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I fail at GridFollow

#1 Jan 23 2010 at 9:33 PM Rating: Good
Or maybe Grid fails me.

So I've worked a bit more on my UI today and I'm fairly satisfied for now (until I actually heal something and/or Aeth posts his criticism here). I also think I am going nuts because I actually held up a ruler to my monitor to help with aligning my unit frames.

Anyhow.
Clicky for demonstration in Shattrath. I moved some more stuff around by 1-2 pixels in various directions after I took it but that isn't relevant to my question, just to my neurotic behaviour patterns.

So my problem is the colour of my Grid. What I theoretically want is for it to be similar to my Pitbull frames, the full part of the health bar being black and the deficit bright green, while keeping the deficit number in the centre of the frame white.
I've got the empty part of the bar set to a medium grey at the moment because if I set it to green, the part I want to be black turns out to be a colour I have nicknamed Midnight Bogie, and that's just disgusting. At least it looks dark grey now.
This happens if I set the Health Bar Color to display Unit Health. Obviously the black part isn't as opaque as it should be but I've spent far too much time looking for an option to change that and either it isn't there or I've been blind for most of today.
I can fix this by setting the Health Bar Color to display Health Deficit but then the Deficit number is the same colour as the empty part of the Health bar, and I want it to be white and not green.

I've also tried out VuhDo for a bit today but it doesn't look pretty enough for me and every time I want to change settings, the menu gives me eye cancer.


So, does anyone know how I can fix my problem? And if not, should I stop being so damn perfectionistic and just live with some non-black colour, or even Midnight Bogie? Or find some alternative? Or get drunk, make my druid my main and spec her Balance?


I am also still looking for something to display my cooldowns as bars that I can actually customise because NECB doesn't work properly and doesn't have the bar texture I want or customisable colours.


Thank you :)



Edit: Ignore my /played, I think most of that is afk'ing, fixing my UI and tring to explain various guild members how to fix their.

Edited, Jan 24th 2010 3:41am by Kalivha
#2 Jan 23 2010 at 11:35 PM Rating: Decent
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You realize you aren't wearing any pants, right?

That said, I don't have a whole lot of Grid experience myself, I'll recommend the videos about setting up grid by Aliena, Tankspot's healing leader. She does a really good job at clearly explaining what's what, and you get the added bonus of boobies her voice over soothing background music (though the boobies still go for Aeth, I guess). I wouldn't at all be surprised if she can resolve your colouring problem. The tankspot site is currently down so I can't look up the movie for you =(.
#3 Jan 24 2010 at 6:43 AM Rating: Good
I will check it out as soon as I can, thank you.

That said, I don't mind boobies at all and even though I really want a robe again and Aeth has been remarking about my PJ look, too, I still think my bare-legged troll lady is kind of sexy.
#4 Jan 24 2010 at 6:55 AM Rating: Good
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Loud noises.

I'll heal something tomorrow on my priest and take a screenie.

She needs to go to that crazy discotek know as ICC any way.

Daddy needs more Primordial Saronite for some shoes and that ***** best earn her keep. ;p
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#5 Jan 24 2010 at 1:03 PM Rating: Good
Ok, update - I just made the deficit blue, dark blue is nice looking enough and practically black. It's not exactly what I wanted, but it's okay. Also finally found a good place to put Omen!

I have barely actually played this weekend...

Interestingly enough, our guildmates' UI's are getting nicer, too.
#6 Jan 25 2010 at 12:09 AM Rating: Good
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It likely wont help but here is my current healer UI.
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#7 Jan 25 2010 at 3:03 AM Rating: Good
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Horsemouth wrote:
It likely wont help but here is my current healer UI.
Fix/remove recount, fix the barstyle in DBM to match the rest and what the hell is grid doing there? Smiley: tongue
I'd also do something about the seemingly random buttons along the edges of your screen, and maybe change the opacity on your two main action bars to match the whole faded out feel of the rest of your UI.

