WAR-UI guide

Quick & Dirty WAR-UI guide

I’m a UI fanatic. My UI is probably about the second thing I do in a game after make-char-log-in-look-around — ok, so maybe the fourth thing. Still, a UI that doesn’t fit my screen AND my playstyle is no good to me.

Tip: to hide the UI so you can take screenies, hit Shift-Z (default binding). It’s a toggle.

Tip: if it’s mods you’re after, try CurseGaming’s WAR mods site. You can use their Curse client or not as you see fit, and you’re on your own from there; it’s not that hard to work out. I’ve got a few installed myself, but I’m not a modder so I can’t do support.

A couple of caveats: your UI does not have to, and indeed probably won’t, look like mine. I’m left-handed for one, and I prefer to look at the bottom of my screen than the top. And finally I now have this shiny 28″ monitor, which has allowed me to really e x p a n d how much space my UI takes up. Even so I hope this might help a few of you out there.

Note: to view the pics at a larger size, just click on the thumbnail. It should open in a new tab/window on your browser.

To start with, here’s a picture of the more-or-less base UI. I say base, because I’ve been in beta for a while and I’ve done some fiddling, so it’s possible yours won’t look exactly like that. It should be mostly the same though.

The first step if you want to be able to alt-tab out of the game is to change the User Settings. Click the WAR icon at the top-middle of the screen to open the dialog shown below.

Click “User Settings” and the following dialog will open. I’ve circled the two options to UNCHECK, because for the time being Mythic recommends those. It still won’t guarantee that you can alt-tab to other stuff with ease, since that depends partly on your comp & gfx card, but it’s worked extremely well for me. As I type this, I have WAR running in the background. Note that WAR doesn’t like to be minimised, not one bit, so even in windowed/no frame mode I can still see bits of my WAR client in the background (yay huge screens!). Note also that usually if you’re going to run in windowed mode, it’s best to set the client resolution to match your desktop rez.

Feel free to play about with the other settings as you please, there’s quite a few more the screenie doesn’t show. Go on, you have my permission!

OK now on to REAL UI customisation. The next pic shows what happens when you select “Customize Interface” from the WAR menu (see screenie 2) and expand both the “General Settings” and “Action Bars” option groups. I’ve also selected the “4 bars – small cluster” option to show what it initially looks like, since I like to run lots’o'hotbars. The “Layout Editor” button is circled in red since that’s the one that’s used to make any changes to where stuff is, how big, whether it’s shown or hidden, etc.

You can see in that pic that my UI is already globally scaled to about 0.8 — and if you just want to make stuff a little smaller, playing with that slider and its handy-dandy preview option might be all you need. If you want further fiddling, however, hit the Layout Editor button and the following dialog comes up:

Seems to me like there’s an extraneous step involved, but it is what it is. To actually START messing with your UI elements, you need to click that “Start editing” button. The next pic shows more or less what you’ll see. UI elements become green-tinted. When selected, they become yellow and acquire corner handles you can hold & drag to make each element larger or smaller.

Most elemenets can ONLY be scaled proportionately — that means you can’t choose to make a UI element wider without also making it taller. The exception to this is chat boxes, but in order to resize without rescaling you need to mess with those in NON UI-customisation mode.

The Windows… button leads to a list of UI-elements (or windows), and lets you lock or unlock and show or hide each element as you see fit. I always turn off (hide) the hotbar endcaps; they’re pretty, but they take up space I need for other stuff since my goal is always to keep as much “gameview” as possible while still having all the UI elements I deem essential (like a second chat window).

The Options… button allows you to turn the snap-to function on/off and to select a snap-to distance, both of which are very handy. If you want a nicely-aligned UI, I strongly suggest making sure this is turned on (which it is by default). When a UI element wants to snap to an element nearby, it will turn orange instead of yellow; if you release at the point, it will snap to that other element. Sadly I haven’t managed to take a pic of that “snap-to” effect because it requires mouse-control of a given UI element *and* you can’t take in-game screenshots in UI layout mode (I faked it by taking desktop screenies instead).

When you’re done messing about with UI elements, or if you want to bail out without saving anything, hit that EXIT button and select either Yes or No to save/notsave any changes. Note that if everything goes horribly wrong, there’s a “Restore Defaults” button to undo everything.

With my vast experience in messing with (and messing up) game interfaces, I like to get stuff to a state I MOSTLY like and then save. Then I can go back in and mess some more, and if I really screw things up I can exit without saving but also without losing all the changes I made previously. (It’s possible that 3rd-party mods will make all this a lot easier someday, too.)

Almost done. Next is a pic of my screen in layout mode, just to give people an idea. It’s scaled down a little but hopefully you can make out most of the stuff on there. Note that in layout mode you can see a bunch of UI elements that may not be visible in play depending on whether you have certain abilities (eg Incognito for Witch Hunters) or stances (like Shadow Warriors; although they’re not always visible, they should be positioned where they WILL be when they’re needed. So, for example, I always move my Morale Bar to somewhere more central because it’s really important in long fights, especially RvR. The tactics bar, while important, doesn’t need to be as central because it’s a “set up and forget” kind of thing.

Take a look at what they call “Career Resources” right in the middle of the screen above the hotbar: most careers have those  — Witch Hunter accusations, Disciple of Khaine blood points, Swordmaster/Black Orc balance/plan, etc — but some do not. It’s usually important to be able to see this but the default UI seems to want to throw it right on top of the hotbars, which irritates me, so I move it up a little.

NOTE – the career resources window will be repositioned to default for every new character career you make, even if the rest of your UI stays put. Fortunately it’s not much to move. If you’ve already made a Witch Hunter and moved the Accusations thingy, any subsequent Witch Hunters you make will share that thingy-positioning. It’s not a huge help, but it’s worth noting.

Note also that I usually try to leave the “Cast Bar” alone, because it’s a handy middle-of-screen locator and for me acts as a “high mark” guide for the elements at the bottom of my screen. Much higher than that and I’m sacrificing too much play area. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

And finally my UI when done. Well, I say done, but it’s never done. I’m sure I’ll be fiddling with it for days to come, tuning it to the mix of careers I’m going to play and whatnot, but that’s its basic shape. There seems to be a UI quirk right now where chat windows don’t want to stay where you put them from one login to the next — looks like they want to snap back to some smaller-rez default position, so depending on your rez you may not notice it. In any case, just reposition it a few times and eventually it should stick.

Bah! I can’t get the last pic to display its thumbnail properly… have a link instead!

FINAL FINAL words, I promise: if you’ve just spent ages redoing your UI till you’re happy with it, log out (the slow way to char select, no Alt-F4 crap, no Exit game), THEN exit the game from the char select screen, and then reload your client. Most games need a proper exit sequence to save things like UI settings, and there’s nothing worse than setting up The Perfect UI (TM) only to crash 5 minutes later and lose all your hard work.

Hope that helps! WAAAAAAAGH!