New FFXI User Interface

[X-Drop]

Sigh...

Ah, the reoccuring topic of the FFXI UI... lol. I've read many posts where ppl complain of this UI. I don't own any other MMOs, so I personally have nothing to compare FFXI to. However, it seems that popular opinion reguards this interface as one of the poorest designs of all the major MMOs. With a bit more reading, I came to the conclusion that the UI's design was created to accomodate PS2 owners.

When I look at some pictures of UIs from other MMOs, I really get blown away by all the great set-ups. Look at some of these sites,
World of Warcraft UI
Ever Quest 2 UI
All these UI's are player created. And I guess the devs had this in mind when they put all the UI data into a nice extractable folder for them. I envy their ability to easily create UIs.

I would really like to create something like that for FFXI. Even if it can't be completely implemented, I would still have fun trying.

In the process of tossing around some ideas, I have created a few scripts that run the chat log to other windows besides on the game screen. One is a PHP script which displays the chat log through my browser, but I'm not too keen with having to use a browser window with all the browser icons and menus that go with it. The other script is a WinBinder script for PHP. Kinda cool that I can create application windows to display just what I want. Looks great too. Still having some small problems with it just auto refreshing the window when there are new chat lines to display. No big deal, I'll figure it out eventually.

Now I can go all out with these app windows and create a nice little UI to take care of macros, chat logs, displays, and whatever else. But then I realized that I had drifted away from Lunar, the very program that I wanted to use in the first place! So I took a few steps back and thought more about what I could and couldn't do with Lunar.


With Lunar I can:

• write all the scripts using Lua (love this language)
  
• have access to ffxi game data (Starhawk is cracking memlocs as best as he can)
  
• display colorful and informative grahpics on screen
  
• and so much more (just wanted to mention the big guns)
  

Now what I would like to be able to eventually do:

• have mouse clicks recognized (hey is this possible with XML support or is this a windower issue? I dunno... just asking. Nebula could probably answer this question)
  
• recognize input from gamepad (does it do this already? This just crossed my mind. I'll edit this out later if Lunar already does this)
  
• database support (when you see my Aggro Check script you will understand why... lol)
  
• sound support (trivial... but will eventually be a nice addition to Lunar. Can you program in C++? Look here if you can help)
  
• memlocs, memlocs, memlocs (out of Tiny Terror's hands I realize. Needless to say, the more memlocs cracked, the further we can take these ideas.)
  

*I know Tiny Terror's hands are full (*understatement*). I just wanted to maybe get a discussion going about the creation of a small scale UI.

---

Anyhow, let me close my ramble...

My first step towards the UI would be getting rid of the current UI..... press "Scroll Lock" and *poof*, goodbye Clunkie.

The new UI could easily include:

• chat log
  
• player and party status
  
• vana'diel timer
  
• compass and possibly a map
  
• onscreen macro icons (manually set or auto-generated)

I would probably have to impliment this set up using full screen mode...I dunno. Currently I play in a 800x600 window, but I think full screen is more feasible.

Important stuff the UI would still need without resorting back to Clunkie:

• All the useful info under "Status" menu
  
• inventory and equipment access (are these memlocs/functions a possibility within the year?)
  
• list of available spells and abilities
  
• search functions (I suppose I could press "Scroll Lock" to see this list)

---

Can you see it? The possibility of implimenting this? Well I can. I'm a nobody, noob of a scripter and even I think I could pull this off.

[phantomphreak]

i really like this idea^^

[deathravin]

Yes, scroll lock makes everything go away until <esc> is pressed, so you'd have to lock out escape. I hit escape more times than I care to count in a given minute... I hit it just to hit it so I know i'm not in any wierd arrow or pointer... I even have my scripts hit it pretty often just to make sure my script and the game are on the same page.

At any rate, yes, i HATE the FFXI user interface. The memlocks is what is keeping this at bay more than anything else. If I had access to the party data, I wouldn't be having this discussion, I'd be coding and testing my new FFXI UI. What I had in mind was party and aliance data. Not just a tiny window I can barly read, but %s, Numbers/Max, for Hp AND MP. A TP bar (For the whole aliance) Maybe a LvL(Job)/LvL(SJob) readout on there too. Time since last level for each of them. Everything in Exp Watch and more. Time Since last kill, average time between kills, average xp per kill, average MP used per kill per player, average amount of TP Gained per player, average amount of damage delt per player, average amount of damage received per player. A log parcer so I know who did what damage at what time. Maybe a running tally by each name for every kill. (make it freakin easy to spot a bad player or somebody not pulling their weight... cept bard, all that'd be 0 for a bard LOL)

I want loads of data at my fingertips. If it can do it, maybe a bar on the side or below FFXI that isn't included in the window data, so there is a clean view of the screen.

There's more but i gotta get ready for work.

[X-Drop]

hmm... the esc key does sound like a problem. I use it all the time too. Gonna have to mess around a bit and see if there is a work around. Really though, pressing scroll lock is the only thing I can think of to hide the original UI.

---

I too wish we had memlocs for personal stats as well as party stats. They are already known. Just check out this application by Snowknight, FFXI Query. Starhawk has gotta have these memlocs too, no? Access to all those stats would be just the thing needed to create what you have in mind.

You could make it an application window, seperate from ffxi screen. I've looked into a couple of options, but now I'm looking at .NET Framework 2.0. I dunno anything bout this though. Personally, I don't wanna create anything in a seperate app window. I really want to play FFXI in full screen (with alt-tab ofcoarse) and have the UI elements all displayed onscreen via Lunar. Athough anything onscreen is still somewhat static. Sure I could create hotkeys to navigate the menus, but I really wanna be able to use the mouse to interact with everything in the new UI.