Aside from that I still really like the see through UI you have.
I have been tempted to go and rebuild my UI to be as see through, but I haven't done so yet because I still <3 my black boxes.
#8 Jan 25 2010 at 5:38 AM Rating: Good
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His Excellency Aethien wrote:
Horsemouth wrote:
It likely wont help but here is my current healer UI.
Fix/remove recount, fix the barstyle in DBM to match the rest and what the hell is grid doing there? Smiley: tongueI'd also do something about the seemingly random buttons along the edges of your screen, and maybe change the opacity on your two main action bars to match the whole faded out feel of the rest of your UI.

Aside from that I still really like the see through UI you have.
I have been tempted to go and rebuild my UI to be as see through, but I haven't done so yet because I still <3 my black boxes.


Recount is only there in heroics, it is hidden in a raid.

DBM bar style? The faded look matches. Just clashes since it is so close to Recount. Would be more of a fix how Recount looks.

The ones on the right side are there so I remember the keybinds. The left side bar should be hidden in combat, I have been meaning to fix it.

Fading the action bars is something I have been meaning to do and keep forgetting.

I like Grid there. Easier to use than at my feet since my bars are there.

I could go map top left and swing Grip to a horizontal config and shift my bars down an inch or so but I like Grid on the right. Makes it easy to check my target.

Could also swing map top left, put focus (which I don't use) about where the bars are while shifting bars down. But then I would have to rewrite a shart load of macros.



edit: also see through is win. as can see through the UI to stuff I shouldn't stand in.

Edited, Jan 25th 2010 6:42am by Horsemouth
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#9 Jan 25 2010 at 5:47 AM Rating: Good
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It's that your unitframes and recount etc have the rounded bars look while DBM is using minimalist I think.
#10 Jan 25 2010 at 6:07 AM Rating: Good
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Could be, I'll try and check it out. I definitely know Recount clashes like a gay guy in biker bar.
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#11 Jan 25 2010 at 7:05 AM Rating: Good
I've been trying to go with a transparent UI but I find that I can't see stuff clearly enough when the opacity is below 70% or so.

I've got stuff like the minimap and most of my action bars set to show on mouseover and most visible stuff at 80% opacity now, might actually change the unit frames to the same. What do you think?

Also changed little bits and pieces again and will change more today and maybe if I ever run an instance again take a new proper in combat screenie.

I'm also considering using less green and more blue because I really love the new Grid colour and might want to make the rest of the UI match.


OPINIONS!

Also, needs more screen shots from other people.
#12 Jan 25 2010 at 8:17 AM Rating: Excellent
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I don't use Grid, but would like to cast my vote in general favor of pants.

I'm a fan of transparency. Pitbull shows me 90% opacity on anyone in range AND in combat. Everyone else gets varying degrees of less. Right now my toolbars show 100% because I just got a new keypad and can't find a goddamned thing, but usually I keep them at 20%. The non-combat stuff like the menu and whatnot are always visible only by mouseover, as are my buff frames. I keep my minimap and chat visible all the time, although I have no idea why, now that I mention it.
#13 Jan 25 2010 at 9:30 AM Rating: Excellent
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Kalivha wrote:
I also think I am going nuts because I actually held up a ruler to my monitor to help with aligning my unit frames.


Align

You're welcome. ;-)

Edit:

Kalivha you also might want to get TipTac to be able to move the popup tooltip from the bottom right corner so it doesnt cover up your chat logs when you mouse every everything.

Edited, Jan 25th 2010 11:01am by SynnTastic
#14 Jan 25 2010 at 9:32 AM Rating: Excellent
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SynnTastic wrote:
Kalivha wrote:
I also think I am going nuts because I actually held up a ruler to my monitor to help with aligning my unit frames.


Align

You're welcome.


Okay that is awesome.

I also use a ruler.
#15 Jan 25 2010 at 10:06 AM Rating: Good
SynnTastic wrote:
Kalivha wrote:
I also think I am going nuts because I actually held up a ruler to my monitor to help with aligning my unit frames.


Align

You're welcome. ;-)


Marry me.



