Adding something useful

Our custom UI is now looking much better, but we can still improve it more. One of the problems when doing Heroics or Raids is knowing what the various NPCs are casting so you tell when to joust away, or interrupt. There is a version on EQ2Interface, but this has a number of problems. There can be 2 casting bars that you will be interested in. One is your target, but often you will be targeting via the tank, so the second is the implied target. The version that was created has both, however they both occupy the same screen space and will overwrite each other. Not useful if the tank casts something and the NPC also casts something. The one that you end up seeing is the cast that happened last as this overlays the previous cast, meaning you can miss what the NPC is doing.

I have adapted the code and tidied it up a lot so now there is a single resizable frame with 2 progress bars on it. Now you can see everything that is happening and react accordingly.

Trying to catch both casts from the NPC as well as the targeted group member together is difficult, however Ive shown a what both types of spells look like. The casting window is just like an other normal window in the UI. You can change the opacity, locking, etc. The window is resizable, but unfortionatly there is no option to restrict the resize to just the width. Adjusting the height of the frame will simply make it bigger, but the the casting bars will stay the same height and will also remain in the vertical position. The frame though can be stretched and be as long as you like.

You can download the files from this site here : https://sites.google.com/site/eq2mcloud/home which is a small site maintained by myself purely for file storage for this blog. There are currently 2 files in the Tutorial folder. They are basically the same but you have the option to download the xml if you don't want to risk opening up zip files on your PC.

The first step will be to download one of the files and place the xml file eq2ui_custom_castingactivity.xml into the custom UI folder that was created in the last stage. If you remember, mine was called AndreaUI.

We will now need to reference it so that EQ2 will pick it up and start using it. To do this we will need to create a file called eq2ui_custom.xml and it will need to be placed in custom UI folder. The contents will need to be as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Page IgnoreTab="false" ismodule="true" Name="Custom" PackSize="1,1" ScrollExtent="1024,768" Size="1024,768" Visible="false" >
  <include>eq2ui_custom_castingactivity.xml</include>
</Page>

You can download this xml from the same place as before. When EQ2 looks in our custom UI folder it will look for the file eq2ui_custom.xml and if it exists, it will process it. The third line containing the include literally means just that. Include our custom casting xml file with the processing. Its that simple.

Now you have the necessary parts to keep adding more mods to your UI as you see fit. It will just be a case of adding more include lines into eq2ui_custom.xml as the various mods require.

Fire up EQ2 and load your favourite character. You should now see the casting bar, which you can change and move to your liking.

Any problems? Give me a shout in guild chat, or find me in game.