Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Happy New Year

Nothing more to say.

B I G

Update! Well, this update may look as a small one for you, but for me it's a big one. Take a look at my new portrait panels, the border is deep black and exactly 1 pixel high (or wide). I recently found out that the border named "Blizzard Chat Bubble" perfectly serves as a black border (border edge size 1). Furthermore I do have more space now for my aggro- and dmgmeter. Probably above the chats, maybe below the minimap, I'm not sure yet. There were some smaller updates, too, like changing the font in the bottom or the position of the different pitbull texts.

I do plan to change the color, it is a bit too grey, this may be caused by the Naxxramas neon colored background, but a bit more color won't hurt.

Monday, December 29, 2008

New idea?

Just tested this one yesterday evening. Was just 5 minutes of work, the panels are not anchored at the portraits and stuff, but the idea is to place the groupframes where the raid usually is. When I am in the raid, the groupframes fade out. I have a new plan in my mind considering my map, maybe I should make it mouseover with a macro, so when I am in a raid there would be recount in the lower right corner, and when I'm not there is my minimap.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Some information

Due to a request for my addons I'm using, here's a screenshot of them. I use probably all of them, though remember that you don't need all the addons listed to make a creative and individual interface.

Above that I am planning to release my interface when it's done, which means when I've eliminated all the teething troubles still present.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Work ahead!

Christmas is over, so it is time to resume the work on my interface. After two days of abstinence I still like my UI so far. I got some new ideas by browsing throgh several forums, but I didn't find anything which seemed to be purpose-built for this one. I'm not planning to reshuffle my interface once again, except there is no other alternative. The problem(s) of positioning my aggrometer and/or my damagemeter may result in such a case where I have to think of new strategies to integrate everything I need.

Honestly, I have absolutely no idea how to move on. Maybe moving the buttons from the right side to the bottom, but this won't solve my problems, because I can't imagine omen would fit above my minimap. If you have some ideas, let me know!

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Merry Christmas!

I'm wishing all of my meanwhile numerous readers a Merry Christmas! Thank you for reading my blog, I'm planning a new update already until the next weekend, so stay tuned!

Sincerely yours
welcome.gg

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Santa Claus is coming soon!


Because of Christmas Eve coming and stuff there won't be many updates in the next days. I tried to fix the mess and make the center more clean. Status: achieved (In my opinion).

Monday, December 22, 2008

As a small anecdote aside

Did you know that it can be dangerous to log out while your interface is still all in a tumble? Usually I let my interface messed up after a long night of work with panels, buttons and unitframes distributed all over my screen. Today I logged in (mentioned in passing, I canceled my registration for the raid due to the fact that I was not able to play in the afternoon), and guess what I got: Raidinvite!

"We need you so much right now, no excuses!"

So I had no other choice except setting my interface while raiding, which means it has to be done fast. None the less I tried different positions of all my stuff used. I won't explain every single one now, because I am awake for about 36h once again, that's why I cut a long story short:


It is still far away from being completed, it looks a bit too squeezed on the one hand, and too empty on the other hand without grid. But I like the potencial behind this idea.

Good night.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Time for tricks

Now what would make you read this guide without me making it more interesting than just posting my status. It is time to present you some "tricks" about my work, starting with (because I consider this to be senseful) my new chats.

First of all remember that I'm just presenting you the way I did it. Feel free to change colors, opacitys, sizes etc.
So actually what you need is kgpanels, download it at curse.com or whereever.
You will have to use 3 panels in order to get the same effect like me. The first panel is just a black one, 100% opacity, size a bit bigger than the chat is. The level can be set to 1.
The second panel on level 2 needs to be a very bit smaller than the first one to be able to cover the black one, in order to only have a small black line around your chat (which means 2-3 pixels less width). I know this could probably be realised by an easy border, but since kgpanels seems to be unable to create some equal borders at each side I made it this way.
You may set the color to any color you want, I took (0.13, 0.14, 0.15, 100%). Furthermore you need a background texture which you can download here. Many thanks to Caith at this point, from whom I borrowed the grapic.
The third panel is once again smaller than the second one, I took around 10 pixels compared to the second one. Set the level to 3, same color as for the last one (0.13, 0.14, 0.15, 100%), same texture, the only difference is I used a border texture now, named "Blizzard dialog", order edge size 4, border insets set to 0. Now put one on top of each other - you're done!

One further tip at the end: anchor the panels to the first one. This will make it much easier for you to position and modify them.

There's no time like the present

I don't know if I really worked 3 hours on like - uhm- not much at all. The problem is that I am not satisfied with my new borders beside the chat. I tried to get them around the minimap, or maybe even around my buffs, or at the bottom of my UI, but it all didn't look nice. The color is too dark, the borders are too big in some way. Anyway, I made it to geht them around my buttons.

Time for bed now, there's always tomorrow.

Every saga has a beginning...

... or so they say at least!
Since I noticed that the only constant is change in my Interface (it will always be a work in progress), I thought it's about time to set out my ideas in a blog, which will hopefully put an end to all the work I got with posting my interfaces in different forums after each small change.

Actually I'm working on a new idea once again, though it might be considered only as an update of my old one(s). What I did was I downloaded several wellknown interfaces such as Caith's or Duke's, installed them and tried to get some kind of a new concept. Overall there is no need to name the others, I was (at least a bit) surprised how grubby most of these works were, so I wasn't very successful, they just didn't had much going for. Anyway, the two mentioned were a synonym for concinnity, even though I only found one single idea I "borrowed" from each guy. Seriously, it is difficult to take parts from interfaces which look like all of a piece. Nevertheless I am happy to to present my Pitbull unitframes with new buffs/debuffs borders, and secondly a new background texture for my chat. The borders are as far as I know included in the .lua files, and due to my lack of knowledge about these files I was never able to realise my wishes until now. From Caith I took a background texture for (probably not only, we'll see) my chat, which gives the chat a more 3-dimensional look. So, in my opinion (very impartial, I know) I definitley like my chatframes more than the ones made by Caith.

You can see the screen enclosed, left side mine, right side the old ones by Caith. All I got to do now is to find a way to let my unitframes and buttonbackground fit into it. Work in progress, as always.