| Roberth | » #385881 Thursday June 25, 2009 at 11:27 | |
Holy "Diver!" Priest |
quote: Well wouldja look at that -- hidden in the just-released Patch 3.2 notes are a whole slew of UI changes to check out. 1) Auto-completion for character names in mail, chat, and pop-up interfaces can now be enabled (and disabled) from the interface options. I believe auto-complete was already in there for mail, but now it'll be everywhere, and/or you'll be able to turn it off if you've sent things to the wrong place in the past. Names are getting a color option according to class, so if "Lolpaladins" is really a Death Knight, you'll know right away. 2) Casting bars near a portrait's target will show whether the spell is interruptible or not. Some boss casts are not interruptible, so now you'll know with a glance. Druids will be able to see mana bars even while shape-shifted, which probably won't change gameplay much, but will be nice for bears and kitties. 3) Item comparisons (like the ability to check other gear for slots while hovering over that gear) are now available everywhere -- hover over an item with Alt pressed to see what's currently equipped in that slot on your character. Macros and scripts can no longer target totems by name -- bye bye totem stompers. 4) The quest log is getting a small revamp: it'll be "double-paned for more easily viewing quest information." We're not quite sure what that means (you'll be able to look at two quests at once? It'll break out the list of accepted quests into its own full-size window?), but we'll give you a look as soon as we see it on the PTR. 5) Vendor prices will now be listed on items even if you're not at a vendor. This was a pretty common feature already, thanks to Auctioneer, but now it'll be built into the standard interface. Keep in mind that these notes are still subject to change -- what's listed here may never make it to the live realms at all. But it seems like there are quite a few changes due in Patch 3.2 are designed to streamline the interface and incorporate a number of elements from common addons. Taken shamelessly from WoW Insider...er...I mean WoW dot Com. 1) As this can be disabled in the Interface options it'll mean you can still retain the functionality of any current Mail mods you use (like Postal which I use personally) if said mod has other features you enjoy like mass mailings and whatnot. Watch though, some mod makers may disable or remove this particular feature since it can be enabled in Blizzard's feature set and probably use less memory and/or have fewer conflicts. 2) I'm not certain if there are any mods currently that show if a spell being cast by a mob/boss are interruptible but I do know WitchHunt will show you what said mob/boss is casting. Watch out for changes to addons that are similar to WitchHunt. As for druid casting bars, I know there's mods out there that do that already but as I don't play druids (I'll play *with* them but that's the extent of my personal interaction) I'm not certain how extensive such mods are in presenting the information versus what Blizzard's UI feature will do. I know from experience that whenever Blizz takes a mod feature and implements it in game, its usually gimped. However, how bad could Blizz mess up a simple mana bar? ...ok, I'm not answering that one. 3) Totem stomping will now move to manual mode. Any addons you currently use that automate or make easier totem stomping will be relegated to the same dust bin that Decursive enjoyed for nearly a year. Use your mods/macros to gleeful abandon now as when 3.2 hits Shaman everywhere are going to rise up and take over the world! Ahem. As for the first part, there's plenty of item comparison mods out there. I use tekKompare myself made by the wonderful Tekkub, author of millions of mods. I provided the link for this mod as he has tons of mods you may want to try. I think one of LO members even has "liberated" his avatar icon. :D Anyway, come 3.2 this mod and others like EquipCompare will be rendered moot, unless you like the instant compare features and don't want to press the ALT key. Myself, I'll delete the mod and revel in the .001 megs of memory I get back. Only another 150 megs more to go... 4) The double pane feature is nothing more than Pane One holds all your quests and Pane Two holds the current quest highlighted description. Woooo...*breathes*...wooo. Excitement is washing over me. /end sarcasm. Ok, there are mods that do similar things like Frame Resized. I'll keep the mod, thankyouverymuch as it allows me to move the frame as well as extend the size of other frames than just the Quest log. Really Blizz, was the size of the current quest log that much of an issue? Oh...it was? Sorry, Tora was just informing me that yeah, it was too small. Anyway, any mods you use that might already duplicate this "improvement" might be impacted, but I doubt it'll affect mods like Lightheaded, Questhelper, and others. 5) Informant is the name of the module in the Auctioneer Suite that provides vendor pricing. It gets this pricing, by the way, from the WoWHead database via an agreement they have. This means that when a new item that is sellable is released in game, the vendor pricing will not show until Informant is updated with the info from WoWHead which in turn must wait for updates to be uploaded via its mod. So...sounds like I'm advocating getting rid of the mod since 3.2 we'll know instantly whenever new items are released what their pricing will be. No, I'm actually not. Informant also provides tool tips indicating what professions can use a particular item, if such an item is sellable by a vendor, what the stack limit is, as well as other options. I find knowing stack size isn't much of an issue as I use a bag mod (Baggins to be precise) that automagically restacks items with a push of a button, hence I don't need to worry about if an item can be stacked to 10, 20, or more. However I shop on the AH alot and knowing if a recipe going for 2 gold is a world drop or can be bought at a vendor for 2 silver is a wonderful thing. 