[TinyTerror]

I feel your pain. The ffxi GUI blows ass.

Fortunately I have plans to fix this. A while back I did some research into getting a gui widget library into Lunar. All or the ones that I found were essentially wrappers for windows based gui stuff. No good. Then I cam upon crazy eddie's GUI system, or cegui for short. It's a gui widgets api that can draw onto an existing d3d device (provided by the windower with a tiny bit of code hacks), handles all input via the SDL event loop (already in Lunar), and has a full Lua binding. It doesn't get any more perfect than this. Well, except for one fairly serious problem. Cegui has no thread safety at all. None. It was designed to work with a single controlling thread. Trying to make it work with multiple threads (as it would have to work in Lunar) would lead to an exceptionaly messy disaster. I came up with a workaround for this problem, but its a little advanced and more than a bit theoretical. Essentially the user would have to seperate the GUI stuff from the main body of thier code. The gui section would be run by the cegui control thread, and would talk to the main script using an intraprocess communications library (already in Lunar, but 100% untested). There would be a very strict set of rules that the GUI code would have to follow such as no infinite loops, no time intensive work, and no blocking whatsoever. All of that would have to take place in the main script. This is required because all of the GUI code for all running scripts would be executed by the single cegui thread. The IPC code I wrote should allow the coder to send lua variables to any other script running under lunar. In this way, it will be possible to control the GUI script segment from the main script. It's not the best solution, but its far better than having to modify the mechanics of 50,000+ lines of cegui engine code and another 30,000+ lines of Lua adapter code. If anyone else knows of a good direct3d and SDL based widgets library with Lua bindings that is thread safe, I woule like to hear about it.

*crickets* *crickets* *crickets*

Thats what I thought.

Anyhow, getting cegui and an improved sdl event handler into Lunar would make getting keyboard and mouse input into Lunar alot easier. Getting sound working wont be too bad, but I just don't consider it a priority. Right now I am still trying to figure out what the hell is keeping the current codebase from loading in the windower. This takes a LOT of time to figure out. I'm considering reverting the CVS repository to an earlier version, but I dont want to do that until I am absolutely sure the current code is fucked beyond all hope of recovery. Add to that the fact that both starhawk and I are in an extremely busy time, and nothing has been done about any of this in a while. I know I promissed a big version update around the first of the year, but it just didn't happen. I am starting a new job in about 2 weeks, so hopefully things will calm down after that.

Anyway, here are some cegui example screenshots from the cegui site:




Making GUI's like that shouldn't be too hard assuming the Lua bindings aren't total garbage. I'll keep you guys up to date on whats going on as it happens. Hopefully starhawk and I can get back to work on Lunar as soon as possible. Also, I might not be on as often to answer questions as some of you have noticed. I'll do what I can.

[X-Drop]

Amazing! After reading through all the details, I gotta admit that I felt like one of those crickets....

Much of that went over my head, but thank you for not dummying it down to my level. Details are great and I now have a much better understanding of Lunar's developement situation.

[TinyTerror]

Anything specific that you didn't understand? The whole thing is fairly complicated, and took me several days to figure out fully.

[X-Drop]

No... nothing specific. Just trying to grasp the whole concept. You were quite clear with your description. After re-reading it a few times, I have a pretty good idea of what your talking about.

The more I read well elaborated insight on complicated subjects like that, the easier I find it to connect-the-dots with all the different subject matter I've been reading lately. Sorry I cannot assist you in building the fine tools which we call Lunar, but I'm just having too much fun using the them.

[sdphantom]

Doesn't sound too difficult, I'd like to try it.

So what's happening is that the main script tells Lunar where the GUI definition script is and has this GUI thread run it along with a list of others that it eventually goes through. When needed, the events triggered by the GUI script would be sent through the IPC for the main script to handle.

Lol, reminds me of the old times with VB, window design and main code seperated.

[sdphantom]

xdrop said:

Sorry I cannot assist you in building the fine tools which we call Lunar, but I'm just having too much fun using the them.

We all are helping out by being test subjects.. guinnea pigs.. >.<;
.. Alpha Testers!! There we go, lmao. XD

[TinyTerror]

sdphantom said:

Doesn't sound too difficult, I'd like to try it.

So what's happening is that the main script tells Lunar where the GUI definition script is and has this GUI thread run it along with a list of others that it eventually goes through. When needed, the events triggered by the GUI script would be sent through the IPC for the main script to handle.

Lol, reminds me of the old times with VB, window design and main code seperated.

You got it exactly. In an ideal world cegui would be threadsafe, allowing every script to integrate the GUI code right into the script. The MAJOR downside of my approach is that if something in the GUI code blows up, it will likely stop the entire gui thread. I'm trying to figure out ways to fix this. Also, please dont expect any of this stuff in the next version. Getting cegui into Lunar is going to be a hell of a lot of work, and will take months most likely.

[oni]

i wish to apply as a alpha tester aka guinnea pig ^^

feel free to prod me with make up and shampoo or whatever they use on test animals ^^

PS: I would like to test viagra on female subjects too but not sure how that would help this project O.o

[thepub]

Too bad these discussions seemed to have died

Wouldn't an "easy" solution, and possibly a better solution, to this be to create a GUI API as part of Lunar that supports this library and creates that single controlling thread necessary to make it safe? Then any API calls made from a Lua script through the API is automagically handled correctly.

I have just come back to FFXI after not playing since a few months after release and have found the potential for your Window plugin to be intriguing. Part of the reason I left the game in the first place was the tedium, and secondly but not least the GUI. It's a sad truth that most MMOs have poor UIs, but at least you can customize them!