The PE IE Mod Thread - Draggable UI Now Available!

[Sensuki]

Thought I'd start a new thread for this one, considering this exciting new feature that has been added.
 
Forum member Bester, who was responsible for the Savegame editor for the early BB versions, and the work in this thread here has just added a new feature to his IE mod for the PE BB (of which I recently did a demonstration video on which can be found here).

Bester's IE Mod can be downloaded from here: http://rien-ici.com/iemod/
 
That new feature is a draggable User Interface. He has created a series of custom buttons that you can use to drag around the portrait bar, menu bar, combat log and ability bar and save their positions. These changes also persist when you exit the game and there are convenience buttons to undo your previous move or reset the UI back to default.
 
There were many of us that were unhappy with the UI layout that Obsidian have chosen for Pillars of Eternity, and for many the position of the combat log is a fairly serious issue that renders it completely impractical to read on the fly during combat.
 
With this mod you can now remedy that and position the UI elements wherever you wish.
 

There are a couple of catches

• This mod removes the ability to collapse UI elements as the flaps are impractical for horizontal re-positioning (they really should have used gems like in the IE games)
   
• The ability to have a vertical portrait bar is not available at this time.
   
• There is no method implemented that allows perfect swapping of UI elements around as of yet. This might be looked into in the future, so you'll have to rely on your hand eye coordination and maybe some mspaint measuring
   
• The mod also comes with a few non-optional features:
  
  ​- You can skip the Obsidian intro movie
  - Level cap changed from 8 to 12
  - All selection circles are displayed when paused
  - TAB no longer displays all unit tooltips (only the unit you're mousing over)
  - Restored v364 Party Member tooltip functionality
  - Can remove ability tooltip delay with TAB
  - Cheat codes enabled (for testing convenience)
   
• And also the following optional features, which can be accessed from the in-game menu IE Mod Tab
  
  - "Disable Excessive Highlighting", which disables the the blue/green blinking shader unit highlighting (AoE spell highlighting still works)
  - "Disable Engagement", which turns off Melee Engagement - this feature is not fully supported yet, but it allows you to see how the game plays without it
  - "Blue selection circles", which changes the color of NPC selection circles to the colorblind blue color when colorblind mode is disabled
  - "IE-like blue", which requires a reset to the main menu if in game, and changes NPC selection circles to a cyan-like color
  - "Always show circles", shows the selection circles of everyone, all the time
  - "Unlock Combat/Inventory and Looting" - Allows use of Inventory and Looting in combat, all items except for armor can be equipped or unequipped.

Here is an example orientation
 


Installation instructions

1. Go to X:\Steam\steamapps\common\Pillars of Eternity - Public Beta\PillarsOfEternity_Data\Managed
2. Backup your Assembly-CSharp.dll
3. Copy and Paste the Assembly-CSharp.dll from the rar file into the folder and overwrite the default one.
4. Run Pillars of Eternity

If you forget to backup your .dll, you can "Verify Integrity of Game Cache" on Steam to restore the default one.

Download it and try it out

Make sure that your thanks go to Bester for the mod, I only help test for bugs and provide suggestions about what to mod.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Sensuki

[archangel979]

Now will this inspire OE to make their game better or just say "the modders seem to be capable enough so we don't need to bother" ?

Edited January 8, 2015 by archangel979

[Luckmann]

Obsidian, just give Bester a job, already.

[Sensuki]

I would also request that Obsidian let us know what they're planning to do for the Solid HUD UI, because depending on what it looks like it might not be compatible with the mod ... which would be a bit of a shame for me in particular, as I really wanted a Solid HUD.

 

It would be nice if it could be modular, or something so it could actually be compatible with shifting the UI elements around with this mod.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Sensuki

[Malekith]

Sensuki, on 08 Jan 2015 - 2:19 PM, said:Sensuki, on 08 Jan 2015 - 2:19 PM, said:

I would also request that Obsidian let us know what they're planning to do for the Solid HUD UI, because depending on what it looks like it might not be compatible with the mod ... which would be a bit of a shame for me in particular, as I really wanted a Solid HUD.

 

It would be nice if it could be modular, or something so it could actually be compatible with shifting the UI elements around with this mod.

With the new version of Unity isn't it posible for Bester to creat the UI he wants from scratch? So you could create aBG2 style UI or something?

Edited January 8, 2015 by Malekith

[Sensuki]

Theoretically it is. However we would also probably need some new art to go with it.

[Bester]

With the new version of Unity isn't it posible for Bester to creat the UI he wants from scratch? So you could create aBG2 style UI or something?

 

 

1) I'm not a UI artist.

2) I don't know how Ngui interracts with 4.6 UI, but probably not well at all, so it won't be useful in that particular case.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Bester

[Uomoz]

Wow very cool little mod! Well done! As soon as I play the game again I'll try it

[Kjaamor]

Although I continue to roll eyes at some of the non-UI features of the mod (cap adjustment, engagement removal), there is little doubt that this is a fine piece of work. Bravo, Bester!

 

I, like Sensuki, would have preferred a skeuomorphic UI, and it is a shame that in playing that it looks unlikely that I'll be able to put the log somewhere more convenient.

 

Has their either been a mod or is there much chance of one in the future that doesn't contain the gameplay adjustments?

