" "already casting" "not ready yet" etc.


Diggityman thanks for investigating too, if it requires a change on SOE's end I guess it'll probably never happen

[Drumstix42]

To me it sounds more of a macro problem than the cast bar. I'm sure they could not show these text overlays, but in the case of someone NOT using a macro, these text popups are important.

I use almost no macros that cast more than 1 ability or item.

If the macro system was smarter, it wouldn't show this feedback, and since you can only queue 1 ability at a time it makes sense that it showing the text that it does.
Obviously I can't convince anyone to use less macros, as in a lot of situations it's just not convenient. But just know it's not the casting bar itself that is the problem

[EQAditu]

Looking at it, there are two important layers. A casting failure page and a casting progress page. The easiest thing to do would be to reverse the order in which these pages appear in the stack. This way when the progress bar is visible, it covers the failure message instead of the current opposite.

Current XML layout:

<Page Name="Casting">
    <Page Name="CastingFailure">...</Page>
    <Page Name="CastingProgress"><Text Name="SpellName" /><Page Name="Progress">...</Page></Page>
    <Page Name="WindowFrame">...</Page>
</Page>

Desired XML layout:

<Page Name="Casting">
    <Page Name="CastingProgress"><Text Name="SpellName" /><Page Name="Progress">...</Page></Page>
    <Page Name="CastingFailure">...</Page>
    <Page Name="WindowFrame">...</Page>
</Page>

This would be easier than say adding scripts to the OnShow/OnHide events of the two pages so that only one was visible at a time.

[snowline]

that sounds great, is that xml stuff something I can edit somewhere in a profitUI file to accomplish? I'm afraid my expertise extends only to the newbie level of getting click-to-de-curse macro's to also send a tell to the healer channel.

[Savie]

As I've said before, I don't use Profit, however I'm told this works.

[snowline]

Savie sent me a casting bar that seems to do exactly what I was after, none of the error messages I tested overwrite the bar, I always see the exact progress of exactly what's casting, big thanks to him!