Several players have posted some remarkable interfaces for zMud. I'm thinking it'd be really nice if we had a 'packet' for people to download such an interface. It would need to be easy to set-up (i.e., well documented) and generic enough for anyone to use (unless we entertain doing one for each guild which seems extreme).

So I'm wondering how practical or possible it is to create and if anyone is willing to help design and maintain such a packet.

Here is what I was thinking.

We would need 3 layouts.

400X600
800X600
and 1024X768 Or maybe different ones.

If you create the interface open enough with forthought about these layouts, you could create variables that get set within the script.

So a prompt comes up, and asks "What resolution do you wish?" "What is your name?" "What City/guild is your charachter?" These questions would set simple things such as labels with the charachter's name, and toggle triggers that say, if they are members of Magnagora, will have buttons for such thing as .... blah nevermind. I'm not delteing what I just wrote, so that you can see where I'm comming from.

I guess the first thing we should come up with is what information we want to display. I have the following.
1. A vote button
2. My name
3. Stats
4. Lessons and Credits
5. Level and Rank
6. % to next level and Karma
7. gold in pack.. might want to make one for gold in bank account also.
8. Critical hit counters and kill counter
9. Day/night button.
10. Wounds
11. Health and Mana guage (guess will might need more and need to ask what the prompt is set to)
12. Seperate status window for things such as tells or afflictions.

I'm thinking most of the stuff can be grabbed off score/etc. Also should just be basic curing, not really attack stuff. Balance/eq tracking and all that, but leave the attack aliases up to the player to make.

Best thing would be an interface that has variables for what skills and powers in those skills you have. So lets say person A just has basic skills, nothing extra for healing. When he cures, it just does herbs/vials/smoke doesn't atempt to use skills he doesn't have. Now he learns, and gets lets say FOCUS MIND, when he does AB DISCIPLINE and the system sees that, it goes oh, he has it, flags a variable saying use FOCUS MIND. Next time he fights, it will use focus mind + herbs/vials/smoke.

oooh thats a good idea....
I think I'm going to make myself a panel for what skills I have and at what rank they are. If it works we can add it to Project Z

(yes I know thats not what your idea is, but I led me to think of that)

Can this even be done? It seems like quite an undertaking.

I think if we come up with a full list (up to 14 things now) it should be easy. All we need is to know how many things we need in the interface, how many people we have willing to make the interface, and one person willing to make 3 layouts. (ps. I'm willing) I bet woe could get it done 2 days after we figure out whats needed if we divide up the work properly.

Sourceforge has the ACP(Achaean Curing Project) so yes, it can be done.

Rather than pop up lots of prompts, we could just use the CTRL-T thing (I forgot what it's called) that is used with Larkin's ACP, LCP etc. I am able to do these...

I think we should really do a poll to see which ones are worth developing.

With options:

640x480
800x600
1024x768
1152x864
1280x1024
1600x1200


I think we'll find that most people are either using 800x600 or 1024x768, but who knows. We also should determine if people will prefer a full screen version, or a smaller one.
If people aren't using a resolution much, then why waste time developing for it?

And, Estarra, there the only impractical thing may be the graphical button changes since as far as I know they work on numbers, which end up getting changed if there are other buttons already present.

I'll look into it though.

You can label buttons.


The reason I suggested those 3 resolutions was not for what people use as thier monitor, but for people who want full screen or not full screen resolutions.

If you have 1024 layout, and expand it to fit a 1600 screen, it will still look fine, as long as you make the numbers reletive to the outside borders, its only when the layout shrinks that you have problems.

Ok, yes you can use the button tag. However, with the full screen issue, the auto-size/location thing is really rigid and generally doesn't work like you want it to, which is why it would probably be better to make an interface for individual resolutions.

The big issue, which may not even come up is the small size buttons are going to be on a 600x480 resolution (People still use this resolution?!) We need to keep in mind that we don't want to force people to use a custom word wrap. 80 characters is still the standard line length, I don't think we want to bother with command echos though, considering Zmud doesn't wrap them by default.

hmmm, perhaps we can choose a smaller font for the smaller resolutions? Like arial which takes up less room?

Or maybe we can make an easy to read Lusternia font.

So we want to use graphical text? Because as far as I know you can't do a %font (doesn't exist) or html in buttons.

We may not even care to bother with something so small depending on what we figure out.

There is a setting to set your fonts in prefences. Its not a function but its saved within the .mud file.

About the list: It all sounds nice, but it isn't very practical. Sure we could do auto-score/stat every time something dies and grab a lot of those numbers, but I don't need to see my lessons every time I look at the screen. Wasted space in my opinion.



That works just fine for me (I typed that up, not the actual script) so that'd be easy and nice. The bank account bit sounds a little useless to me as well however. I also never understood adding stats to your window, I know my stats generally. If it changes I'll know it then too. I'd say it's better to aim for a bit too little than too much in this scenario.

1. Health, Mana, Endurance, Willpower, Ego, Power, Reserves bars
2. Vote button
3. Name at top in lovely writing (I just did a word perfect word art and photo shopped it a bit)
4. gold on hand
5. Healing classes with radio buttons for on off etc. #NOOP %btnimage (buttonID, CIRCG) etc. etc.
6. Day/Night
7. Totems currently active would be nice
8. I'm writing up a nice classed window for my harvesting that shows what I'm harvesting, how much left etc. That'd be good to have one for each tradeskill and just change it when it prompts you (or we do a window config with CTRL+T).
9. I always liked something seperate (like on the right side if this is all on the left) that has a toggle button for each affliction. Green if healed, red if active. Click it manually heals it, otherwise it goes off trigger.

There are over 50 afflictions, more if you count broken left arm seperate from broken right arm.

Totems would only apply to serenwilde, so we can have city based differences.

We can't photshop each person's name unless we plan on giving instructions on how to do that.

For myself, my stats change so often, I need to know what I'm currently at, esepcially with Highmagic/lowmagic things fading

I never use the bank myself, I tend to invest in credits if I hold too much gold, but some people do use bank accounts and I'm sure they would appreciate that.

ooh! I forgot how many Lusternia has, was in Achaea mindset

We can give them instructions as to how to put a better looking name in however, they can do that one their own

You can only set fonts in these areas:
-Output Window Font
-Command Input Font
-Edit Window Font
-Status Window Font

I don't see any "Button Font"...

If you're referring to me about the "Button Font" I meant with Microsoft Word and whatnot