It all started out as a desire to compile all the various gui tweaks i was using into one (xUI, Slate's Tiny Spell book, Cyricc Compact Character Stats, Gaoneng Player's Handbook etc). I play in 1024 res and the default layout just takes too much space. I really loved the Baldur's Gate UI by Trevor Morris, but it took up even more space. Then I thought of modifying a few things myself...
These are the changes to the default GUI (I tried to make the panels of uniform size and look - thin borders, transparent black background, smaller buttons, smaller scrollbars etc):
- Character Screen reduced in size to be the same as inventory screen. Changed background, smaller fonts with no outline (much clearer with the black background)...
- Changed the look of the Inventory
- Resized Known Spells and Memorized Spells to be the same size as the Inventory, changed look, replaced spell level icons with the ones from NWN1
- Resized Store, Barter Screens, changed look...
- Changed Quick Cast drop-down menu and Metadata Grid and look
- Mini Map changed a lot (square minimap) and Area Map changed just a little bit (not much that can be done there)
- Smaller Party Bar
- Added Command bar options in the Mode Bar with the NWN1 Icons
- Changed the look of Hotbar, Action Queue, Target Enemy, Target Friend, Player Menu, Voice Menu, Journal
- changed the loading bar in Load Area and Load Module Screens
(15.08.2007)
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THANKS:
My sincere thanks goes out to XiDragon for allowing me to use and modify his code to create and give functionality to SlimGUI options screen. XiDragon's (xUI) has been an inspiration to me to make my own UI improvements.
This changes the size of the portrait in the chat window (take a look at the screenshot). To install extract to the override folder. Delete quickchat.xml from "ui\custom\slimgui folder". Can be used for both themes. NOTE: I will not be adding this to the installer, so it will remain a separate download.
Non Installer version of SlimGUI. With changes from v2.76 installation got a bit more complicated, but detailed instruction are inside. If you have any problem please contact me.
The package contains SlimGUI for the following versions of NWN2 (Both Gold and Green Themes) NWN2 v1.23 (OC, MotB)
NWN2 v1.23 (OC, MotB) with Compmonai v2.2
Storm of Zehir v1.23
Storm of Zehir v1.23 with Compmonai v2.2
Also included are extras:
Small Inventory
Big Bag Inventory v1
Big Bag Inventory v2
Warlock Buddy
Small Party Bar
From v2.76 Custom Hotbars with or without Options Screen are separated into various packages. Custom Hotbars install ALL of hotbars and an Options Screen to change them at will. Also are included separate hotbars witch replace hotbar.xml installed with basic SlimGUI. Only one of these can be selected during install and they can be installed along side custom Hotbars package. To manipulate various hotbars easily extra buttons have been added to the Playermenu. Please see the appropriate screenshot for more info.
*NOTE* If you use (Tony_K's Compmonai) or (Warlock Buddy) updated by Ladydesire don't forget to delete the original .xml files provided by the authors. For Compmonai those are characterscreen.xml, contextmenu.xml, creatureexamine.xml, and for Warlock Buddy quickspell.xml and warlock.xml. These files are usually located in the override folder.
If you are using compmonai.XX in hak form, open it with (NWN2Packer) and remove/delete characterscreen.xml,contextmenu.xml and creatureexamine.xml and copy/save the same .xml's from the right SlimGUI package.
@ Kinasin
It has been a few months since i last checked in here. Of the top of my head, i can't exactly say what may be the problem with your game. First you should uninstall SlimGUI, but if the uninstaller won't start do it manually by deleting the related files. Download the manual install version and read the included instructions on how to do that (the instrucions explain where everythin goes). You should also check the override folder for multiple versions of hotbats.xml file (it may be in other subfolder).
For a more detailed instruction, you will have to wait for me to reinstall NWN2 to refresh my memory and test the SlimGUI uninstaller. Sorry I can't be of more help at this moment.
Hey I'm getting this error where another hotbar pops automatically when ever I go inside a house or like every 5 minutes and just goes over the normal hotbar that I have chosen. Any ideas on how to fix this ?
@ pakrat25
Easy way, you ask? The transparency of the GUI elements is determined by the alpha channel of the images used to create it. Example: if you were to open action_queue_slim.tga (image used as background for action queue) in Photoshop and go to the Channels tab, at the bottom of the stack, you would see Alpha 1 channel. It's in black, white and grays. The area of the image that is black is transparent(you can see through it), the grays are semi-transparent, depending on the %, and whites are solid non-transparent part of the image.
