Dev Diary Feedback: New Main Menu

[sirwillow]

Certainly looks nice. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with my skins. Would absolutely love it if it works with the minimalist skins- where it could essentially remove all the buttons but this one. That would be wonderful!

I would love to see some of the skin makers get more of the skins updated as well. A couple of my favorites are still stuck back in SoA mode.

[Ransroth]

About removing unneeded buttons via UI skins.... There are some really great minimalist skins out there, but (unless I was doing something wrong) you can't use them if you switch in and out of full screen. if you start in full screen and stay there it's great. If you go from full screen to window, no problem. But if you go from window to full screen, the skin no longer sits where it should at the bottom of the screen. I guess coordinate 0,0 is at the top left, and it's smart enough to move the bar up when the number of usable vertical pixels decreases (when switching to window mode) but doesn't know to do anything when the usable number of pixels increases.

I don't really understand why, since the native skin has no problem adjusting to any amount of window resizing, but I tried several skins and ran into the same problem with all of them. And as someone who frequently bounces in and out of full screen it made the skins useless.

Anyway, I was hoping for a native option with fewer unneeded (for me) buttons, but at least the update allows for some customization to make them more useful.

There was a bug fix in this general area which may have also fixed the problem you are reporting above.

[Ransroth]

Certainly looks nice. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with my skins. Would absolutely love it if it works with the minimalist skins- where it could essentially remove all the buttons but this one. That would be wonderful!

I would love to see some of the skin makers get more of the skins updated as well. A couple of my favorites are still stuck back in SoA mode.

The skins will definitely need to be updated to work with the new system. You ought to be able to get a skin to do what you want.

We put in a nontrivial amount of work into making sure that if a skin were to move the Main Menu button to a different location on the screen, the Main Menu itself will move with it and open next to it in an appropriate direction (so down and to the right if the button is in the top-left corner). Hopefully that all will work .

[MrBloodworth]

Skirmishes use a system called Skirmish Join. It was called World Join before the name was changed for consistency.

Its ok, I had just assumed all skirmish related things would be under one button, not two. Wasn't really the name that confused me, I just thought it was redundant.

[Lohi]

the most popular ones are still SoA versions.

I always thought it would be nice if Turbine included one or two additional UI skins with the installation, so that players without the necessary computer skills could try out some alternate skins. This would mean Turbine would keep these up to date when the books change.

Ie, they could provide the default UI, plus a minimalist UI that hides a lot of the buttons and has smaller borders on the windows. Maybe a third one that keeps the toolbox at the bottom but with with a different style.

Modifying existing ones is not that difficult, but it can be annoying (you have to restart the client in order to see many of the changes). My custom one is pretty small though, and keeping it up to date isn't hard (when I find the time). However the UI skins that try to do a complete makeover, changing every single element and background, will get out of date quickly and take a lot of work to fix up the new windows.

[atteSmythe]

Modifying existing ones is not that difficult, but it can be annoying (you have to restart the client in order to see many of the changes). My custom one is pretty small though, and keeping it up to date isn't hard (when I find the time). However the UI skins that try to do a complete makeover, changing every single element and background, will get out of date quickly and take a lot of work to fix up the new windows.

Didn't lotrointerface.com used to have a 'skin viewer' that didn't require you to fire up the client?

[Lohi]

Didn't lotrointerface.com used to have a 'skin viewer' that didn't require you to fire up the client?

True. But it's not updated immediately when a new book or expansion comes out. So you can wait for it to update, or bite the bullet and spend a lot of time rebooting the client :-)

[LlamaDraco]

There was a bug fix in this general area which may have also fixed the problem you are reporting above.

Muy excelente, I will try again once the Mirkwood comes out and the skins are updated.

[Dolnor]

This is a very nice feature. Since I run a 17" monitor (CRT FTW), I shrunk all UI interface down to the minimum a long time ago. I also overlaid a quickbar over the top of those useless bag and main menu buttons. With this feature it is like gaining 1.5 more toolbars for me! (no overlaying plus additional mapable buttons).

Thank you very much!

Dolnor The Happy

[Logal444]

I think this is certainly a great step, although I really think we need another quick-slot bar. Please?

[oldmanwhoplays]

I am looking forward to these improvements and thanks to the team for thinking of these things. Our UI needs lots of love as the game gets more complex and options pile up. Now for my question: A small but annoying problem is the cursor. It gets lost in a lot of battles with all the glorious eye-candy. If I could make it bigger or color it differently, that would be a great help. I know this has been suggested many times, but could this be put on the never-ending list too? It is so minor, I fear this little thing doesn't get the attn it merits.

[FoxFire]

Very nice.

Since we can now re-map the bag buttons on the right side of the bar, it'd be nice if you can make it look like the left hand side and provide 7 slots instead of the current 5.

