January Feature Pack

Here are some wintery cool patron-only updates that you can try out right now.

Wide Examine

No matter which UI size you prefer, the Examine window often has that annoying scrolling area where the effects on gear items and adornments are shown. Darq Sider Jrox recently asked in Discord if anything could be done to make this area easier to deal with, so we took another look at it.

It's nearly impossible to resize that area vertically without borking up everything else, but we can make it wider without causing problems. Below is an example of how that affects the window. In the wide version you can see that everything is not so crammed in. It's more orderly and easier to read without all the excessive line breaks, and a lot less scrolling is needed in order to see everything.

Personally, when I first started working on the wide version I figured the larger overall footprint would drive me to go back to the standard width once the feature was built. But surprisingly I ended up preferring the wide size, so it's what I'm using right now.

When you check for updates you'll see a new gear icon next to Examine that lets you choose between standard and wide Examine windows. If you think you might like the alternate layout, give it a try. Worst case, you can come back and choose standard again later. Thanks to Jrox for making the suggestion and for his testing and feedback during development.

Choice Favorites

This one started out innocently enough: member Naviaz asked if there was a way to simplify the task of repeatedly entering plat amounts for The Price Paid when activating the buff. I made several attempts to add an elegant control to the Choice window, but nothing was really up to our DarqUI standard.

And during the process, an important question came up: what happens when new gear pieces or other game content appears that would use the Choice window in a similar way? For example giving the password in the Merchant's Den, or solving the pictogram puzzles in BoL's Vault of Ssraeshza.

Instead of trying to hard-wire all possible responses into the window, the better idea was to add one of our (in)famous Favorites lists, giving you control over the preset responses that are relevant to you. So that's exactly what you have now.

If you want to configure your favorites ahead of time, you can open the Choice window by renaming your mercenary, or creating a gear set in the Character window. You can add your preset responses, save them, and then cancel the window without changing the merc's name or creating a gear set. Thanks to Naviaz for testing and feedback over several versions of this window.

Auto-Hiding Quest Helper

Earlier this week, Darq Side member Alils wondered why his Quest Helper window wouldn't auto-hide on the left-hand side of the game window the same way it does on the right-hand side. Answer: there's no good reason! So now the window will do its thing from either edge. Try it out! And thanks to Alils for helping to stomp out any bugs before we dropped it on the server.

There's still plenty more to come this month, and as always thank you for your valued support and your excellent ideas like the ones above. More proof that the DarqUI project is your project. Stay warm, and I'll see you in the Badlands!