Apart from that, I got TipTop now and have it set up. I changed loads of other stuff around again and I'm currently trying to find out how to change the opacity of Grid without writing a whole new addon. Is there per chance an addon that will just change the opacity of stuff and do nothing else?
#17 Jan 25 2010 at 10:43 AM Rating: Good
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Screenshot

See through UI for the win?
#18 Jan 25 2010 at 1:06 PM Rating: Excellent
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While levelling a druid, I had to redo my Grid to take into account all the hot management. After getting it to a point that I liked, I decided to incorporate the settings into my priest's Grid so I can monitor what the other healers are doing in the raid. I could always see the direct heals, but never tracked hots except to see if Renew was active and color-coded to alert me when it was about to fall off.

I also am adding tank cd's into Grid so I don't have to watch their main frame to coordinate cd rotation. GridIndicatorCornerText and GridIndicatorSideIcons are really starting to make my Grid a one-stop info center. I never really liked watching my tanks' Pitbull frames for monitoring buffs and debuffs. I had to enlarge my Grid boxes a bit so the info is displayed so I can make use of it, but I can really streamline my Pitbull now to a minimalist approach. I will grab a screenie later of my work-in-progress.

This thread gave me pause to redo my ui, yet again!

...Thanks, I think Smiley: lol
#19 Jan 25 2010 at 2:13 PM Rating: Good
Oh Oh Oh, more questions!

1) Can I change the master opacity* of grid? I need this, and so does Aeth. If there is no possibility, I'll set out to make my own raid frame addon and probably fail miserably. Smiley: laugh


Also, how can I make Grid show the tank's CD's? How can I make anything show them? I'm not even happy with how my own are displayed, but this is really interesting.


*or, in Aeth's case, make everything completely transparent apart from the borders/indicators.

Edited, Jan 25th 2010 8:14pm by Kalivha
#20 Jan 25 2010 at 3:26 PM Rating: Good
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Kalivha wrote:
Oh Oh Oh, more questions!

1) Can I change the master opacity* of grid? I need this, and so does Aeth. If there is no possibility, I'll set out to make my own raid frame addon and probably fail miserably. Smiley: laugh


Also, how can I make Grid show the tank's CD's? How can I make anything show them? I'm not even happy with how my own are displayed, but this is really interesting.


*or, in Aeth's case, make everything completely transparent apart from the borders/indicators.



I can't remember about grids overall opacity level, I thought there was an option for that, but to be honest I can't remember.

As far as a tanks cooldowns, don't quote me on this, but it's worth a shot to look into as a roundabout way of knowing when they are used. The cooldowns are nothing more than buffs, shield block, shield wall, last stand, are warrior cooldowns, don't know what the pally, dk and druid cooldowns are. I know grid has a buffs tab option, and I don't think it would be hard to show an indicator when someone uses those particular abilities, I mean if it can show when renew is on someone, I'm sure it can show when shield block is on someone, since they are the same mechanic, a buff.

If you can't find it, another roundabout way of showing it (though I really wouldn't recommend it, since you are aiming for a minimalistic UI), is to get the addon needtoknow. You can set that to track the buffs and/or debuffs of you, your target, or your focus target. You can set your tank to focus and have it track all of the cooldown spells of all the tanks, and when your focus uses it, the bar will popup and countdown. The biggest problem is 25 man raids when you have multiple tanks, you can't really keep switching focus all the time when the tanks switch for whatever reason.
#21 Jan 25 2010 at 4:08 PM Rating: Good
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^
What he said. I also need to find a way to display this kind of stuff on my interface, I guess...

Also;
Quote:
don't know what the pally, dk and druid cooldowns are.


