May Waypoints

I asked my mom on Mother’s Day, "How does breakfast in bed sound?"
She said, "Oh that sounds lovely!"
I said, "Great, I’ll have two eggs, bacon and hash browns."

(With apologies to all our moms. Happy Mother's Day!)
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This month's newsletter serves dual-duty: showing off some of the features and improvements we've been making during April, as well as some of the things we'll be working on during May.

Go Big or Go Home

Two of our newer members, SuperWog and MogNug, both mentioned in Discord that floating combat damage bubbles were way too small for the XL size UI. We went to work and used a trick learned previously when scaling up another difficult component, and now damage bubbles are the correct size for your UI. Thanks to SuperWog and MogNug for testing and feedback!

Often one thing leads to another with this UI, and while working on combat bubbles a similar question about Nameplate tier arrows arose (new member Rasc and others). Long story short, tier arrows on XL nameplates were way oversize due to a miscalculation in the scale factor. But they have been corrected, resulting in arrow graphics that are crisper and appropriately scaled for XL (shown below) and L.

And wouldn't you know it, working on nameplate arrows led to taking another look at Target and Implied Target tier arrows. In that case the arrows had never been rescaled at all for Large and X-Large sizes. Fixed.

NPC Spell Monitor - Tags Only

If you've used the NPC Spell Monitor you've probably noticed it actually piggy-backs onto the default Target Tagging window, and up until now we did not have a setting to toggle the window on and off with only the default tagging buttons shown. Darq Sider furiousone decided it was time to change that, and so we now have more flexible settings that let you choose a tags-only default layout.

While we were there, we took a scalpel to the extra controls that were no longer needed for shuffling layout modes around. The result is a cleaner, simpler window with only a single control needed to cycle between three modes: All, monitor only, and tags only. As a bonus, tags are now slightly larger even though the window doesn't take up any more space. Nice!

Bug Fix: Guild Bank

The DarqUI Guild Bank window has a simple control to resize the bank icons for all of your guilded characters. Darq Side member Kattster noted that it wasn't always sizing up to the desired setting when switching between certain characters. We took a simple-is-best approach to exterminating this little bug -- a one line change was all it needed. Thanks to Kattster for pointing out the issue and testing the changes.

Heroic Opportunities: Cancel Starter

The popularity of Heroic Opportunities has waxed and waned over the years, and recent expansions have seen something of an HO comeback with certain encounters either benefiting from, or requiring, HO interaction. The custom DarqUI Heroic Opportunity window has evolved quite a bit, and the most recent improvement comes from member Frosch who was looking for a way to cancel the starter when an HO gets stuck, or when no member of the party has the right spell or combat art available to advance to the finishing wheel.

A new option in the Window Manager adds a Cancel control over the starter icon itself after the HO is started. Enable the new setting and you'll have one less thing to fiddle with when an HO goes AWOL.

In addition, since an HO can't be started while another one is active, the starter icon now grays out while the finishing wheel is up. While we were there, the Heroic Opportunity setup page also got a needed regrouping of features. Thanks to Frosch for the idea, and to Sharakari for additional testing and feedback.

Sequential Group Member Targeting

In the last newsletter I mentioned that Darq Sider bytepirate had requested a way to reliably switch his target sequentially between group members using a macro command. There isn't a game command that will do this exactly; target_next_pc will pick a nearby player but only if they are in your field of view, and they won't necessarily be a member of your own group (during a raid or PQ for example).

The DarqUI Group window now contains commands that you can build into a macro that will select the next or previous group member. How would you use these commands? Well for example you could create a two line hotkey (or Icon Bar icon) to select the next group member and cast hearts or shards:

show_window MainHUD.GroupMembers.Target.Next

Click the macro and your target will automatically advance to the next group member and cast hearts. Easy! To guarantee starting with the first group member, hit [Esc] before you start casting with the macro. When it gets to the last group member, the command cycles back up to your character again. You can also auto-target in reverse using

show_window MainHUD.GroupMembers.Target.Previous

But wait, there's more -- you can do the same thing with pets! Group pets now have a blue highlight in the window when targeted, similar to group members. You can move sequentially through them using

show_window MainHUD.GroupMembers.Target.Pet.Next
show_window MainHUD.GroupMembers.Target.Pet.Previous

If you are a class that regularly hands out single hearts, shards or anything similar for your entire group, you could get creative and build a command list Loadout that cycles through all six group members hands-free. Try it out -- it's easier than you might think!

