G
georgemarvin2001
Guest
@Roland:
First, thanks for the info about using the Pinco mod to re-size the hotbars. For anybody who doesn't know about it, if you open user settings>actions>Pinco's UI, it's toward the bottom of the list. I had totally overlooked the icon for it.
P.S.: It would be great if somebody made a convenient list of all the features in the Pinco mod and how to find and use them.
Pinco's mods will make EC MUCH easier to use. I made the compartments for stuff like health, mana, stamina, etc. about twice as large so that they are more easily readable. I left the hotbars for spells their current size. I might even scale down the size of the hotbar that I will use for the menu stuff; I won't use it constantly, so it can be really small, in an out-of-the-way corner.
I also changed the default zoom like the sticky at the top of the EC forum suggested, so the graphics don't look quite so crappy now. The problem is, why didn't the devs do simple stuff like that themselves? It would have taken them a few minutes to make the client much more functional.
However, there are still some major issues with the client.
1. My character is centered on the screen; not easy to look away every time he casts a spell. They should have an easy toggle button so we can toggle spell effects on and off, or just don't make effects that are bright flashes of light in the first place.
DIRECT QUOTE from Pinco: Unfortunately the spell effects cannot be disabled... so I hope you are not epileptic or the earthquake could kill you
That is NOT encouraging, regarding the future of the EC, as those annoying spell effects hurt my eyes and give me a headache. A simple on/off toggle would make the EC much more user friendly for the hundreds of people who try it and just simply can't use it because it hurts their eyes. I CAN'T play a mage using the EC because of those bright white spell effects; 10 minutes and I have to go take 3 or 4 aspirin for a migraine. That's why my treasure hunter has to switch back and forth like 10 times for a chest; I need the EC to check out the items and see if there's anything worth keeping, then switch to the CC to fight the monsters, since he's a mage.
2. Most of us don't want to spend weeks figuring out how to make the new client as functional as the old one. If any of the devs had been playing UO, they should have realized that they needed to make a new client that, in terms of functionality, was easy to figure out and worked similarly to the old client. Giving us a new client that doesn't function like the old one is like telling somebody to use the more efficient Dvorak keyboard after he has typed all his life on a Qwerty. If you give somebody who has never seen a keyboard before the Dvorak, he can type faster with it. But an old typist who has been using Qwerty all his life will never be able to type as fast on a Dvorak.
3. We're all in agreement that the EC could use some much higher-res graphics. The original UO graphics were ahead of their time in 1997, but that was nearly 14 years ago.
The problem with 3rd dawn wasn't the graphics, it was memory leaks, crashes and and overall poor performance. By the time they had fixed a few of the worst problems, most of us had already given up on it.
Unfortunately, that will probably be the fate of the EC. I can't really see UO surviving much longer if we don't either move forward to a modern client, a more new-player-friendly combat system, a less confusing armor and weapons system, new eye candy, etc., or back to a pure classic, pre-AOS game, which was about skills and groups of players working together, not about graphics, uber items and eye candy.
Both wouldn't be so bad. Maybe change the ruleset on the deserted shards to make them pure classic, never-changing PvP shards, where everybody can only use the CC, and they would use pre-AOS combat rules and systems.
And fix the EC and bring it up to date for the rest of us, so the people who like the current item-based combat system, all the eye candy, and don't want to take the chance of getting PK'ed while doing PvM, will start bringing some of their friends from other games to UO.
First, thanks for the info about using the Pinco mod to re-size the hotbars. For anybody who doesn't know about it, if you open user settings>actions>Pinco's UI, it's toward the bottom of the list. I had totally overlooked the icon for it.
P.S.: It would be great if somebody made a convenient list of all the features in the Pinco mod and how to find and use them.
Pinco's mods will make EC MUCH easier to use. I made the compartments for stuff like health, mana, stamina, etc. about twice as large so that they are more easily readable. I left the hotbars for spells their current size. I might even scale down the size of the hotbar that I will use for the menu stuff; I won't use it constantly, so it can be really small, in an out-of-the-way corner.
I also changed the default zoom like the sticky at the top of the EC forum suggested, so the graphics don't look quite so crappy now. The problem is, why didn't the devs do simple stuff like that themselves? It would have taken them a few minutes to make the client much more functional.
However, there are still some major issues with the client.
1. My character is centered on the screen; not easy to look away every time he casts a spell. They should have an easy toggle button so we can toggle spell effects on and off, or just don't make effects that are bright flashes of light in the first place.
DIRECT QUOTE from Pinco: Unfortunately the spell effects cannot be disabled... so I hope you are not epileptic or the earthquake could kill you
That is NOT encouraging, regarding the future of the EC, as those annoying spell effects hurt my eyes and give me a headache. A simple on/off toggle would make the EC much more user friendly for the hundreds of people who try it and just simply can't use it because it hurts their eyes. I CAN'T play a mage using the EC because of those bright white spell effects; 10 minutes and I have to go take 3 or 4 aspirin for a migraine. That's why my treasure hunter has to switch back and forth like 10 times for a chest; I need the EC to check out the items and see if there's anything worth keeping, then switch to the CC to fight the monsters, since he's a mage.
2. Most of us don't want to spend weeks figuring out how to make the new client as functional as the old one. If any of the devs had been playing UO, they should have realized that they needed to make a new client that, in terms of functionality, was easy to figure out and worked similarly to the old client. Giving us a new client that doesn't function like the old one is like telling somebody to use the more efficient Dvorak keyboard after he has typed all his life on a Qwerty. If you give somebody who has never seen a keyboard before the Dvorak, he can type faster with it. But an old typist who has been using Qwerty all his life will never be able to type as fast on a Dvorak.
3. We're all in agreement that the EC could use some much higher-res graphics. The original UO graphics were ahead of their time in 1997, but that was nearly 14 years ago.
The problem with 3rd dawn wasn't the graphics, it was memory leaks, crashes and and overall poor performance. By the time they had fixed a few of the worst problems, most of us had already given up on it.
Unfortunately, that will probably be the fate of the EC. I can't really see UO surviving much longer if we don't either move forward to a modern client, a more new-player-friendly combat system, a less confusing armor and weapons system, new eye candy, etc., or back to a pure classic, pre-AOS game, which was about skills and groups of players working together, not about graphics, uber items and eye candy.
Both wouldn't be so bad. Maybe change the ruleset on the deserted shards to make them pure classic, never-changing PvP shards, where everybody can only use the CC, and they would use pre-AOS combat rules and systems.
And fix the EC and bring it up to date for the rest of us, so the people who like the current item-based combat system, all the eye candy, and don't want to take the chance of getting PK'ed while doing PvM, will start bringing some of their friends from other games to UO.
