Shadowed Unit Frames - Page 3

Gorsgo · 05/12/09, 5:09 PM

Originally Posted by Shadowed

What kind of text do you show in your both health and mana? Is it just the standard name/level/current,max health/current,max power/race"
How much filtering do you use for auras, do you really need a specific list of what to/not to show, or is letting you choose filtering by what you can cast (Group buffs), can cure, what you did cast (Your auras on the unit)
Portraits, automatically swapping them to the other bar side for target units, annoying or not.
Are additional text options needed, right now it just has left/right health bar, left/right cast bar, but it can let you create and position your own additional text that uses tags.
Gloss for auras, actually a point? Beyond showing a colored class if you can dispel it, I don't see a point to it.
Highlighting, same question. I don't see a point for highlighting a frame if you're targeting it... because you're already targeting it.
Indicators, is there anything else that people use besides status, PvP, leader, master looter, raid target, happiness
Smooth health bar updates (Not quick updates, the ones where the health bar will slowly changed based on health), does anyone use those? Seems annoying to me.
LibHealComm-3.0, anyone use this for anything beside raid frames?
Rune and Totem bars, personally I think colored rectangles are annoying and would rather have icons that show exact time before they're ready/fading
Range checking, useful for anything besides raid frames?
Dummy frame configuration, this was a random idea I was playing with which was to create a dummy frame that you can modify everything on, drag it to increase width, drag portrait to the right side to change it to the right side, etc. Basically it just speeds up configuration since you aren't digging through everything.

Texts
Obviously Health, Health percent, and Power are virtually mandatory for good unit frames. The race/class tags a la Pitbull have always seemed pretty pointless to me. There are much cleaner, easier to interpret ways to display class. Unit frames shouldn't be a replacement for the actual game field so race text is just clutter.

Aura filtering
I wouldn't mind a whitelist / blacklist, but I only use filtering for an extremely niche purpose right now. I wouldn't really lose any sleep if there wasn't fine-tuned filtering. One thing I'd love to see however is non-self debuff desaturation, rather than just straight filtering.

Portraits
Let us turn off individual portraits. I like having a target portrait but it's pretty pointless to see my party or my own portraits.

Text options
An x, y offset would be useful.

Gloss, Hightlighting, Smooth health
I've always considered them pointless and unattractive. Mileage may vary, etc.

Range checking
I don't personally use it but range checking on target could be useful.

Qupe · 05/13/09, 12:46 AM

- As other people have mentioned, I pretty much haven't used an actual text to show class/race in a really long time - much better ways via bar coloring etc... to show that information. But I know a lot of people probably show those texts so an option for them couldn't hurt.

- Aside from the basic highlighting or emphasizing of the auras/buffs you can cast/debuff, explicit filtering of auras isn't a major concern for me. What I really liked most about Stuf frames (switched to PB4 for multiple reasons) was the method in which it displayed aura bars:

It was a simple bar format similar to the quartz buff bar.

- Regarding texts, auto placement like Pitbull, DogTags, and the option to adjust via X,Y would be the most amazing combination of options I can imagine.

- I agree with what you said about highlighting on the target frame (its still nice, though) but for raid frames I'd say its extremely nice. I'm not sure if you were going to create raid frames in this package but I would greatly appreciate raid frames in the same package as my unitframes.

- I cannot stand smooth bar updates. I play a healer class 98% of the time and turn off any type of bar fading/smooth movement out there. I can see it being nice to see as a dps class but it tends to just look like a slow update for a healer and I'd rather see the bar drop immediately.

- Rune bars with unitframes are generally outrageously sub-par to most rune mods out there. If anything just show the icons with Omni-CC support or something of the sort. Totems on the other hand I like having attached to the unitframes since you need nothing but 4 icons with a timer attached to them - ie- 4 icons horizontally aligned with a M:SS timer below or above each icon. Give the totem bar the option to be aligned vertically or horizontally and the ability to place them via X,Y co-ords in relation to a side of the frame.

- For range checking, I absolutely cannot stand a text read-out of range mainly for aesthetic purposes. I'd much rather have the frame fade when oor - all for target/tot/focus/pet/raid.

- I really like the idea of a dummy frame. I think DUF had something similar except you could actually drag elements of the frame to different locations - something I haven't seen since. Dummy configuration as well as mock layouts (like most UF's now) where you can configure a raid frame outside of a raid etc... would be extremely nice.

Shadowed · 05/13/09, 4:02 AM

Gorsgo: What cases do you use it as a niche purpose, are you basically talking about rare boss buffs, or another case? Portraits can be toggled based on the unit frame.

Qupe: The Stuf method is something I'd prefer to leave to buff bars since it's not really the kind of display I want anchored to a unit frame. Raid frames are going to be very basic, any features they have are there because it's useful for the other units to have them. Their meant for DPS mostly who don't want a full raid frame like Grid.

It's not going to support the same type of dragging elements out of the frame that DUF did, since the point is still to keep to being unit frames.

I'm not sure I'll have test modes in this, likely the dummy frame is going to try and replace that. Mostly, because it uses secure headers for party/raids which makes it easier to code, but also means it's not as easy to simply show every frame such as agUF and Pitbull does.

Random status update: Tag/Visibility is done, going to start on the actual layout configuration today and then some of the more non-essential features need to be added like aggro and threat. Hopefully that is all done by this Monday, and I'll have a beta going around then.

