November Waypoints

Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.

                              -Robert Louis Stevenson

Hmm... The idea was to offer a quote about accessibility and not so much about talk. But I really liked this one. Let's just say that most of the accessibility quotes I found were not very... accessible.

If you think about it, quite a few DarqUI features and functions deal directly with accessibility. We enjoy all sorts of automations, visual and auditory cues all over the UI that make game-related conditions more conspicuous and convenient. Whether it's displaying and drawing attention to time-sensitive combat conditions like spellcasts or stat changes, or providing oversize UI components and fonts that are easier to see, one can argue that the entire thing is in one way or another a reflection of accessibility.

High-Contrast Backgrounds

Over the decade or so that DarqUI has been in development, two items that fall into this category have been addressed multiple times on an ad hoc basis. The first one is pretty easy, and I think many of us can relate: default game background graphics often make it hard to tell if there is an item in a bag (or other) slot. Some items are so dark that they blend right in with the background. A lighter, more contrast-y background would be a big help here.

Color Blindness

Another item that is less common but still affects gameplay: Some players (and surprisingly in some countries this may affect as many as 10% of males) have color blindness, especially when reds and greens are in proximity to each other. One place where we don't have a lot of control is in the mapping system where, wouldn't you know it, red elements like the "self" arrow are often superimposed on grassy green landscapes. Certain color blind players have a terrible time with this and have requested a mod to correct it. In the past I have offered an alternate map texture with more recognizable colors for those elements.

Long story short, both of these choices are now built into the upcoming utility and can be enabled with a click. Bonus: you don't have to be color blind to benefit from the map customization. I'm not color blind, but I prefer the bright blue arrow and groupmember symbols. Try them both out when v3.1.3.0 is published. You might like them better too.

Character Order

This new item was highlighted in last month's newsletter, and the feature is now mostly complete and being tested. Although I am not one of them, quite a few players have dozens or even 100+ characters on one account (I'm looking at you, Rosyposy and Aidbringer). You already know you can reorder your character roster in Quick Setup by name, level, server, etc., which also reorders the corresponding Login, Camp and Quick Camp character lists.

But even though the Quick Setup grid offers lots of flexibility, there might not be any suitable sorting options for accounts with many characters. A player might have 10 or so characters that they want to appear at the top, which none of the sorting options will do.

If you are one of those players, or if you'd just like more control over how your characters are ordered, you can now rearrange your characters manually, moving the ones you want to see first to the top (or bottom) of the list for each account. Here is the new sorting dialog which I am told is very easy to use:

Visions of Vetrovia Beta

Naturally this month will be devoted partly to ensuring that DarqUI works smoothly with the expansion release in December. If you have not checked out the new expansion on the Beta server, now is a great time! If you missed the post with suggestions for trying out Beta, take a look at it here and a follow-up post here.

As soon as we are reasonably sure there won't be any more UI changes that need to be addressed in the utility code, version 3.1.3.0 will be published with all the new bits I've been showcasing over the past several weeks.

Wikia vs Fandom

A few days ago the Fandom website that hosts what we all remember as EQ2i (or EQII Wikia) went offline for an extended period, which happened to coincide with the VoV Beta where some developer changes were made regarding the in-game browser window. This was enough fuel for me to speculate, perhaps prematurely, that a modern embedded browser capable of displaying the popular site was in the works.

Some investigation reminded me that most of our custom URL buttons still refer to Wikia and not Fandom. When eq2.fandom.com is online and working correctly, Wikia requests are automatically converted into their new Fandom equivalents. So all of that works fine.

But even so, I think at this point it makes sense to go through and modernize all of our old references, bidding a final sayonara to the venerable EQ2i nameplate. A while back all the EQ2i buttons were re-labeled "Wikia" to prevent confusion with EQ2U. But I think for now we'll keep the Wikia labels even though internally they'll point more correctly to Fandom.

2K/4K Updates

Lately instead of the usual 2K/4K member poll we've been adding larger-sized components to the UI as new features get added to them. Following that same pattern, there are two new components on the list for getting upsized. One or both will get published during November if I can swing it schedule-wise. I don't want to give too much away, so I'll maintain the mystery until development is over, see?

Thank You

I want to welcome new and returning patrons who joined us during October, and offer my sincere thanks to all of our Darq Side members for your continued support. It enables us to do more for just a few pennies per day, and I hope you are taking advantage of all the members-only perks and features found throughout the UI and the utility. Nearly every improvement comes directly from your requests, suggestions and feedback. When I say our members are part of the project, I'm not kidding!