July Waypoints

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

          ― Alan Turing, Computing Machinery and Intelligence 

On June 28, EverQuest II officially becomes a 64-bit game, playable only on 64-bit PCs. The newer technology was already deployed on Beta and Test leading up to this milestone, and if you have logged in to either of those servers you've already seen measurable improvements in zone times, lag and overall performance. But another point of optimism is that the game developers may now be free to expand the design of zones, NPCs, encounters and other game systems to take advantage of the expanded platform. Fingers crossed on that.

DarqUI, the DarqUI apps and the ProfitUI CE utility will continue to work just fine without any changes, although we do have new versions in the works that are exclusive to 64-bit computers. Since it won't be possible to play EverQuest II on a 32-bit PC any more, it makes sense for the apps to follow the game to the new platform. It will allow us to take advantage of expanded memory utilization, and in fact we have already done so with one new feature in the upcoming utility that involves log files.

Apps

We're not going to try to publish new apps right on top of the technology upgrade. I think it's a better idea to give everything a chance to get settled at Daybreak. The developers have promised minimal downtime, but I think it's safe to point out that stress testing with a few hundred players is very different from going live with thousands.

The new utility and notifier will target Microsoft .NET version 4.8, which I don't expect to be a hardship since virtually every PC playing EverQuest II (Windows 10 v1903 and up) will have v4.8 included. To avoid the question we could have stayed with .NET v4.0 but Microsoft recommends v4.8 when paired with Visual Studio 2022. It would only be a matter of time before we would need to make the jump anyway, so doing it now makes the most sense.

We've finalized almost all of the utility's new features, including those that were promised way back in the May and June newsletters, and I'm looking forward to publishing v3.1.3.2 for you during July.

Just Browsing

The new Chrome-based in-game browser has proven itself to be adequate and stable, and I've been (reluctantly) using it more often lately. There are two items involving the browser that we'll be looking at in July. The custom DarqUI browser in both of its forms, normal and "lite," need to be revisited and refurbished. There are quite a few bits that were helpful and convenient years ago, including a more modern customizable "start page" with links to popular sites, an ACT Mode that monitors your parses within the game window, a multi-tabbed interface, and so on.

Also, when the EQ2MAP package was being reworked last year we made some changes to the POI submission window to bypass the "old" browser. If the new browser can submit POIs without errors, we'll probably do something to ease that process.

Transportation Simplification

This one's easy. I use Rosyposy's excellent Transport window at least a couple of times per game session, but often I'm only interested in the fast travel icon up at the top. We'll be adding a command shortcut button for fast travel that you can include optionally on the XP bar, the floating Nav bar or the Start menu.

Help!

Even though how-to videos are easier to digest than printed help text, we still maintain a concise, up-to-date Help window that's accessible in-game and in the utility. We've added many new features and improvements over the past several months that have not yet been documented, so July is a good time to clean up any outdated or missing bits in the Help window.

Money in the Bank

Having a huge war chest is never a bad thing, but gone are the days when having a few million plat made you a certified baller. Even though broker sales got nerfed recently, total accumulated funds did not. Nowadays throwing around plat in the billions is commonplace, and the DarqUI Banking Sidebar has not kept up with the ever-inflating money supply. We're going to add another order of magnitude (10 million) to the premium sidebar selectors and if possible a second order, allowing money moves of up to 100 million plat per click.

Playing Favorites

This is a sneak peek at an idea that has not been developed yet. It's only been discussed, but it's interesting enough that I wanted you to know about it.

DarqUI has several convenient Favorites lists, and the Darq Side has members with enough alts to form at least one football team -- first and second string. Recently I had a discussion in Discord with Naviaz about an improvement to Camp Next, which was one of his ideas originally. He pointed out that although Camp Next is useful, many times he would like to use the feature to camp sequentially to a subset of his character list for checking pack ponies, doing daily quests, etc. So the idea of a Favorite Characters list was born.

Let's say your account has 20 characters, but out of those you'd prefer to Camp Next to only six of them. Add them to your Favorite Characters list, maybe with a toggle like the gold star in the image below. Then when you issue the /camp_favorite command, Camp Next will use the short list instead of the whole roster. What do you think?

DarqUI 2K/4K

Not long ago I was killing some time redecorating one of my houses, and realized how much I've been slacking on 2K and 4K UI pieces for the Player Housing system. We upsized the main House window and a few odds and ends a while back, but practically everywhere I turned the UI was still showing up at normal size. The Player Housing system, which includes editing, publishing and rating systems, Dungeon Maker and Dungeon Finder, which in turn includes the zone timer UI, is quite extensive and covers a lot of ground.

A new group of 2K/4K components is well underway, and you should see the first bits within a couple of days. The theme of Group 23 is Home and Dungeon, and it's turned out to be a relatively massive group of files on the back end. So far there are 33 files on the boards, counting top surface components as well as their various internal templates and support files.

Thank You

We welcomed quite a few new Darq Side members in June, a substantial proportion of whom call Varsoon their new home. I appreciate the conversations I've had with some of you, and it's been fun focusing on early and non-endgame bits like housing, the perils of lower-level tradeskilling, the LFG window, character creation, and others.

For new and seasoned Darq Side members alike, I want to thank you personally for your patronage as we continue to innovate and tackle the long (and growing) list of great ideas. DarqUI has never been more widely distributed, and it's your ideas that are improving gameplay for many EverQuest II players worldwide.