EC Modding - What would you like to see?

Hail,

I've been on working on an EC mod for over a year now. After many iterations and rewrites, I've settled on a pattern and am starting to make a little bit of progress. Below are some sketches.

My goal is to make the UI more minimal and to borrow concepts from third-party classic clients that are "illegal". I find a lot of things in the Default UI make it difficult to manage your game window (Mobile dockspots, for example), and so I intend to strip out a lot of stuff, particularly if the existing implementation is ugly or buggy.

1. Are there things that the EC Default UI does that you would insist a mod retain?
2. Are there things that the EC Default UI does that you find to be overkill or that bug you?
3. Are there things that you wish the EC UI would do?
4. Are there concepts from Pinco's UI that are worthwhile?
5. Are there concepts from the CC you would like to see in EC?
   

Paperdoll



Backpack



Skills



Player Health Bar



Target Health Bar



Settings

Looks great!

Is there a way to make a search function for any container, or esp those without them now. E.g. the jewelry case. 

How do we find say a specific ring or bracelet in a container with 500 items, say with certain specs like 10 ssi, 15 hci and 15 dci.

I have like 8 jewelry cases, and I dropped all my loots into them without checking in the past. When I tried to find a specific type over thousands of jewels, it's very time consuming.

Seth said:

Is there a way to make a search function for any container, or esp those without them now. E.g. the jewelry case. 

How do we find say a specific ring or bracelet in a container with 500 items, say with certain specs like 10 ssi, 15 hci and 15 dci.

I have like 8 jewelry cases, and I dropped all my loots into them without checking in the past. When I tried to find a specific type over thousands of jewels, it's very time consuming.

My understanding is that Pinco already has a search feature for the jewelry box (can't say for sure - I don't use Pinco), so yes. For container search, my plan is to make it function as an inline filter instead of as a separate window. It would be a bonus if I could make it support regex or boolean expressions (AND, AND NOT, wildcard, etc.).

“On pincos you can save different vendor search criteria, I used to use that, except it’s really buggy on pincos and doesn’t work well, tried to submit bug report to him but he couldn’t reproduce or something, plus language barrier.

also pincos has auto stop attack on blood oath, somehow that is legal? although I don’t see how that is any different to autobox script

also both pinco and *** (if you have the wizard hat package) have auto unequip item at 0 durability, to prevent item loss, this was introduced after Craig Jones started putting chars in rival guilds and destroying peoples splintering boks that they paid plats for while they are afk at Luna. So it’s only official classic client you’re vulnerable now.

also like Auto insure artifact that pincos has, (this is triggered by reading a journal message and insuring last item in backpack)

I also like the afk mode pinco has that stops client logging out.

also like the password save feature and shard screen select skip pincos has”

Yoshi said:

“On pincos you can save different vendor search criteria, I used to use that, except it’s really buggy on pincos and doesn’t work well, tried to submit bug report to him but he couldn’t reproduce or something, plus language barrier.

also pincos has auto stop attack on blood oath, somehow that is legal? although I don’t see how that is any different to autobox script

also both pinco and *** (if you have the wizard hat package) have auto unequip item at 0 durability, to prevent item loss, this was introduced after Craig Jones started putting chars in rival guilds and destroying peoples splintering boks that they paid plats for while they are afk at Luna. So it’s only official classic client you’re vulnerable now.

also like Auto insure artifact that pincos has, (this is triggered by reading a journal message and insuring last item in backpack)

I also like the afk mode pinco has that stops client logging out.

also like the password save feature and shard screen select skip pincos has”

Wow merv/yoshi you've managed to violate the TOS twice at least this post..

Prob not anything you could do abt it but every time I see the EC paperdoll it annoys me.

Female characters stand tall & proud with their shoulders back and head high. Male characters are in a semi-squat looking like they’re abt to pinch a loaf under their robes. Worst design ever.

Constant screen motion sucks

Yoshi said:

“On pincos you can save different vendor search criteria, I used to use that, except it’s really buggy on pincos and doesn’t work well, tried to submit bug report to him but he couldn’t reproduce or something, plus language barrier.

also pincos has auto stop attack on blood oath, somehow that is legal? although I don’t see how that is any different to autobox script

also both pinco and *** (if you have the wizard hat package) have auto unequip item at 0 durability, to prevent item loss, this was introduced after Craig Jones started putting chars in rival guilds and destroying peoples splintering boks that they paid plats for while they are afk at Luna. So it’s only official classic client you’re vulnerable now.

also like Auto insure artifact that pincos has, (this is triggered by reading a journal message and insuring last item in backpack)

I also like the afk mode pinco has that stops client logging out.

also like the password save feature and shard screen select skip pincos has”

HI Yoshi,

Concerning Vendor Search, I found that when I removed the default UI's Vendor Search and re-implemented Generic Gump Parsing into my mod, the CC's Vendor Search became visible and fully usable within the EC. Since I find the CC's version more straightforward and less buggy, I don't have any plans to tweak it beyond that.