Pally
-Righteous Fury
-Divine Protection
-Hand of Protection
-Holy Shield
-Divine Sacrifice

Death Knight
-Frost Presence
-Icebound Fortitude
-Anti-Magic Shell
-Vampiric Blood (Blood only)
-Lichborne (Frost only)
-Unbreakable Armor (Frost only)
-Anti-Magic Zone (Unholy only)
-Bone Shield (Unholy only) (I suggest you look it up before making a final decision here)

Druid
-Dire Bear Form (I suppose it goes a bit far to even mention this)
-Survival Instincts
-Barkskin
-Thorns
-Frenzied Regeneration

That would be a list of everything even remotely interesting to track on those 3 classes. Bold abilities are actual 'panic buttons', stuff with a cooldown of 1 minute or longer, and italic abilities are self-buffs that a tank should be keeping up whenever possible - some of these (like frost presence) might be dandy to keep an eye out for in PUGs.

Edited, Jan 25th 2010 11:14pm by Mozared
#22 Jan 25 2010 at 4:58 PM Rating: Good
I added Aeth's CD's to my Grid and I'm using the centre icon for that now, it's brilliant.

I will add the other ones tomorrow but I'm running 3-4 instances per level bracket with a tank that isn't him, so it's enough for now.

Also, I looked at the Grid lua files and I'm happy that the code is fairly clean and well annotated; when I looked at the SBF lua earlier, I nearly had a heart attack. It completely seems to lack line breaks, indentations and spacing of any kind.
So yeah, trying to figure out Grid now and then apply the changes I want to apply, and my hope that I'll actually wrap my head around it in the next fortnight or so is rising.

I actually think the option I want might be there and simply bugged somehow, since the thing I have been looking for in the menu is listed as a menu option in the code (I think) but doesn't show up in game. I do hope this is true. :3

This is strangely exciting. The last time I did any sort of programming/coding was in school and I really didn't have much motivation and was the only person taking the subject who hadn't grown up inside a compiler.
#23 Jan 26 2010 at 2:41 PM Rating: Excellent
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One other cd to keep track of is Forbearance, actually a debuff.

I have my bottom icon on Grid set to pop up all the major cooldowns listed above. I really don't pay attention to what they are, it is more knowing when they are up so I can prepare for when they fall off. Forbearance stays up for quite a while, so I have it priortized very low.

I think Pitbull has a way of "shining" a frame depending on if it has an aura. I know you can add debuffs for dispelling to cause this, probably can add tanks cds there to give you a general alert when they hit their panic buttons, maybe give it an alternative "shine"?
#24 Jan 26 2010 at 5:41 PM Rating: Good
I went through the code for Grid and Grid2 (which I don't really like much anyway), and what I want it to do isn't possible without changing the way it displays the health bar completely, and the author actually annotated that bit with an explanation and it appears that I'd lose much of the functionality of Grid for my DPS alts if I changed it, so I'm not going to do it.

I don't want to give up its great functionality and I don't trust my understanding of Lua enough to go through VuhDo or some other raid frame addon to add the option I want AND indicators of the sort Grid has.

So I'm going to stick with a lifeless colourless UI and Aeth will have to deal with opaque raid frames.


Edit:

For Aeth, because I'll just forget to say this otherwise: If you just want prettiness, doesn't Pitbull have raid frames? I can probably change the texts in that to something more minimalistic (because that's the kind of Lua I understand) and it does transparency.

Edited, Jan 26th 2010 11:43pm by Kalivha
#25 Jan 26 2010 at 6:14 PM Rating: Good
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Alright, now that I finally got my PC back I can share some screenshots of my UI (which is still somewhat WIP as I fix the final details, mind you).

This is what it looks like in 'standby' mode, when nothing is going on. The chatwindow disappears entirely if nothing is being said.

This is what my interface currently looks like in 10-man raids (pic's literally still hot). Let me explain what you see.
First is the additional portrait that came up; that and the health/resource bars above it represent my target. The range check in the middle, buffs left and right of the portraits and naming of the target is all IceHUD. If a target of target exists, it pops up in a small green bar just below the naming of the target (the part that says "Bruhahe 80 Tauren Druid <In Meus Pardus>").

The little bubble below those red letters is my ProMtracker, which keeps track of the amount of charges I have left on Prayer of Mending, along with it's current target.

