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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.
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.
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
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.
AC There a fine line between "needless prosecuting" and "protecting their product". It's blindingly obvious to everybody but a few select OS people that bnet-d was trying to "steal" from blizzard. Blizzards authentication proccess should not be made public (as key gens would be made instantly) and Blizzard does not have any obligation to work with bnet-d to make bnet-d work legally. Bnet-d is trying to bypass a copy protection feature from blizzard. They plan to do this so you can play without paying. Blindingly obviously, so obvious that I have gone blind thinking about it.
So AC STFU.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Every time I mention the bnetd thing i get modded down. new game is out, people don't care what kind of injustices have been forwarded by blizzard. that requires a little bit of bravery and no one has any anymore.
That because Naikrovek, What blizzard did was not morally or ethically wrong, but what bnet-d team did was morally and legally wrong. So they mod you down becuase what you say can be paraphrased as:
"Whaaaa they took away my ability to play without paying, those bastards. Their evil."
As companies go, blizzard is as good as almost any other. They support their games long long after they have to, they insist on quality over quantity or deadlines. They make polished high end products. If every game company could do the same we'd get nothign but great games from every studio. They happen to take exception to what Bnet-d group was tryign to do (emulate their servers) which allowed people to play blizzard games without paying blizzard. Blizzard has no moral obligation to help them out or let the project live. The Bnet-d team had a responsibility to protect someone else product by not trying to crack the protection(which was proven in court that they had a legal responsibility). Thus they squished em. Thats not evil. Thats like finding someone who was makign copies of the keys to your house and telling a cop, the cop arrested them and conficated their equipment. You did nothing wrong, but the keymaker did. Your vilifying blizzard is the same as someone villifying you for reporting the key copier to the cop. Sure the guy might just be making the keys to give you a spare when you need it, but it's more then blindingly obvious that he's going to do something else with the key.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."