The only thing you need to watch out for is mercenaries that have first and last names. (Single name mercs like Raffik won't mess up anything.) If you are creating a group that has at least one merc, form the group initially without any mercs, then have group members add their mercs to the end of the group after everyone has joined. So you can use sequential targeting between the first four group members (e.g.) without interruption from mercs. Pets always have single names, so they don't have this limitation. Thanks to bytepirate for a very fine idea and for testing and feedback.

By the way, I also mentioned last month that bytepirate has a clever way of using these new commands: he's actually mapped sequential targeting for players to the mouse wheel in one direction, and pets to the wheel in the other direction. So now he can click through group members or pets one by one with the mouse wheel, and cast on them using hotkey shortcuts with the other hand. Super efficient!

Overseer Quests Added

Overseer Experience for 33 new missions has been added to the Overseer window. If you notice any missions without XP shown, you know where to find me!

Harvesting Help

Once you've read the Help tooltip the first time, it's kind of a waste of space after that. But member Wilbur came up with a good use for that spot -- an optional icon to open Track Harvestables. While we were in the area the Collect Shinies icon on the other side got some attention, and now it's a bit easier to see. Settings on the window manager setup page also got reorganized.

Tanks a Lot

The DarqUI Threat window is crammed full of all kinds of alerts, automations and conveniences, one of which is Threat Alerts. This feature lets DPS classes set a threat threshold value above which the window changes color and emits an attention-getting sound. But what about fighter classes trying to keep the eager DPS'ers in check?

Darq Side member Saraphim wondered in Discord whether there was a feature that works in the opposite direction -- alerting when the tank loses aggro. As it turns out, we were able to retrofit the same control to do both. Set the threshold value to 100 and you'll get an alert the instant you lose aggro; set it to anything below 100 and you'll get the alert when you exceed the threat value. Nice! Thanks to Saraphim for improving Threat Alerts with this request, and for testing and feedback.

May-be, May-be Not

As I'm sure you've heard by now, Darkpaw Games recently announced a brand new TLE-style experience in the form of the Anashti Sul Origins Server. From all appearances, it looks like the enthusiasm and anticipation for this new-old concept are rivaling that of the Varsoon TLE server's release almost exactly two years ago.

If you want to leave behind all the inflation, statflation and sophistication of the current game and immerse yourself in the uncomplicated and magical Norrath of old, this new members-only EverQuest II server appears to have the right stuff.

One interesting aspect is that the new Origins server will be completely separate from Live, Test and Beta server depots. In theory this means the UI could very easily be the one from 2006! We don't have any advance information to share here at Darq Side HQ, so we'll find out more starting with Beta on May 2.

I personally would very much like to see the UI matched to the 2006 time period, at least initially. If the modern Live UI ends up being used, we're scheming ways to quickly (and optionally) tuck away the more advanced customizations in order to offer a more elementary experience. Either way, at the top of my list will be making sure we have at least the basic bones of the UI available in Normal, Large and X-Large for our premium members as soon as possible.

We should soon have enough info to be able to anticipate what kind of workload will be needed to accommodate the Origins server, whatever form it takes, and therefore how aggressively we can pursue past and current feature requests like:

• Rally flag timer in the Guild window (Kattster)

• 15-min Marketplace claim window, can't see selection highlight with certain themes (furiousone)

• Utility: Stop button should also stop infinite looping if there is a file download issue (Alils and several other members)

• Utility: add newer custom components to empty config file creation routine

• Tutorial video request: Heroic Opportunity (Anatha)

• Customizable daily alarm clock tied to Earth time, similar to default timer

• Target/Implied/Player/Extended power percent values: dark purple color is too dark (chief)

• Gear Buff Macros: add alert sound when buff drops off (Viktore)

• Auto-seek target that has specified Target Tag icon (Tune)

• Add up to three tiles with Statter logging to StatMon (Sephy)

Thank You

As you can see, there's a lot going on these days at Darq Side HQ with impressive improvements on the boards for every playstyle, every month. Clearly the Darq Side crowdsourcing formula is turning DarqUI Premium into your personal add-on that works the way you want it to work. Because you are the designer. Thank you for supporting and participating in the project. I'll see you in Graystone Yard!