Maybe someone could shed a little light...

[jayltir]

I've been playing around with some of the UI's here and I enjoy them. I know I would enjoy it more if I started getting into the developing my own UI's. I have a decent background in c/c++ (more towards old school c though). I've read the posts on "just stick with the UI Builder and it will soon be zen" and so I will do just that. My question is this: How much XML do you need to tweak "by hand"? is the Builder the end all? Do you even NEED to teak the XML by hand? Are you able to do calculations on any of the data types? For instance, the xp bars that display decimal points, I looked at the XML code but couldn't pinpoint where it was the author pulled out the actual decimal points? Can someone enlighten me? Thank, in advance.

[tonyis3l33t]

the UI can do everything for me so far...(lots more than what ive posted in downloads section)

the %'s and life current/max numbers are pretty easy to find. Best way is to copy and paste the value from some other piece...maybe someone else's mod or the persona window. Then just paste it in the window you want!

as for learning UI...spend the time when servers are down and you are normally flaming playing around with the UI instead it took me like 2 or 3 server resets to learn it pretty well.
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group Webcam

[jayltir]

LOL! 2 or 3 server resets, eh? How much flaming time did you lose? Thanks for the info, I'll see what I can come up with.

[Imadruid]

Math isn't really possible here quite yet, although Deathbane has been doing some interesting stuff that might expose it some more. Personally, I hand edit all my code. Being a programmer, all of my XML code is indented and lined up. I have even gone so far as to add commects to some of the files. I regularly comment out lines and whole blocks of code to try new things.

As far as your question on the decimal points, I think you'll find that many of them are nothing more than crafty coding. No one is extracting individual digits from the numbers/strings. Instead, we are playing tricks with clipping regions of PAGES (or at least, I am). PAGES will automatically clip anything outside of them. For example, let's say:



Current experience (yellow) is : 98%
Experience to next bubble (blue) is : 83%

+---+ +---+
|98%| |83%|
+---+ +---+

In this case, Y is a page and B is a page. Both pages are
large enough to hold the maximum value for their numbers.

Side Note: For this example, the only information that will
render on screen, is that which is displayed
between the plus signs.

So, lets say all we want is two digits from the Y page and
one digit from the B page. That is easy, we just need to
make our pages smaller and let the natural clipping properties
of pages take effect. Just resize the pages to display as
much information as you want.

+--+ +-+
|98% |83%
+--+ +-+

This would now gives us 98 and 8 displaying. Well, what we
really want is 98 and 3. Therefore, all we need to do is shift
the control that displays the B value to the left a little more
(change it's X offset negative). This will bring the digit we
actually want into the viewing area of the page.

+--+ +-+
|98% 83%
+--+ +-+

Now, we have our 98 and our 3. The only thing left is to add
in the decimal point using its own page or text control.

BTW, I left out an important thing which is to make sure you
right align your text fields.

Hope that helps.

[jayltir]

Thanks Imadruid. Exactly the answer I was looking for. I appreciate the time it took you for the hefty reply. I think I'll take a look at some of your mods (you do have some posted here, yes?) as I'm not too spun up on XML and decent, structured code is often times a great learning asset. That and I can not bring myself to continue using the UI Builder, 8678 Mem leaks!!! Oh my GOD!! Thanks again Imadruid.

[Imadruid]

I haven't gotten around to posting any mods yet. I'm still not satiasfied with my components. I have also kind of moved onto playing World of Warcraft. My machine just can't handle EQII at this point. I'll probably revisit EQII in a couple of months. Perhaps later this week, I'll put something up in the beta section. I have a stat bar that resizes and can be manually dragged to the top and bottom of the screen. It alos has the decimal point thing going on. I'll see if I can post that later int he week.