[Uomoz]

I too completely disagree on the gameplay changes, but all this features need to be enabled in-game via a menu, so you don't have to worry about them if you want only the functionality changes.

[Sensuki]

The gameplay changes are more for testing purposes than anything. You can't actually level up to 12 in the beta, but you can cheat yourself up to it to test the build process.

 

Has their either been a mod or is there much chance of one in the future that doesn't contain the gameplay adjustments?

 

They're completely optional, don't tick them and no worries.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Sensuki

[ruzen]

changing hero portraits vertical could be usefull aswell

[Kjaamor]

The gameplay changes are more for testing purposes than anything. You can't actually level up to 12 in the beta, but you can cheat yourself up to it to test the build process.  

 

They're completely optional, don't tick them and no worries.

 

Apologies, misread. It's all up there.

[Shevek]

Great work. I hope Bester finds a way to do verticle portraits. Maybe that will be possible with the move to 4.6?

[Leferd]

Looking forward to some of the components for this mod!

[Quantics]

Amazing! 
 

Will the mod work for linux/mac?
Hm. When the mod starts coming out in form of a patcher, it might patch the linux/mac assembly correctly. Until then, since I don't have macos/linux, you can send me a macos/linux assembly, I'll patch it for you and we'll see. 

 
 
Here is a link to my Assembly dll (OSX):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/otdby7pil8ipv4a/Assembly-CSharp.dll?dl=0

 

It would be great if you could give it a try

[AndreaColombo]

Mandatory from day one for me.

[Flow]

I honestly don't understand the consternation over where on the screen UI elements are positioned. The information being delivered is the same. After playing for a few minutes, I can adapt to whatever.

 

I do find mechanical changes interesting, but I'll wait until we have final PoE code before deciding if combat mods are useful/necessary.

 

Bookmarking for later persual. Thanks for the work, Bester.

Edited January 8, 2015 by Flow

[White Phoenix]

I installed mod from curiosity (I didn't care for mechanic until there are some major bugs) and it has one great benefit - cyan circles, they should be in the full game, because as I turned them on, it was the end for my indistinguishable characters problem! It makes combat so much clear and it's only brighter blue! Especially it can be seen at night, when everything is in blueish tone.

 

Draggable UI is nice, although I like it as it is now (not moddable), but understand there are people, who wanted to have portraits, UI parts right or in middle or left, up, down. 

[Bester]

Great work. I hope Bester finds a way to do verticle portraits. Maybe that will be possible with the move to 4.6?

 

Two simple things I could do:

 

1) Make them draggable individually.

2) Perhaps I could make them align vertically, but then the functionality of swapping their positions would be lost.

 

I understand people's desire for vertical portraits, because that's how it used to be in IE games, but its impracticality is also blatant, considering the amount of mouse movement it would require, since action bars are horizontal and therefore would be quite far away from the portraits.

 

I'm curious, would you seriously use vertical portraits and not care about the distance between portraits and action bars?

Edited January 8, 2015 by Bester

[Bester]

Amazing! 

 

Will the mod work for linux/mac?

Hm. When the mod starts coming out in form of a patcher, it might patch the linux/mac assembly correctly. Until then, since I don't have macos/linux, you can send me a macos/linux assembly, I'll patch it for you and we'll see. 

 

 

Here is a link to my Assembly dll (OSX):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/otdby7pil8ipv4a/Assembly-CSharp.dll?dl=0

 

It would be great if you could give it a try

 

Ok I'll look into it over the weekend. Don't hesitate to remind me in case it slips my mind.

[Malekith]

Bester, on 09 Jan 2015 - 01:27 AM, said:

 

Shevek, on 08 Jan 2015 - 7:16 PM, said:

Great work. I hope Bester finds a way to do verticle portraits. Maybe that will be possible with the move to 4.6?

 

I'm curious, would you seriously use vertical portraits and not care about the distance between portraits and action bars?

 

Yes, it feels prety natural to me.

[Karkarov]

When it works without losing features in the current ui let me know.  It is nice work and Bester has put lots of cool effort it, but I don't care to see the combat log 75% of the time and I never want to see the main menu.

[Hormalakh]

Hey Bester. I can do solid UI artwork. Others have seen my work here before, but we can chat up a design and maybe get this in?

 

I'm thinking we can just copy the ie type solid UI. Let's chat.

[Bester]

When it works without losing features in the current ui let me know.  It is nice work and Bester has put lots of cool effort it, but I don't care to see the combat log 75% of the time and I never want to see the main menu.

If you don't want the middle menu, you can just drag it out of the screen. And if you absolutely need the minimize buttons, you can use the mod without activating custom UI, since it's completely optional.

 

But I don't think I'll ever restore the minimize buttons in custom UI myself though. You'd even have to make 2 on each side, depending on where your UI elements are, and it's just not worth the all the trouble, since log is pretty important anyway. The sources are open though, anyone could very well extend the mod to support minimalist ui.

 

 

Hey Bester. I can do solid UI artwork. Others have seen my work here before, but we can chat up a design and maybe get this in?

 

I'm thinking we can just copy the ie type solid UI. Let's chat.

Sure, add me on steam. However I'm not sure I want to do solid UI until I see what Obsidians come up with. And I'm not sure the IE type solid UI would look well, considering that we're now in the wide screen era and the log would be too wide, and action bars in poe are different from how they were in IE games. A few things would have to change.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Bester