A Brief History
DuskUI is my new project. It is also my 3rd UI. In beta I developed NadGUI, in late beta I started CoreUI, once I did I abandoned NadGUI. The original CoreUI was full of art, over time it became CoreUI2 which dropped a lot of the art in favor of minimalism.
I also around this time decided to create a HUD Pack that was standalone and could be plugged into any UI. CoreUI itself was built around this HUD Pack and how it works.
Now CoreUI has become a victom of its success. Every time someone requested something I did my best to include it in the options. It so full of options it became bloated and can decrease your performance in game, due to the way the Vanguard Client handles UI memory and processing.
This lead to my being unhappy with CoreUI2. I thought about just making a stripped down version but my taste in what I wanted changed as I saw other great UIs like CMod come out that were just very good looking graphically. This appealed to me and rather then try to redo CoreUI into what I wanted it to be, I decided to simply start a new UI.
I will continue to fix CoreUI if a patch breaks something, or bugs crop up but other then that I am done with it. For now my focus is on my new project. DuskUI.
What is DuskUI?
Dusk's main theme was derived from Warhammer Online's Interface. It has a similar shape. It is the evolution of my experiences coding UIs, and experiences in game. It strives to have eyecandy without being too gaudy, much like CMod's style. It will not include the HUD Pack, or VGInfopanel. I want to keep it simple and have a low memory & processing footprint.
Using DuskUI could, in theory, also improve your performance in game. As I will be unloading the default graphics that are no longer used from memory, and using a new image format called .dds. CoreUI had 2 TGA files totaling 8MB in size. Those same 2 TGA files in .dds format would come to 2MB. I also plan on redoing the default TGA files into .dds, but keeping the default XML code in the default directory. What this means is xml file updates to the default UI will still be in effect every patch. However TGA file updates would require me to patch the UI. So basically what this method boils down to is the UI will take up far less memory then any other UI.
There are a few kinks with DDS files i need to work out still, but I should be able to nail them.
Enough...wheres the screenshots?
Okay, okay...Here is a Concept shot I made in photoshop to show what I want the finished product to look like.
Concept Shot
Now here is an actual in game screenshot of my current progress on the UI:
Progress Shot: April 7th (4:30am)
Progress Description - April 13th (10:00am)
The UI is ready for a beta release now, as its fully functional its just missing some bells and whistles. Id like to get the options window in before releasing a beta though. You might notice the words in the center of the screen above the arc bar. Thats just a little pvp tool, that you will be able to turn off in options. Also if you notice the clock in the upper right, I made a 12h clock cause im not used to military time. And yes i turned my graphics way down because this last patch made my previous settings unplayable.
Anyway feel free to post comments and suggestions. I love reading them.
DuskUI Development Thread
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