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World of Warcraft UI Customization
geekboy_x writes "The gang at Blizzard has released a UI customization tool for World of Warcraft. It basically breaks the meta-interface into individual XML descriptions that you can change, add, or omit to your (corrupted decaying undead) heart's content. Note that you should have pretty good chops in both XML and Lua, and if you break it, you bought it." The best known UI project out there for WoW right now is Cosmos, which adds a few extra hotkey bars, a clock, a quest manager, and a nice buff/debuff timer.
Here is his post.
personally i prefer CTMod. granted it doesn't have every feature under the sun like Cosmos, but it's a lot less bloated and buggy. it includes the features that i consider "vital", including the extra toolbars, HP and Mana recovery tickers, map notes that you can send to other players, Damage per Second indicator, and the ability to re-name your bags.
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the only feature i missed after switching from Cosmos was the explicit levels of the quests in my quests logs. so i found someone who ripped that feature from Cosmos, then i edited to work with the current version, and slapped it on. you can download my UI here: (i didn't really write any of it, just collected it and made some minor changes)
http://www.theoverprivileged.com/wow/Interface.zi
just put this Interface directory in your WoW directory and you should be good to go. click on the "Ct" button on your mini-map to configure it. the initially-empty toolbars are invisible until you drag an icon, then they show up. you'll figure it out.
i could live a little longer in this prison
Interesting note, Blizzard removed timing features from the language to prevent automated tasks. CosmoUI had one feature as a work around, but asked to remove it.
Stops that auto farming sitting in a field, like the fishing bots did. I wish I knew how the fishing bots worked, as you had to click a moving icon.
There are also 2 other UI Mods that are popular CTMod and Gypsy Mod
The XML language has made it easy for people to upload thier characters to websites like Allakhazam and Thottbot. Very nice gaming resources for WOW.
Reminds me of the days Tribes scripting took off, made many people into full time programers. Glad to see it in newer games, actually promoted by the game developers.
Good job Blizzard.
World of Warcraft on Linux
I almost passed out when I read that Blizzard is leting you edit WoW using XML.
Congrats, more proof Blizzard is one of the most innovative companies around. If only other games/programs let you customize it this much through some (not so) simple XML editing.
Waitasec... give money to lawsuit-happy suemongers? They are suing Free Software developers, don't help them!
And.... it's down already. I wish they had an option to distribute this using some kind of universal bittorent client. I know a lot of people don't like it, but if they would give easy access to all their files using some special client then there would be a better chance that a dedicated fileserver wouldn't collapse under all the requests.
----- Wtcher Dragon, UDIC
Cosmos has a lot of really nice features that take advantage of groups of people using Cosmos. The abilitiy to view what quests other Cosmos-Users in your group have, to share map notes with other Cosmos-Users. Even better is a sort of an ingame BBS that (if cosmos was more widely-used) could really be useful in finding groups and selling items.
Unfortunately Cosmos has a bit of a bad stigma with some people. Many people I have talked to thought if they used Cosmos they were breaking the EULA and could be banned, and many thought it was a cheating device that gave an unfair advantage. It is a real shame considering how many features Cosmos has that would benefit from it's use becomming widespread
I do suppose one issue facing it is that it is a little difficult to use. No installer, a metric ton of options, and the fact that the main page of their website is rarely updated don't really help non-technical players out much.
--- "End Of Line" - MCP
Cosmos can be found at http://www.cosmosui.org not cosmosui.com.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
In previous Blizzard games, various hacks to give you access to information your client had to have but you weren't supposed to see were in fact cheating and bannable offenses. This notice on the main WOW page aside, Blizzard hasn't done much to inform users that this time they're ENCOURAGING people to mod their UI's, in part because they have failed to include highly important features in the one that ships with the game (every single class needs a second hotbar in their early teens). And, in all fairness, non-users do have a point - players with the mod installed can tell if they're just inside or just outside of spell range, faster access to a wider range of skills, better macro options, and numerous other things that DO give mod users advantages over non-mod users. Whether one should have to choose between installing a third party script on your machine or being at a disadvantage relative to other users is a separate debate from whether it's technically allowed by Blizzard.
:)
Also note that the language in the policy permitting UI's is very nebulous in terms of what those mods are allowed to do - basically Blizzard is trying to cover their tails in case they want to ban a specific thing later (see their occasional "requests" that Cosmos remove things from their UI, which would probably become a lot less polite if refused). That may cause serious problems down the line if people have installed mods that were legal at the time and don't get the message that they've since been banned.
Personally, I won't use Cosmos because of the massive bloat, labyrthine menus to even find out what it's doing, the possibility of taking a performance hit from all the extra things Cosmos attempts to do, and because there were some very shady incidents involving the programmers during the beta. But I certainly don't have a problem with other people using it, as I go on to use other mods.
If you just want an extra bar, I recommend Telo's bottom bar (linked in one of the first comments to the original article). It seems to be the best at moving other things you need to see off of itself.
.toc file in each sub-directory. If it doesn't say "required dependencies: Cosmos", you can usually extract just the one subdirectory into your /interface/addons folder, though depending on how well documented the add on is you might have a hard time figuring out how to configure it. If you really want a stand-alone for something that is Cosmos dependent (EasyMail, TackleBox), you can usually find either someone who's done it or DIY instructions via Google. I wouldn't redistribute any such liberated mods without the original author's permission though (they probably could have made it stand-alone themselves if they wanted).
Also note that many, though not all, Cosmos functions can stand alone. To check, look at the
From the nice server hammering, only a few mirrors are left of the Cosmos mod.
9 .s html?tid=206&tid=209
A list is available here:
http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/12/10/195523
If their games were no good do you think anyone would've bothered to come up with something like bnetd?
Sad fact is, we DO love blizzard. The relationship here is like a hopeless loser in love with a girl who wouldn't give him the time of day.