First look: Custom UI skin for SA (Large image)...

[Dermott of LS]

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Not sure what I'm going to call this if/when it gets finished. While it uses many Bitter Black skin features, they are mixed in with tweaked default features and a few others from other skins. The idea was to create a bit more subtle framework than the (IMO) glaring orange that highlights the default UI, so in many places I tweaked the orange color into a more subtle gold/bronze while keeping the underlying graphic and in others brought back some of Bitter Black's graphics... so far, the outcome looks something like this:

Thoughts, opinions, flames?

 

[EnigmaMaitreya]

Are you suggesting it is ready for DownLoading or is this a preview and good work btw.

I could not tell if it had the mod for making the background in the containers lighter so one could find the darker things.

 

[Dermott of LS]

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It's not ready for downloading yet, so this is just a preview of a work in progress. I'm hoping I can get something ready by the end of the day today (Sunday), but I make ZERO promises in that regard.

For containers, it uses the backgrounds Fink crated, for Hotbars, it uses Bitter Black.

 

[Frarc]

My friends and I where always a big fan of you guys skins for KR and we looking forward what you will make for the new client.

Will the heal/cure/bless button for pets and party members with the option to use paladin spells also a feature of the skin?


No rush on making the skin, its looking good again.



If you have it done by the time i get back from work today then i'll be more then happy ! (Kidding)

 

[Dermott of LS]

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At the moment it will not (at least the version that gets uploaded once I get set back up with the Exchange (two OS changes, a website move and lack of real effort on my part has my uploading capabilities out of date and needing to be redone)) as currently it looks like we're separating the graphical skins from the actual UI mods for now. Probably once the custom UI portion of the new client gets opened up fully and settled, we'll start putting forth some "omnibus" Enhanced mods which will have it.

However, it shouldn't be too hard to add it in.

 

[Rimeny]

Looks very nice...keep it up, will make SA more pleasing to the eyes!

 

[Jermosh]

Looks awesome.

 

[Fink]

Looks as if it uses the standard source image layout code.. no windows reworked, etc, in terms of texture mapping, would I be right? Also seems to retain the standard text colours for the most part.

If so I can lay the art for Nautical right over the top of it and any functional enhancements you may put in. I'm about 85% done on that one. I wanted to tackle it to see if I could rebuild it without the source (lost to a HDD failure), and so far it's been okay.

I've got Clockwork on my mind, too, having heard about the new craftable pets.. I might incorporate some of the newer elements into it.

 

[Hebus]

Looking great so far, I can't wait to download it !

At least, I've already got Fink's nautical icons on SA. Thanks Fink : my fisherman is the happiest of all my chars

Adding lipstick on SA... well it will still be SA but looking way better

Now if a dev could add a mod for high res creatures

 

[Hildebrand]

Looking good!

 

[Dermott of LS]

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Fink: Porting over current KR mod graphics into SA while possible isn't as easy as copying over the DDS files and being done with it. Many of the graphics have either changed position in the DDS file, or changed size (some smaller, some larger). Some button graphics have been moved from HUD to Core or Common and so on... so you're going to have to basically rebuild with that in mind.

Is it possible? Certainly. Is it easy? Not really. Have to watch your positioning VERY carefully... 1 pixel off can really bork up the whole UI. A couple of my UI changes look a little weird because of it (specifically the backpack open/close icon), but otyher than that, it's not too hard... especially if you have a base set of graphics with which to start.

 

[Daga Taga]

Looks good to me. I'd use it.

 

[Fink]

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Fink: Porting over current KR mod graphics into SA while possible isn't as easy as copying over the DDS files and being done with it. Many of the graphics have either changed position in the DDS file, or changed size (some smaller, some larger). Some button graphics have been moved from HUD to Core or Common and so on... so you're going to have to basically rebuild with that in mind.