Gorsgo · 05/13/09, 4:23 AM

Originally Posted by Shadowed

Gorsgo: What cases do you use it as a niche purpose, are you basically talking about rare boss buffs, or another case?

I don't use the normal debuff display and instead opt to have them on my own unit frame. Much easier to see but it also limits the space I have to display them. Right now the only filter I use is for the argent tournament jousting debuffs, which I hide... Told you it was niche. :P

f1reburn · 05/13/09, 6:40 AM

* Player text: absolute health and mana, no name or class or anything. Target text: absolute health, percentage health,
absolute mana, name, maybe elite/non elite. For the target of target text only the name is sufficient to me.
* I never really tried aura filtering out of fear of filtering out something important, like on the Snaplasher in Freya.
* Automatic swapping of portraits seems kind of annoying, I usually don't use player portraits, but target portrait can be useful
when you're unable to see if you're targeting the right mob in a big group.
* Additional text options are not needed for me least.
* I don't see a point in gloss for auras. Some aura border configuration would be nice, like padding.
* Highlighting is not needed for me at least.
* I only use leader, master looter, raid target indicator, scrolling combat text usually indicates combat. Pet happiness
seems useful to add for hunters.
* I don't use smooth health bar updates.
* I don't use LibHealComm-3.0 for anything beside raid frames.
* I would personally not try to do rune bars and totem bars, the specialised addons usually do a better job. For runes I would just
add the Blizzard style of runebar, only with a spiral that is better to see than Blizzard's.
* Range checking can occasionally be useful for focus and target frames.
* Dummy frame configuration sounds good, maybe a test mode that lets you configure everything and when you're done, it asks for
confirmation to apply it to your real frames, and if you press no your unit frames go back to the way they were before.

You mentioned making a cast bar, I'm not sure if it's complicated but a Quartz-like red area that shows latency would be great.
I can't wait to try it out, keep up the good work!

Papajan · 05/13/09, 9:09 AM

Originally Posted by Shadowed

Keynote the Apple software, or is it a mod? I actually like the idea of a snap-to-align a lot better than simply saying anchor target frame to player frame but offset it by 50.

yeah, Keynote the Apple product. Basically every widget adds a top/center/bottom line to snap to vertically, and it shows the line when you're dragging and it's snapping so that you know what it's doing the align on.

A lot of the other questions have completely different answers depending on whether you're talking about the raid frames or self/target/vehicle/etc. For non-raid frames, range checking is nice on the focus for checking CS/sheep range and it's nice on party frames for the same reason as raid frames.

Mman · 05/13/09, 1:47 PM

One thing I have always wanted in a unit frame is the ability to modify 1, a few, or all of my frames at the same time. That way I can easily go in and adjust the frames global or just adjust an individual or set of frames. It would save a lot of time in setting up the unit frames and allow you to adjust much quicker if needed.

Shadowed · 05/17/09, 12:19 AM

http://img29.imageshack.us/img29/6069/frame3.png

Example of the default configuration (still being tweaked), left = player, right bottom = focus, right top = focus target, middle = target, middle top left = tot, middle top right = totot. I'll probably toss an alpha/betaish on WoWI tonight or tomorrow.

Edit: Beta is out, Shadowed Unit Frames : WoWInterface Downloads : Unit Mods

Krames · 05/17/09, 10:33 PM

The config menu that you have is probably one of the easiest menus I've used. It only took about a minute or less of looking around and I was completely comfortable with it. I never really messed with the tags and such so I'll have to look into some of that and what's going on there, but I think this is a great unit frame addon. You have achieved what you set out to do in my eyes.

EDIT: Slight problem, the cast bar does not actually work from my quick experience with it. It shows the background area where it's supposed to be but the bar itself does not show up.

If you prefer this bug report to be done on the WoWI page, please let me know and I'll delete this portion and re-post on there.

Shadowed · 05/17/09, 11:14 PM

Thanks for the comments.

I prefer WoWI, but ultimately I can either one so it honestly doesn't matter. The cast bar works, but you need to reload, it breaks when you enable it -> disable it -> enable it, this is fixed next push (In a few hours).

Krames · 05/18/09, 12:15 AM

Thank you very much Shadowed, it worked as I expected it would. I'll start posting bugs on WoWI.

EDIT: One last comment. The memory usage is much less than I expected it to be. Definitely a job well done.

Shadowed · 05/18/09, 12:32 AM

Static memory is a bad statistic just so you know, generally you trade static memory for CPU as well and I doubt anyone would say they prefer having slightly lower static memory at the cost of CPU in combat.

Kuosi · 05/18/09, 2:23 PM

Absolutely loving it.
Something I noticed is the party frames getting stuck to your cursor when not anchored to anything and freely dragging them around. I'll see if I can find some bugs / things to improve when I get to play more.

Ollin · 05/18/09, 5:07 PM

I need to learn to read.
<deleted post in wrong type of thread>

globus · 05/19/09, 4:54 PM

thanks for this addon that seems highly interesting. make a try today and found small annoying things :

when trying to move raid frames, I was unable to drop raid frame, they remains stuck to the mouse and was unable to do anything with the mouse until /reloadUI
I was unable to display raid frames in several columns, they are configured "left centered" and it seems that columns overlap
in raid frame I put the aura bufs on the right and they display vertically and not horizontally
small refresh pbs concerning aggro frame coloration (like some frames remaining red after loosing aggro)

I wish you the better for this promising addon, hope it will be a viable alternative for pitbull.