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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.
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.
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."