Waypoints: August Adventures

When I figured out how to work my grill, it was quite a moment. I discovered that summer is a completely different experience when you know how to grill. 

                                         — Taylor Swift

I know what you're thinking. First Prince, and now Taylor Swift. While putting together the August news post this week, I asked my trusty DuckDuckGo to find some quotes about adventure and loyalty. In the midst of soaring rhetoric from the likes of Churchill, Aristotle, Ghandi and Sacagawea, this one landed in front of me. Did DuckDuckGo have a momentary brain-quack? Not sure. But August is indeed a great month for grilling, so I decided why not share. I promise I'll never ever ever do it again. ;)

Speaking of Loyalty

Even though our little community technically began life in January of last year, it wasn't until August that the Publish button finally got clicked, and our shared adventure to the Darq Side began. It aspires to the goal of offering you a first-class experience where your ideas go directly to the game screen in return for a few pennies per day. Result: the sheer number of improvements and great ideas from our members over the past year has been impressive and gratifying. And I hope you'll agree that the game we all love is becoming much more informative, convenient and fun thanks to you.

A player who has been a member of the Darq Side for one year acquires the title of Veteran Patron in the credit scroll, and along with it you have my sincere thanks for your continued support. I ran a couple of other reward ideas past Rosyposy, and we're leaning toward some kind of "ask me anything" product, or possibly an interview-style town hall discussion about all the nerdy DarqUI details. I probably should have been thinking about this long before now, but you folks do keep me pretty busy. :)

And speaking of Rosyposy, here's a shout out and big thanks to our very first Veteran Patron who has been my sidekick, sounding board and right-hand halfling since January of last year. It's not a stretch to say that the Darq Side wouldn't be the same without Rosyposy's diplomatic and reasoned input at every turn.

The Beast Within

One of our Beastlord adventurers made a request recently to track progress on their Warders without having to constantly check the tab in the Character window. We have a very nice pop-out prototype in the works, so you should expect to see something on that during August.

A Window of Opportunity

We also had a request to take a look at the Heroic Opportunities window to do some automation, possibly some spell presets, to assist with completing the chains efficiently. It's a fine idea since HO's are still useful, and sometimes necessary, in certain encounters. I can't make any solid promises with this one since the code doesn't give us much to work with, but I'm excited about taking a first look at customizing this component.

DarqUI 2K/4K

We took a short break from the 2K/4K adventure in July, but we'll pick that up where we left off with some more component groups for Fabled and Mythical members to vote on. There was also a question about enlarging player names (the ones that float overhead) to match the Large or X-Large format. I'll be looking at whether to build that in, or make it an option in some form. I may poke a few of our 2K/4K players to test and give feedback.

Linux

Two of our members have been on an adventure of a different sort: playing EverQuest II with DarqUI on Steam on Linux. Whew, that's a tall order. As the alternative to Windows on PC, Linux operating systems are becoming more popular, and the only thing preventing many folks from switching to Linux full-time is compatibility with their favorite programs. But that's also been improving dramatically of late.

At this point the experiment is about 90% successful with both players running EQII with DarqUI and getting file updates correctly with the utility. We're working out some small details regarding font and theme options (from three different countries! Thank you Discord.) I finally have an excuse to crank up that Ubuntu box in the corner and get it updated.

Thank You

Here's to adventures of every variety! It's my honor to be on this adventure to the Darq Side with you. Let's take Taylor's suggestion and do some grilling out where possible this month, and also roast as many of those slithery Shissar as possible in-game. I've heard they're not too bad with the right barbecue sauce.