6) Not indicated above in the quote, but Blizzard is putting Questhelper/Carbonite information directly on the main map. To whit: quote: User Interface: Quest creatures and objects will now show on the player's world map. A skull graphic will be placed on the map in the general area where creatures players must kill can be found. A glowing skull graphic will be placed on the map in the general area where creatures can be found that drop quest objects. A gear graphic will be placed on the map in the general area where players must loot objects found in the world. A chat bubble graphic will be placed on the map in the general area where players must interact with a specific NPC. X marks the spot on the map where players must reach, discover or explore a designated area. A yellow question mark graphic will show on the map to provide the location of a NPC whose quest the player has completed. Now, some might say that they'll be able to uninstall QH/Carb but not me. Why? QH, Carbonite, Lightheaded, and even Tourguide all provide additional functionality beyond the simple placement of indicators on the map. QH, Carb, and TG all provide a smart guide that you can follow to complete quests more efficiently. QH I notice has you going in a wide circle to complete quests along the way before heading back to turn it in. TG is a tad smarter in that it knows quest chains and in some instances will have you go back to turn in a quest in order to get the next part so you can work on multiple quests more efficiently. The Blizz method here will do nothing more than add in signposts indicating where quest items/mobs to kill/NPCs to see, etc are. Granted, QH and other mods can ruin an initial quest experience, but I find these mods nearly necessary when playing my alts. After all, do I really need to try and hunt down Mankirk's wife for the fifth time? Can't a magic arrow just merely point her out to me? I'll update this as we find out more information on the PTR (its up btw folks!) and see how the new UI features interact with current mods. Its looking like the UI features in this patch aren't going to be as earthshaking as previous patches (built-in Omen, Itemrack, etc) but its something to keep an eye on. |
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| netslave | » #385899 Thursday June 25, 2009 at 12:30 | |
My total—65. So what do I win? |
I'm pretty excited about the Quest objects being shown on the map. QH has been a lifesaver, but i'm really tired of it crashing on me. I don't really use it for the 'fastest' route but rather just the little icons that say 'kill these here.'
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   "Posting damage meters means you have abnormally small man parts." - wow.com |
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| Paks | » #385902 Thursday June 25, 2009 at 13:00 | |
YOU'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME FRUIT VENDOR! |
Got one thing slightly off, Roberth. Item Comparison, a la TekKompare, is already in the game. Go in with a vanilla UI and hold down shift, then mouse over an item and you'll see a comparison. The actual patch note is: quote: Originally posted by Blizzard Website: Item Comparisons: Holding the shift key while hovering over an item will now display the stat differences with the item currently equipped in the relevant slot. What that means is, when you hold down shift to get the comparison data, it's going to give you a stat breakdown between the two pieces a la RatingBuster. You'll probably still want RatingBuster around for info displaying rating conversions to stats, but for comparing between two stat sets, it'll be very nice. (My personal example is, when I'm helping my wife upgrade her gear; she doesn't like running addons, so this will make my life easier.) --
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| Roberth | » #386136 Friday June 26, 2009 at 11:46 | |
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Holy "Diver!" Priest |
quote: Originally posted by Paks: Got one thing slightly off, Roberth. Item Comparison, a la TekKompare, is already in the game. Go in with a vanilla UI and hold down shift, then mouse over an item and you'll see a comparison. The actual patch note is: quote: Originally posted by Blizzard Website: Item Comparisons: Holding the shift key while hovering over an item will now display the stat differences with the item currently equipped in the relevant slot. What that means is, when you hold down shift to get the comparison data, it's going to give you a stat breakdown between the two pieces a la RatingBuster. You'll probably still want RatingBuster around for info displaying rating conversions to stats, but for comparing between two stat sets, it'll be very nice. (My personal example is, when I'm helping my wife upgrade her gear; she doesn't like running addons, so this will make my life easier.) Huh, this I did not know...its been years since I last used the Blizz standard UI I've relied so much on add-ons for my UI. I will agree with RatingBuster but I'll also add in that those who really want to get into comparisons may want to look at either Pawn mod (check out their weights at the Pawn's forum) or Equivalence Points mod. Both mods will allow you to either import or create your own weighting measure of how you want to compare items. Check 'em out, both are pretty cool. |
