September Waypoints

Q: Why was the robot couple’s anniversary in the fall?
A: They were autumn mated.
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Work of Art

We have a talented digital artist among our ranks who is developing a beautiful new UI theme that will become available in September. I've seen it under development, and I can tell you it's an elegant and understated theme that you will definitely want to check out. Word on the street is that one of our other members is contributing design ideas to the project.

I've been using the files in my own game window, and I'm more impressed with each new update. I won't give away too much right now, but will say that at least one of these players is really Annoying.

Command Performance

Darq Side member Tazz wondered in Discord recently if DarqUI had a way to auto-consume a potion every X minutes. This is a great idea, since we have quite a few stat-enhancing elixirs, potions, reprieves, etc. to choose from that can be cast from inventory. Most of them are on a short timer, so often you will want to cast several during a raid or day of adventuring.

Since we already have a recurring countdown timer built into the premium Clock window, an idea was considered to add a command line to the end of the countdown cycle. Tazz, Kammelle and Sharakari agreed to test the new timed command concept. We soon got a generic command line working which allows the player to run just about any chat command, not just potions, as the timer cycles.

It's been an interesting process so far, and I'll post more details when the feature is published. At this point it looks more or less like the screenshot below, but we're in the process of adding multiple command lines and improving the accuracy of the timer itself.

Delay Tactics

In the August newsletter I mentioned a potential feature that automatically adjusts the delay time of tooltips depending on whether or not you are in combat. The rationale was that a shorter delay is more appropriate for out-of-combat gameplay (gear comparisons, inventory management, etc.) but while in combat, especially within hotbars, players may prefer spell and item hotkey tooltips to be on a longer delay. If you already know everything about your spells, there's no good reason to have all those large, complex tooltips popping up during battle.

Without this tiny bit of automation, players settle on a one-size-fits-all delay value, or they can set up macros to switch values manually. Member Jrox was interested in testing and developing the feature, and so we're working on something that looks like this at the moment:

The best part is that once it's all set up to your liking, there is very little ongoing need to fiddle with the controls. The optional feature just works quietly in the background as you go into and out of combat, and I think this may become one of those little QoL features you didn't know you needed, but won't want to play without. I'm already hooked.

All In

Whether you've logged onto the new Beta server or not, you've probably noticed two new buttons in the Broker window: List and Unlist all items. This is a very welcome UI addition by the game developers, and on Beta it's working nicely. When we are out of Beta, all DarqUI players will have access to the improvement immediately. Now if we could just stop tripping over all those old unbuyable listings priced at 999,999,999,999 plat.

Did I Stutter?

Members Nabu and Drax reported a new lag or "stutter" when opening the Character window, but other players (including me) mentioned they were not seeing anything. Fortunately, Drax sent me a short video showing that indeed there was a very visible hiccup upon opening the Character window while moving. The new Mercenary Battalion feature was preloading some things, even though the Mercenary tab was closed. Thanks to the video, the fix was a snap to make. Bug reports from Drax and Nabu are much appreciated.

A Big Help

With all the recent updates to the DarqUI help files, I was reminded of the fact that all text in the Help window is rendered at the same size, no matter which UI size (N L or XL) you choose. A style file in the help folder controls all those sizes, but the DarqUI Utility was never designed to reach into the main Help folder to replace the CSS file. Another of the many nice upgrades to the upcoming utility version allows us to automatically tailor help text size to match the player's UI size preference by placing the correctly sized style file into that folder. It's about time!

About Face

And speaking of text styles, Darq Side member Baratan recently pointed us to a handsome new typeface called Cadman that works well as an alternative within the game. The current utility allows us to publish new typeface definitions, but not the TTF (True-Type) font files themselves. This is another case where the upcoming utility is being reworked to place new font files into the \fonts subfolder inside the UI. Interestingly, the ProfitUI CE Utility already had this capability, so adding it to DarqUI has been relatively painless.

Thank You

Technically, the Darq Side has been around since the beginning of 2020 although (with exceptional input from Rosyposy over that summer) the site was finally made operational in August. I am pleased to announce that our membership includes esteemed early adopters who have been with us for the entire three years of operation. Going forward, there will be a new designation in the in-game and utility credit scrolls for Darq Side members who have been with us for three years or more.

To all of our valued Darq Side members, we could not do this without you. And this is especially true for our long-term supporters. My helm is off to you, and it's my honor to bring your new and exciting ideas to the game window every month for our fellow members, and for thousands of EverQuest II players around the world.