January Waypoints

What's my favorite New Year's resolution? 3840 x 2160 of course!

            -Darq

Here are some of the things on the to-do list for January. And we might even be able to sneak in a couple of extra tweaks here and there. ;)

Getting Familiar

Not long ago some convenience controls [1] [2] were added to the Tradeskills system to swap out mount and gear sets between crafting and adventuring. Darq Side member Naviaz made the point that some familiars have stat bonuses that affect tradeskills, so we'll be adding familiars to mounts and gear sets in those commands and icons.

Hidden Talents

Darq Sider Jrox made an age-old QoL request in Discord recently: Is there any way to resize Examine windows so the effects list doesn't have to be scrolled?  Because of the way the game builds Examine windows on the fly, making that scrolling area resizable is something that has stumped me and other UI authors through the years. Examine windows are a thorny rose, but I do have two new ideas for the scrolling effects area that I'll be taking a look at in January. Fingers crossed.

All Set

And speaking of gear sets, member chief wondered if there might be a way to use the utility to display the list of gear pieces that make up a gear set. That's a job for Census, so as long as the data can be requested from the database, we should be able to do something with it.

X Marks the...?

Even though the next utility version is not slated for publishing right now, we do have a working control for fixing the "blank map" issue that Darq Side member Alils pointed out recently in Discord. In the meantime, another map issue has popped up with the RoR expansion: The sandy color of desert maps makes the flashing white "X" marker a lot harder to see.

I don't want to step too deeply into the EQ2MAP sandbox, and it's also likely that simply changing the X to a different color will make it hard to see when you visit other zones that don't have light colored backgrounds.

The best answer would be a button somewhere, maybe on the map frame, to cycle through a short list of different colors for the X depending on the background map. Alternatively, maybe a sonar-style "pulse" around the X to make it easier to find on demand. I'm hoping we can do something with this. I've wasted time searching for the icon on the mini-map lately. That's time I could be doing something more productive. Like dying to named mobs in RoR instances.

Player's Choice

A couple of newsletters ago we mentioned Naviaz's request to add a coin icon to the Choice window that would incrementally add plat amounts when charging the buff on The Price Paid charm. My solution was not the most graceful, but more importantly it was not scalable outside of that single context.

We should have every reason to believe the developers will be adding more gear pieces, quest scripts and other content where you respond using the generic Choice window (e.g. typing the password to get past the gate in Merchant's Den.)

A much better solution would be another... (wait for it) Favorites list, this time for the Choice input. Using the familiar dropdown box, each character can build a configurable list of 10 quick answers. So for instance in the VoV examples, you could choose from custom plat amounts or passwords. Much better.

DarqUI 2K/4K

It may be hard to believe, but yes we do still have a bunch of UI components that need to be enlarged for 2K/4K. But nothing on the list anywhere near as rough as the AA window or the Window Manager. Thank heavens.

Thank You

The new annual membership has been surprisingly successful, and I'm gratified that we have so many members who plan to be with us long term. Thank you to all of our new, returning and loyal members for your continued support. And a special thank you to our members who have chosen to upgrade to the new Celestial membership tier. I am genuinely humbled.

I hope all of our members are taking advantage of the many members-only perks and features found throughout the UI and the utility. As you can see from this newsletter, nearly every improvement comes directly from your requests, suggestions and feedback. When we say our members are part of the project, we're not kidding!