I do have plans to implement a "no logout" feature.

I likely will not touch the Login screen. There are a few screens which are outside the visibility of the UI when the game is started up -- Login being one. I think Pinco accomplishes this feature by using the UI Patcher to edit the .uop files. I don't intend for my UI mod to use a custom patcher since I find it causes problems if you switch between Default UI and back, although I would love to add the classic UO music and to update the background image to the Hildebrandt art: https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Hildebrandt_Ultima_Online_poster

PVP is an area where I have almost zero knowledge of in terms of how players use the features of which client. What I intend to do is to add an "Automation" module where the users can add Lua scripts to a directory for the UI mod to load (haven't confirmed that this is possible). I will create a few default scripts as examples (auto bandage is one). The others you mentioned (auto insure, durability intervention, etc.) are good candidates.

Acid_Rain said:

Prob not anything you could do abt it but every time I see the EC paperdoll it annoys me.

Female characters stand tall & proud with their shoulders back and head high. Male characters are in a semi-squat looking like they’re abt to pinch a loaf under their robes. Worst design ever.

Yes, the EC is terrible in this respect. I had wanted my mod to support only the Legacy Paperdoll textures, but unfortunately they're so buggy in the EC that I really can't. Instead, my intention is that the UI only supports the EC texture, and you toggle between a "grid mode" paperdoll and a "character mode" paperdoll that has the ugly texture. Updating the textures to work would require editing the .uop files (I think), which I do not intend to do.

Lord_Frodo said:

Constant screen motion sucks

Concerning the Earthquake effect, right? Only way around this is to turn off effects in the settings, which is lame. The devs should remove this effect.

Increase the font size in the Davies Locker gump. The 7's look too much like 2's.

In the plant reproduction gump change the background color to have better contrast when the seed color is black.  What the heck is the seed count in this picture.
. 

To the dye gump add a text entry box so you can manually enter in the hue number you want. Pinco's has an eye dropper.  I'll settle for a text entry box.

TimSt said:

Increase the font size in the Davies Locker gump. The 7's look too much like 2's.

In the plant reproduction gump change the background color to have better contrast when the seed color is black.  What the heck is the seed count in this picture.
. 

To the dye gump add a text entry box so you can manually enter in the hue number you want. Pinco's has an eye dropper.  I'll settle for a text entry box.

Thanks for the suggestions. I will look into them.

Gumps which are created in a more generic fashion, as I suspect the locker and dye interface are, pose a problem. The EC only has the ability to scale generic gumps in their entirety (you can do this in the default UI setting), and there appears to be a cap to the scale. To customize generic gumps, you would need to override their presentation in full, which is what they did with Vendor Search.

loop said:

Lord_Frodo said:

Constant screen motion sucks

Concerning the Earthquake effect, right? Only way around this is to turn off effects in the settings, which is lame. The devs should remove this effect.

Not sure what you mean by earthquake effect, if you men that my screen is in constant motion even when I am just standing around doing nothing then yes earthquake would fit

Lord_Frodo said:

loop said:

Lord_Frodo said:

Constant screen motion sucks

Concerning the Earthquake effect, right? Only way around this is to turn off effects in the settings, which is lame. The devs should remove this effect.

Not sure what you mean by earthquake effect, if you men that my screen is in constant motion even when I am just standing around doing nothing then yes earthquake would fit

I’m referring to the screen shaking you see when you or those around you cast the mage spell Earthquake. This effect can make doing events on the EC unbearable unless you disable all effects.

There are a few other things that might give an unwanted sense of motion: water along the shore animates, and there is also an idle animation, which can be turned off in the settings. Weather effects are also less subtle than the CC, so rain can be annoying. Other than that, maybe try laying off the ale .

I am talking about the constant motion the EC Screen appears to be always in even when you are alone just standing still and doing nothing.

Lord_Frodo said:

I am talking about the constant motion the EC Screen appears to be always in even when you are alone just standing still and doing nothing.

Do you mean the rain effect?

TimSt said:

Lord_Frodo said:

I am talking about the constant motion the EC Screen appears to be always in even when you are alone just standing still and doing nothing.

Do you mean the rain effect?

No the constant motion like swaying or a breeze blowing

Lord_Frodo said:

TimSt said:

Lord_Frodo said:

I am talking about the constant motion the EC Screen appears to be always in even when you are alone just standing still and doing nothing.

Do you mean the rain effect?

No the constant motion like swaying or a breeze blowing

This animation?

It's the idle animation, which can be disabled in the settings. If that's not it, I'd be interested in seeing it. I use this software to record gifs of my screen: https://www.screentogif.com.