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Sinthea's New UI

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Sinthea's New UI

Postby Killemal » Tue Sep 28, 2010 6:01 pm

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I'm using X-Perl, kgPanels, TitanPanel, SexyMap, and Bartender, mainly. There are a few other recognizable addons there (Omen, Recount, Necrosis). Still working on getting everything sized and spaced, and most of the colors and fonts are just placeholders, but it's a work in progress...

So... any comments or questions?
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Re: Sinthea's New UI

Postby Zancarius » Tue Sep 28, 2010 8:08 pm

Killemal wrote:So... any comments or questions?


Keybind, keybind, keybind, keybind.

keybind-keybind-keybind-keybind.png
keybind-keybind-keybind-keybind.png (315.58 KiB) Viewed 3736 times


Don't bother reading the rest of this if you don't like the idea of keybinding. This is just general advice from someone who transitioned to keybinding as his primary playstyle back in late 2005/early 2006. It's not suitable for everyone. If you tend to play many FPS games, you might find keybinding to be much easier after a (brief) readjustment phase.

Keybinding looks ominous at first, but the net result is a faster attack cycle than you'd otherwise have with clicking (even for casters). The best approach is to use the keygroup immediately surrounding your movement keys and may require rebinding things like your social menu and so forth. (I'm left-handed and my movement keygroup consists of JKIL which should explain the key selection.) Though, as a word of warning, it does take a while to adjust to keybindings versus clicking--a period which can take up to two weeks. The results are much more worthwhile, though. It becomes significantly harder to return to clicking once you have adjusted.

Don't forget you can use modifiers, too. Several of my own bindings are comprised of shift+key, alt+key, and so forth.

And yes, I use these keybinds even while healing, though my main heals have always been bound to VuhDo (as in the case of the VDW encounter, you cannot use VuhDo unless you have a private tank set up--which you can't make changes to while in combat--so it's easier to target the dragon and just use the keyboard shortcuts while clicking on partymembers to heal them). Certain "uh oh!" buttons, like that for Nature's Swiftness, are bound to easy to reach keys like "\" since they need to be pressed while in a hurry.

Though, again, I have made several changes for being a southpaw. My tab key (for tab targeting) is my backspace key, for instance. In your particular case, you could use Q, E, R, T, F, G, and many other keys that are easily reachable while remapping health bars from V to something else which would gain you another key to use for abilities. Experiment!

Oh, and if you ever do adopt keybinding, you may find that it's worthwhile to keep certain classifications of spells between multiple characters. It sounds a little ridiculous at first, but my reasoning is that it helps the brain associating specific activities with specific actions further reducing the learning curve when switching between characters. To illustrate, U is my universal "slow" keybind: earthbind on the shaman, hamstring on the warrior, curse of exhaustion (when I played an affliction warlock), and so forth. But be aware that redoing a keybind after using this system for several months can be detrimental to your ability to play. Once you've adjusted to a new style, moving a spell to another binding can take just as long to adjust to as transitioning from clicking to keying!

That's my $0.02.
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Re: Sinthea's New UI

Postby Grimblast » Wed Sep 29, 2010 8:32 am

Or you could take a lesson from this guy!
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Turalia Gearspark - Asuran Engineer ----------- Turus Gearspark - Asuran Guardian
Thelena Turusian - Norn Warrior ---------------- Jake Turusian - Human Thief
Dililah Turusian - Norn Necromancer ------------ Rahl Braincrusher - Char Mesmer
Star Earthbreaker - Sylvari Elementalist -------- Rylo Preystalker - Char Ranger
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Re: Sinthea's New UI

Postby Killemal » Wed Sep 29, 2010 9:54 am

LoL! Kinda like my damage meter.
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Re: Sinthea's New UI

Postby Killemal » Wed Sep 29, 2010 10:41 am

Back on topic:
Thal, I'd tried keybinds back when BC launched. After a week or so of banging my head against the wall, I switched back to being a clicker. I'm going to give it another go, however. I've already rebound my WASD to ESDF, with common channeled spells being assigned to a combination of one of those keys and Shift, seeing as I won't be moving when I cast them. I'm going to try re-binding some other spells to the left side of my keyboard as well and see how I like that.
One thing I noticed with my UI last night is that the buttons are harder to click accurately. Whether that's a result of them being in a completely different place and layout or from me reducing their size by about 15% is still up for debate. Either way, if I can get the keybinds to act the way I want and my brain and fingers to cooperate, it won't really matter.

