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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.
Wow doesnt run under winex? It has native support for OpenGL, and runs in a window.
Hell, they even have an OSX version, thats basically a *nix version.
No, its because its an open standard as opposed to a proprietary format. Which is shocking to see in a retail, mass-market product, which happens to be the "Fastest Selling PC Game of All Time".
Waitasec... give money to lawsuit-happy suemongers? They are suing Free Software developers, don't help them!
So, tell me how the XML aspect makes this substantially different from, say, Quake scripts?
;)
Its not XML that makes it different, its the interaction with LUA (Scripting language) and XML (Data storage format) that makes it different. This is the standard people are going to use for games to come in scripting for games.
Think of this as the first of a standard, that what you learn here, you can use on other games in years to come.
Quake, Tribes, etc, use a scripting language like thats jumble of languages, and you must learn each and its special flavors.
But some geeks like learning multiple languages and will tell you why they like ruby over perl for a job python can do quicker.
Dark Age of Camelot
Anarchy Online
EverQuest
All allow editing of the UI, 2 through XML.
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
Cue the typical Blizzard fanboy. Posting with extreme hyperbole (he passed out?!) and pathetic ignorance (among others, EQ1 allows UI editing using XML) - invariably leading to the conclusion that Blizzard is oh so innovative.
Not that I don't think this is cool. Like many other aspects, Blizzard seems to have taken the best of the games that defined the genre and is building on them. Nothing wrong with that, quite to the contrary. (And of course, in other aspects they do genuinely innovate - but so have all other large MMORPGs released to date.)
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Hey felt really light headed when he jumped up, spilling his Doritos and Mountain Dew all over his lap. Thus he almost passed out.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
i think it's better to modify the UI without having to resort to editing XML. i can't do jack with the UI in WOW unless i mess with the xml but i can in eq2.
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."
Ok so where's the official customizing tools for those games?
>> Hell, they even have an OSX version, thats basically a *nix version. Foo port. Mac OS X isn't just a bog standard Unix / X11 combo with some Apple stickers on it, it has a completly different GUI system, has different libraries etc. It's not like they could've just clicked a "i586 Linux" checkbox and done a Linux version.
I know there are platform independent libraries / middleware to get around some of the problems (OpenGL, SDL etc.), but I'd imagine it would still take quite a bit of work to port and debug WoW to Linux, and they obviously don't think it's worth it for the return they'd get. I think Linux is an even smaller desktop / games market than Mac OS...
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
they even have an OSX version, thats basically a *nix version.
This is by far the biggest misconception about OS X on Slashdot. Yes, the inner core of the OS is BSD, but the high-level APIs that every program that's not a command-line tool must use - especially Carbon - are COMPLETELY different from those found on other unixes. Porting to or from OS X is no easier (or harder) than porting to or from any other platform, and having an OS X version of a program available has no effect on the difficulty and effort involved in further porting.
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
Blizzard rarely is the innovator, they just bring eveyone else innovations, wrap it up in a slick, well produced package and crushes everyone else with quality.
Like BMW and Lexus. It's not the innovative parts, it's the packaging and quality you pay for.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."