Oh yeah, and if you want add a couple extra bags. Thanks!

[VonRoden]

Very cool and exciting changes to the UI! Kudo's to the developers. One question/comment/request, though. Will the UI settings apply to all characters on that server or will we need to set up each character individually? I really wish there was an "import UI settings" option to make creating a new character easier and faster.

Thanks!

[Ransroth]

Very cool and exciting changes to the UI! Kudo's to the developers. One question/comment/request, though. Will the UI settings apply to all characters on that server or will we need to set up each character individually? I really wish there was an "import UI settings" option to make creating a new character easier and faster.

Thanks!

I think you will need to set up each character individually. "/ui layout save" and "/ui layout load" would be perfect for the import UI settings you are asking for. Unfortunately I'm not sure whether they will be setup to save/load the button mappings right away. If not, it's definitely something that would make sense to add in a future relase. I'd check but am at home at the moment .

[VonRoden]

I think you will need to set up each character individually. "/ui layout save" and "/ui layout load" would be perfect for the import UI settings you are asking for. Unfortunately I'm not sure whether they will be setup to save/load the button mappings right away. If not, it's definitely something that would make sense to add in a future relase. I'd check but am at home at the moment .

Wow, thank you for the response. I'm sad to hear it's not in there yet, but glad to see it is something to be considered.

[tanis0]

I think you will need to set up each character individually. "/ui layout save" and "/ui layout load" would be perfect for the import UI settings you are asking for. Unfortunately I'm not sure whether they will be setup to save/load the button mappings right away. If not, it's definitely something that would make sense to add in a future relase. I'd check but am at home at the moment .

Wait, are you saying these two commands already exist? If so, *SHAKEFIST* I've been wishing I had a feature like this for a long time. Haha.

[Brongdha]

Yay, more shortcuts to stuff I couldn't shortcut to before!

Wait, are you saying these two commands already exist? If so, *SHAKEFIST* I've been wishing I had a feature like this for a long time. Haha.

You must not read patch notes, then.



All this stuff is available to creeps, as well... right?

[Unique]

Wait, are you saying these two commands already exist? If so, *SHAKEFIST* I've been wishing I had a feature like this for a long time. Haha.

It's only been in a couple months (or so)

It saves your ui positions but not scaling (yet)

[FoxFire]

It's only been in a couple months (or so)

It saves your ui positions but not scaling (yet)

Nor does it save various Options, like size and coloring of chat text. I've modified most of the various chat channel colors so I can easily identify which incoming text belongs to which channel. Unfortunately I can't easily copy it across toons.

[Ransroth]

All this stuff is available to creeps, as well... right?

Yup . The panels that aren't available to creeps don't show up as options for them in the Main Menu or to map to buttons on the bottom. The names are adjusted accordingly as well.

[tanis0]

Nor does it save various Options, like size and coloring of chat text. I've modified most of the various chat channel colors so I can easily identify which incoming text belongs to which channel. Unfortunately I can't easily copy it across toons.

Yeah, this is the sort of thing I want to save, along with:

Turning off the profanity filter
Turning on target indicator
Turning on pass-through targeting
etc.

Does any of that sort of thing carry over?

[Unique]

Nor does it save various Options, like size and coloring of chat text. I've modified most of the various chat channel colors so I can easily identify which incoming text belongs to which channel. Unfortunately I can't easily copy it across toons.

Yeah, this is the sort of thing I want to save, along with:

Turning off the profanity filter
Turning on target indicator
Turning on pass-through targeting
etc.

Does any of that sort of thing carry over?

This was posted November 6th

with the advent of Mirwood, /ui layout save will now save the following items:

. your layouts (this is the "old" functionality) - the sizes and positions of the elements on the screen
. your aliases
. your chat font sizes and colors
. your UI Options from the various options pages (scales, various checkbox settings, etc.)

-P

Sounds like this addresses almost all your requests

[tanis0]

This was posted November 6th



Sounds like this addresses almost all your requests

Cool. Thanks for the linkage.

[harrisben]

This is nice, but I was hoping for a little more efficiency in the UI design after so long.

The biggest thing I would suggest is to consolidate toggled skills. An example is the hunter stances (I don't know much about the other classes, but I assume most have something similar). Only one stance can be active at any time, so why not have a pop-up menu for these akin to what is being done with the main menu? I'm only level 37, but is switching stances mid-fight something that hunters do often?

[straytext]

I'm only level 37, but is switching stances mid-fight something that hunters do often?

Actually, yes. Possibly more than most stance based classes. Balancing our threat against our DPS output usually requires shifting stances from Endurance at first to Strength at the end. Also, the other job of the hunter is to watch the healer's back. This is done most easily by pulling aggro off the healer with a quick switch to Strength. That's why Strength doesn't just boost our damage but also our threat. It's for saving minstrels.