I'm still changing some things with the UI, namely the color schemes. I'm trying to keep it dark, and I've named it 'Nightfall', as it seems to share the color properties of the Warlock Nightfall talent proc. All of the panels at the bottom now have a nice gradient to them, going from dark to light, just like a clear night sky does. Omen and Recount have also been re-colored to match and had their transparencies altered to make them blend in more. I've dropped some more buttons off of the SexyMap, as they don't want to behave correctly and the TitanPanel can handle the plugins just fine.

I'm still looking for a decent spell timer. I like the one built into Necrosis, but I can't seem to alter the length or positioning of the individual spell bars. I also want to change the frames around the kgPanels down below; make them a bit fatter. Chatter still isn't looking the way I want it to. The font is all wrong and a bit too small to read comfortably, IMHO.

Obviously the entire UI build is suited best for how I play Sinthea. I tried a couple of randoms on Killem and Shoop last night, and it was a bit tedious. I'm honestly not really happy with the action bars in the center. I think that I might move some of the non-combat abilities back off to the left or right side of the screen to reduce the clutter down below.

So... anyone know of a good spell timer?
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Re: Sinthea's New UI

Postby Zancarius » Wed Sep 29, 2010 11:59 am

It could be the viewport crunch you're experiencing. That can be disorienting and is something to keep in mind.

When I first switched to keybinds it took me a better part of two weeks to get used to it. I almost gave up, too. It really does require a complete rewiring of your ability to play. The important thing is to avoid giving in to disappointment. It's frustrating, it's difficult, and you will most certainly catch yourself glancing down at your action bars frequently to figure out what button is bound to which ability. After a while, it becomes automatic. Just don't feel discouraged.

Also, I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for (there are some really good spell timers around including one that looks something like a timeline, but I've lost track of them). It's mostly for the "bling" in your UI: Doom_CooldownPulse is a fun little addition that pulses the ability in the very center of your screen at the instant of cooldown. It can be handy for visually tracking cooldowns. I tend not to really use the visual aspect of it, though. Also, I've attached a replacement "lubdub.wav" that was pulled from Doom 2 (it's the revenant attack sound) and adds a really cool effect to multiple cooldowns clearing in sequence. You do have to check "enable out of date addons" or modify the *.toc file to bump the API revision up to current. It's simple enough that it shouldn't break for a long time.

I do wish I could find that spell timer addon I saw on Curse once. It showed an approximate timeline of all your upcoming cooldowns in your rotation, and I think that's approximately what you're looking for.

Edit: Fixing the attachment stylesheet data since the link is white (I hate prosilver's layout in CSS). It appears that it's also adding wavs as some kind of embedded object. Sorry. :/
Attachments
lubdub.wav
"lubdub.wav" replacement for Doom_CooldownPulse; simply overwrite the existing one, if it exists, or replace into the Doom_CooldownPulse directory under Interface/Addons.
(14.28 KiB) Downloaded 300 times
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Re: Sinthea's New UI

Postby Killemal » Wed Sep 29, 2010 12:54 pm

Thanks for the input, Thal.

I've changed a few things around.
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I've actually shortened the bottom section and completely re-positioned the action bars down there. I've pretty much stacked 5 bars down there, then two more 4-slot bars in the minimap and threat/damage pane. The entire center pane is now made up of action bars. The big blank section to the right of the bars in the original picture was where the timers were going to go, but for now I just moved the timers up and to the right side of the screen. This should allow for better raid awareness as the viewport is much larger. I still have a few pixels left down there at the bottom, but once I figure out how to change the borders on the panels that will probably disappear.

Yes, Omen and Recount are small, but it really doesn't matter. I only need to see the top 3 spots in Omen (for the most part), and recount is there just because.

I've fixed the chat window so that it's a bit more readable (I think).
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Re: Sinthea's New UI

Postby Menacea » Wed Sep 29, 2010 5:47 pm

Here is a UI shot from MANY years ago. I think this was one of the first custom UI's I built from scratch. Options were limited so dont knock it too much ;)


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