Is it possible? Certainly. Is it easy? Not really. Have to watch your positioning VERY carefully... 1 pixel off can really bork up the whole UI. A couple of my UI changes look a little weird because of it (specifically the backpack open/close icon), but otyher than that, it's not too hard... especially if you have a base set of graphics with which to start.

Sorry, what I meant to say is:

I've reworked my KR skin to suit SA, 85% done.
My SA skin looks as if it may be compatible with yours in terms of mapping the actual pixels (ie: looks as if you've done the same re-texturing I have).

 

[Dermott of LS]

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Well, I'm pushing back my relesae of the UI skin as I'm making a second pas sthrough and cleaning up a lot of little things to make the UI skin look a LOT better.

I changed the TargetBar completely, tweaked the "status lines" in the status bar and target bar to better fit the image provided, and made a bunch of colorscale changes to many UI elements. Going to play with mobile health bars and see if I can get them a bit shorter overall so they fit the system better.

 

[Frarc]

Take all the time you need.

 

[Fink]

Seems they're tweaking the default interface also (notably those ugly target triangles have been replaced with ugly target plus signs). At this point my stuff won't work with the updated default code (my target indicators no longer show) or any custom mods, so I've downed tools indefinitely.

 

[Dermott of LS]

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Ok here is the "second" look at the new UI. Again, a bit more Bitter Black influence, a more cohesive color scheme to blend with it, and a few tweaks here and there to clean things up.

Current propsed name for the skin's directory is "Copper" based on the additional color scheme, still don't have a finalized name yet.

 

[Jermosh]

Looks awesome, I like Platinum better.

 

[DarkChronus]

Just some feedback on that latest screen. I love most of it, except the new coppery/bronze colored backgrounds. It isn't a very pleasing color to look at in that quantity.

 

[Dermott of LS]

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I've darkened the background considerably just now... it should look quite a bit better... more subtle overall. Apparently, SA wants VERY dark backgrounds for that file and it is quite a pain to get the file to work correctly sometimes.

Thanks for the feedback!

Additional changes so far tonight (8/21/09):
- Moved down separator line for Weight, Health, Mana, Stam, and Pets (also did the Warning icons)
- Tweaked the health/mana/stamina bars to remove the Quartile lines as the mana and stam bars were not scaling properly due to changes in the graphics file in which they are referenced
- As mentioned above, significantly darkened window background to a more acceptable level
- Changed Left/top ends of hotbars back to how they were originally... didn't like how the newer version scaled ingame
- Changed container grid graphics to match the "filled" slots shown in the paperdoll. Seems to bring out colors of items and sharpen them a little.

 

[DarkChronus]

I can't wait to be able to actually try it out! I might consider using grid view more often for the bags with this (I know different backgrounds are out there for other mods but I like a lot of the other changes too, so I feel like I should just wait ... )

 

[Dermott of LS]

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I've had a few problems getting the file changes to take tonight and some other weird bugs creeping into my SA install, so I'm in the middle of patching up a reinstall... I'll have an updated screenshot here before too long.

I think I have one more DDS file that I'm going to play with (UO_Common), the rest are pretty well done, so hopefully I can stay on target for this weekend... we'll see though. Taking the extra time has been worth it though, I've been able to polish a lot of stuff with the skin.

I think the last difficult thing I want to tackle will probably be another look at the health bars, and then send it over to Ash to see how his mods will play with the skin (especially the pet and party spell mod).

There are just sooo many little bits and pieces involved with a given skin, and I don't claim to be a graphics or coding genius.

 

[Dermott of LS]

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And here is the third iteration of the UI, each time with a little bit more polish involved:

 

[Jermosh]

I really like the backpack. Could you make the petbar the same type of shaded coloring you have in the blocks as well?
Will you have intensity coloring?

 

[Dermott of LS]

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Unless I see a need to change something with the petbar, I think it's going to stay as it is (need to change something meaning some way to make it useful with function mods like Ash's spell buttons).

When we get intensity coloring ported over, it will be able to be added. First I want to get the graphical skin completed and uploaded, THEN I'll look into the functional enhancements.