lol and the UI update

I happened across this little datamined script over at MMO Champion one night.

 

TIME_PLAYED_ALERT = "You have been playing for %s. Excessive gameplay can
cause inconvenience in your daily life."

 

OOPS! They're on to me. How the heck am I going to convince them that WoW IS my daily life? Roflmao!

 

KK, more slightly serious stuff ahead.

 

Some of you may remember way back when I first ventured into the world of add-ons and UI changes. If not, the UI post with screenies is here.

 

I confess to being rather slow in doing such things for reasons I'll not bore you with. I must take my time with them. I do a little here and a little there, play with them for some time to get a good feel for the changes, then take time to consider the next change. To bring everyone up to date more or less, here is the current list of add-ons I'm using. Also note that instead of linking each one, I get all my add-ons from Curse.com, via the curse client. Makes installation quite easy :)

 

• Chinchilla Mini-map
• Omen (threat meter)
• Recount (damage meter)
• Bartender4 (action bars)
• Deadly Boss Mobs (PvE modifier/alerter)
• Tidy Plates (name plate mod w/threat indicator)
• KG Panels (shiny stuffs to pretty things up)
• Chatter (obvious useage)
• Pit Bull unit frames (group/party unit frames)
• Quartz (casting bar/buffs and timers)
• Healers Have To Die (Khrox's battleground favorite, lol)

 

The KG Panels, along with tweeking out Bartender4 and adjusting my camera max distance, are the most recent adjustments I've made. One of the other important considerations I keep in mind during all changes, is the ability to use my set-up across all characters. Important for two reasons. I don't want to go through changing the overall appearance, and I don't want to be changing keybinds.

 



UI screenshot4

I've got my KG panels thingy about as small as possible, where I can still recognize the icons at a glance if needed. My main rotations are keybound to the same keys across all characters. This required moving some spells and such through Bartender4, but no big deal. I just needed to use the same keybinds for my own memory sake, lol.

 

Now that most everything is pretty well contained in the bottom portion of my game screen, I further tweeked my "camera max distance" view to 35. (settings range from 0-50, default is around 15? as I recall) This was done for the benefit of Aygaren learning to tank, and needing to see more of what was all around him including the deeps squad and healer positions. I started with distance 35 which may or may not change after a few try-outs. My middle mouse scroll button still covers camera zooming for on the spot needs. There are still a couple of other camera settings I'll probably try out in time. What I've managed to do so far is good though.

 



camera max distance 35

Other minor notes: Recount isn't all that necessary any more, though still has some uses. I have it set to auto-hide when in combat, so it works well on top of Omen which I do use in combat. And, though all my characters gain duel-specialazations abilities, I haven't really worked with those changes to the action bars yet. Yep, I'm one for staying in my main chosen spec because I like it that way.

 

Keybinds and macros are set to the left of the minimap, clickable off spells/self heals and such to the right of map. Professions, food, drink, necessary pots/flasks and such are in the two down-sized right side bars. Very much out of the way.

 

Quartz-must have for me! Centered above but near the KG panels, leaving room for the timers and such to show. My own character frame is to the left, slightly lower. And my focus frame is to the right of it, along with the "target of focus" frame.

 

I still have work to do on the group/party frames. For now, they show up near the top, left side of the screen as long columns of ten. I would like to tweek them to more of a 'block' style. Some sort of a 5x5 thing or such.

 

Bagon: shows all bags as one. Mouse over an item, I get a total count of it plus seperate counts of in bag and in bank. Along with the quantities of all alts on that server and wheather in bank or bag. Pretty useful for me.

 

Chatter allows me personal customization of the chat box and various seperate channels as I use them.

 

All in all, it's been a slow learning process which I'm quite happy with so far. Everything just looks so much better, and is easy to navigate and manipulate when necessary. Add-on's can be very useful to your game play. Personally, I use them sparingly and as learning tools. Most all that I have, are really basic when compared to more serious players/raiders. That is just my personal view though, I am something of a minimalist in my ways, lol. So...

 

...if you're new to the game world of add-on's and UI adjustments, take your time. Start out with just one, maybe two. Get them set-up and use them for a bit. Then proceed at your own pace. In time, you'll probably come up with something quite useful for yourself, and have fun using it.

 

If you happen to be pretty good with game mods and UI's yourself, feel free to add any helpful suggestions for beginners in the comments. Most of my post here is about what I use, not how to use them. Though I will mention that most add-on's come with a readme.txt and usually a link to their website and possibly tutorials. As I recall, a couple were 'good to go out of the box,' to which I made only minor adjustments over time. But this was according to my personal tastes and useage. Your milage will certainly vary.

 

HappyGood gaming everyone!

Okay, just one fun one for the road-lol!



Gizzel and his baby naga's