Creating your own Custom UI

I have been using the default UI since I started EQ2. It does get a bit boring after a while and over the years it has improved so from my perspective it works OK, but it could be a lot better. EQ2 comes with a nice skin using dark cyan colours and even as a basic change this is quite appealing. To see this change in effect, use /loadUI in the chat window. This will bring up a dialog displaying what UIs are currently available. You could also use /loadUI Default to change back again once you had the blue loaded. If you loose the chat window, simply hit the return key and it will display again.

This is not good enough for what we want though, so a good start would be to look at use EQ2Maps. This can be downloaded from here: http://maps.eq2interface.com/index.php?action=download It pretty much installs itself and is highly useful, especially for looking for named NPCs and running around dungeons. You can get the map to show up by using /loadUI again and selecting EQ2Map. Great! a good start but can we have the blue skin and EQ2Maps together? Nope, sadly it is either one or the other.

As a first exercise Ill explain how to merge the Blue skin and EQ2Maps together so that we get the best of both worlds. You will need to traverse to your Everquest2 directory using Windows Explorer. For Steam users this would be something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\EverQuest 2 Locate the UI directory and open it up. You should now see something like the picture below.

Right click and create a new folder and call it something useful. Mine happens to be called AndreaUI, but you can use your own name of course. Now copy and paste the Default_Blue and EQ2Map folders and dump them into your new directory.

OK, so far so good, but you don't want to keep using the /loadUI command to load it in, so we will make EQ2 load it in automatically when you enter the game. Traverse back to the main Everquest 2 directory and look for a file called eq2.ini Open this up using your favourite text editor and add the following 2 lines:

cl_ui_subdir UI/
cl_ui_skinname AndreaUI

Remember to use your own directory and not AndreaUI. Whilst you are in here have a look at the other various options that you enable by removing the # (hash) in front of the relavant lines. Assuming you want to keep those options at their default settings your file should now look like the following:

cl_ui_subdir UI/
cl_ui_skinname AndreaUI

# Below you find some additional options that cannot be set via the ingame menu.
# Just add or remove a "#" in front of the setting which you want to activate/deactivate

# Enable Anti-Aliasing support (enable here, then set via your graphics card driver)
#r_aa_blit 1

# Allow the possibility to have chat channels in more than one tab/window
chat_allowduplicatechannels 1

#To force EQ2 to listen to your custom cl_screenwidth and cl_screenheight parameters
#cl_validate_resolution false

#EQ2 automatically reduces texture quality if your system's memory is used up, resulting in washed out icons and character graphics, for example. With this command you can disable that behaviour. Would be better to just get more memory though, it's cheap these days.
#disable_auto_low_mem_mode 1

# Disable the intro movie
#cl_movie_enabled 0

# Force the options window to open in advanced mode
#cl_options_advanced 1

# Make the merc quieter
#cl_ignore_merc_chatter true

Load up EQ2 and see your new combined interface - Default using the nice blue and EQ2Maps active at the same time.