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| Randall | » #386255 Friday June 26, 2009 at 16:11 | |
Member |
quote: Originally posted by Roberth: 5) Informant is the name of the module in the Auctioneer Suite that provides vendor pricing. It gets this pricing, by the way, from the WoWHead database via an agreement they have. This means that when a new item that is sellable is released in game, the vendor pricing will not show until Informant is updated with the info from WoWHead which in turn must wait for updates to be uploaded via its mod. So...sounds like I'm advocating getting rid of the mod since 3.2 we'll know instantly whenever new items are released what their pricing will be. No, I'm actually not. Informant also provides tool tips indicating what professions can use a particular item, if such an item is sellable by a vendor, what the stack limit is, as well as other options. I find knowing stack size isn't much of an issue as I use a bag mod (Baggins to be precise) that automagically restacks items with a push of a button, hence I don't need to worry about if an item can be stacked to 10, 20, or more. However I shop on the AH alot and knowing if a recipe going for 2 gold is a world drop or can be bought at a vendor for 2 silver is a wonderful thing. Informant also has an openable data window that will list what vendors sell a vendor-provided item, with zone name and coordinates for the vendor, what quests use an item, and how many are required, and sundry other information. You can set a keybinding to open the window in your keybinding options (mouseover the item you want the info for, or click on a link for it, then hit the key to open the extra data window). Most people don't know about this, as we haven't heavily publicized it, and I'm still slowly working on making it a little more useful, but I figured now was an opportune time to mention it here. --
"You're all forgetting the number one rule: All loot is hunter loot." -- Phalling Star "Rule Three: An ordinance technician at a dead run outranks everybody"  |
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| Roberth | » #386268 Friday June 26, 2009 at 16:38 | |
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Holy "Diver!" Priest |
Hah! Thanks! Didn't realize Leftovers had such an esteemed member of the modding community amongst us. Of course, if you ever need beta testers... :D | |
| Randall | » #386357 Saturday June 27, 2009 at 07:14 | |
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Member |
quote: Originally posted by Roberth: Hah! Thanks! Didn't realize Leftovers had such an esteemed member of the modding community amongst us. Of course, if you ever need beta testers... :D Heh. Also something you may not know: We make our beta versions available under the "Preview" section on our download page at http://www.auctioneeraddon.com/dl We're not adding new features incredibly quickly right now, as we're trying to improve the consistency and efficiency of the current feature set, but if anything, the preview version is usually at least as stable as the release version, and often more stable, as we've fixed bugs in it and may not have pushed a new release yet. If you're *really* interested in the latest code, we provide public read-only access to our svn repository, as well. --
"You're all forgetting the number one rule: All loot is hunter loot." -- Phalling Star "Rule Three: An ordinance technician at a dead run outranks everybody" |
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| Roberth | » #387003 Monday June 29, 2009 at 20:46 | |
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Holy "Diver!" Priest |
quote: Item Level: A new option has been added under Display in the Interface Options to show the item level on item tooltips. So...I wonder if this means those mods (like Auctioneer's Informant) that put the ILevel will remove them? Not sure how this would impact computing performance... |
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| Randall | » #387634 Wednesday July 1, 2009 at 11:03 | |
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Member |
quote: Originally posted by Roberth: So...I wonder if this means those mods (like Auctioneer's Informant) that put the ILevel will remove them? Not sure how this would impact computing performance... Not a whole lot, really. It's quite simple to pull, as I recall, and isn't information we store in a data file somewhere. But I believe conversations about this are ongoing. --
"You're all forgetting the number one rule: All loot is hunter loot." -- Phalling Star "Rule Three: An ordinance technician at a dead run outranks everybody" |
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| Sisren | » #388578 Sunday July 5, 2009 at 13:32 | |
Furious Sissy |
The quest icons seem awesome to me. I use Cartographer and TomTom, so now I will simply be able to scroll over where a quest is, check the coordinates, and make myself a quick waypoint. Exact same thing as QuestHelper, without the huge memory drain. Also means that my waypoints will disappear properly and I won't have an arrow telling me to do something I already completed instead of the new quest I'm standing right next to. (only downside is I'll need a new flight timer) --
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