The red glow you see all around pops up when my current target is afflicted by Weakened Soul if I'm in disc spec, which allows me to easily keep track of who can be shielded and who can't. The red letters show the remaining duration of the debuff on the target. The little white hippocratus staff shows me the cooldown on Prayer of Mending, and it disappears if ProM is off cooldown. In a similar fashion, a white cross appears to the left of where the staff is located which shows me the cooldown on Penance (or CoH, if I'm holy). All of this is PowerAuras.

The actual raid interface is all Pitbull4. I did actually end up removing the portraits the bars used to have this very raid, as I felt more comfortable without them. These frames (which I like to call 'cards' myself) only show my buffs which allows me to easily keep track of who I have renewed, graced, or what-have-you. The cards highlight when there's a buff I can dispel (blue highlight for magic, greenish for diseases), and stuff like "party leader", "loot master" and "PvP enabled" all appear on some spot near the sides of the card . Ready check checkmarks or crosses appear all across the middle of the cards allowing me to easily see who has pressed what without having to return to the party menu.

The larger card on top ('Kyunar') is my focus card; in my previous UI I used to have the group of MTs along with their target's target up there, so I could effectively keep track of all of them and in the same go keep track of who the boss was targeting, allowing me to do preventive shielding better in case someone got aggro or simply to better keep track of taunt rotations. I might change this back as I'd probably prefer the old setup over just the focus card I have right now, but I'll need to do a 25-man raid to test that out.

This last pic shows you what my setup would be as holy in addition to showing how I track my cooldowns.
The cross and staff I had as disc are now yellow and the cross tracks Circle of Healing instead of Penance. The glow you see over my character indicates I have a Surge of Light proc, and the big Serendipity icon helps me keep track of Serendipity; this icon starts of tiny and transparant at one stack, grows and becomes more thorough with two stacks and ends up like the way you see it there when I have three stacks. Additionally, the 'cards' at the bottom track my longer cooldowns for me, while another row with shorter (less important) cooldowns like Holy Fire and Mind Blast is situated in between that row and ProMtracker.

I've hidden all my bars, but have an accessible bar on the right side of the screen that appears on mouseover and holds potions, healthstones, and other in combat stuff. A small bar below that holds spells I couldn't hotkey (Mind Vision, Ressurection, Pantsroll), and my bagbar is hidden in similar fashion on the left - just below the minimenu that allows me to keep track of FPS and addon memory used (which is unlike you might assume, surprisingly low; 22 mb in standby mode and 34 in busy raids - and up to 14 of that is Recount).


Which effectively leaves me wanting the two things I've mentioned earlier in that other thread about UI's;
-A way to track debuffs like Marrowgar's Bone Spike on raid members, preferably with a highlight.
-A way to track tank cooldowns more effectively. I'd like to see some kind of effect on the main tank frames if they put up Shield Wall or Divine Protection.
#26 Jan 26 2010 at 6:42 PM Rating: Good
That is actually quite a nice UI.

I've got a couple of suggestions and questions.

Suggestions are to use the same texture for your Damage Meter and Raid 'card' bars, and maybe switch to Grid for raid frames because it would give you pretty much what you want. You can type in any buff or debuff and it will allow you to track it with an icon, a little square indicator, a highlight of the whole frame or a border.

I will take a screen shot again soon, but basically my Grid shows my long-term buffs as white indicators in the corners of the unit frame, and colour-coded short-term buffs and other stuff (namely PW:S, Weakened Soul, my own Renew and Aggro) will override them. Tank Cooldowns are huge in the centre of the unit frame and sort of block out half the health bar at the moment, I am still trying out sizes and stuff for those.

You might also want to change/remove the border of the ProM tracker frame to match the rest of your UI.

It does look like one of the most practical healing UI's I've ever seen. Do like.


Now for my question (I had two, but it's late and I can only remember one now): The rounded green and blue bar thingies to both sides of your character are your and your target's health and mana bars, right? I've seen them before and always wondered about that. Also, are they part of PowerAuras, as well? I couldn't really see myself using them because I'm horrible about keeping myself alive as it is but they're still quite pretty.
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