Most of my GUI elements in the gold theme use background.tga as a common background, and its Alpha 1channel is all gray. By changing it's Alpha 1 channel to a different gray (the closer to black the more transparent) you would change most of the GUI elements transparency. But to make a uniform change to all elements (tile bars, borders etc.) you would have to edit a lot of image files used by the theme.
I have been using Photoshop exclusively for a few years now, so all the tips on how to do what you want would refer to it.
Posted by Psionic-Entity at 2010-04-03 10:37:10 Voted 9.75 on 04/03/10
Love the look, definitely the best UI out there. Would really love to see something like this made compatible with HCR2, if that's even possible
Posted by Corwin z Amberu at 2010-03-30 22:49:06 Voted 10.00 on 03/30/10
I love the Green, slim interface. Finally got rid of the*bleep*bersome, heavy standard UI.
Great job!
@ Galnospoke
Back when i first created slimgui , i was using a 17" monitor with 1024x768 resolution (I'm now using 1280x1024). On it, all gui elements were too big, so i first decided to make them smaller and of uniform size IE reduce or enlarge, if necessary, and make them all the same as the inventory screen. First version took me like 6 days of 16 hours a day to finish (bear in mind i really did not have a clue what to do at first).
So an answer to your question is: maybe in a near future when I'm up to redoing everything I'll make a bigger slimgui. Also, I'm not sure how larger would you like me to make the gui elements, lengthwise and height-wise. If you have an idea please email me the details.
Posted by lethial at 2009-10-15 18:37:50 Voted 10.00 on 09/30/09
and 30 minutes of typing go out of window because i forgot that opening tags exist in html as well.
ok i'll do this again:
line 346 UIListBox name="FEATDESC_LISTBOX" x=28 y=102 width=329 height=122. increase 'height' value by a certain amount.
line 358 UIText strref="181237" x=43 y=225. increase 'y' by the same amount
line 359 UIListbox name="FEAT_LIST" x=22 y=250 width=335 height=251. increase 'y', lower 'height' by the same amount.
2. open playermenu.xml go to line 85
UIButton name="MENU_TOGGLE_BUTTON" x=3 y=0 width=47 height=47. here you define the position,size and function of the button. if you change anything bear in mind how it will look in relation to the other gui elements. if you don't want a gui element to show make it a comment by adding opening and closing tags before and after its UIBUtton tags as defined for xml (<!--comment-->). you can see it at the top of the xml you just opened.
3. the installer is meant to install only one version of SlimGUI. both themes contain files with the same names (.tga for images and .xml)and those are set to overwrite files of the same name when installing. but, i sometimes change something in a theme, be it an image or an xml, so their order of installing changes dependant on the package, so when installing both themes you got it all mixed up. just reinstalling will not work, first uninstall and make sure all the files have been removed, then reinstall just one color theme.
@lethial
First, sorry for the late reply. Lets address your questions in order given:
1. of course you can resize it. open characterscreen.xml in a text editor (try crimson editor) and go to line 346 where it says
Posted by lethial at 2009-10-01 09:59:05 Voted 10.00 on 09/30/09
That is awesome to hear Slider, thank you very much as always.
Couple questions/comments if I may:
1. Is it possible to resize the feat window, so one could see more text description of the feat? For that matter for any other popup windows to reduce the need to scroll too much. I don't want to add more unnecessary work for ya, so if you could give me couple pointers as to where to start poking around for that it would be great.
2. For most of the pop up windows (examine for example) there is a big "Neverwinter nights" icon at the bottom. It is shaped like a button, and I always click on it every time thinking that it was the "close" button.
So can we get an option to remove it (to reclaim back some window space) or have it function like the close button?
3. Some feed back about the installer. A little while ago, I tried to use the installer to install your great UI. But I ended up installing it manually.
Some issues that I encountered:
1. It wasn't very clear if we should install both gold and green version of the UI. If that is not a good thing, the option of installing one or the other should be disabled when the user selected one color.
- When I installed both color the first time, the UI that I got was a mixture of gold and green. However, when I uninstalled it, and installed either the gold or green color separately, part of the UI elements were not installed.
- That trick you mentioned in the comments was great in making the action bar "stick." I think that instruction should be placed in an readme that accompanies the installer?
Thanks for the heads-up lethial. Compmonai v2.2 has only one file changed compared to v2.1 (in regards to SlimGUI), and that is in fact the fix Player1 implemented into the cretureexamine.xml file. So we are good, nothing to change, v2.2 works with SlimGUI 2.79.
Posted by lethial at 2009-09-30 04:44:45 Voted 10.00 on 09/30/09
Thank you very much Sliders! Btw, there is a new Companion AI 2.2 that just came out, I haven't checked it out yet, so I am not sure if anything will need to be updated for slim UI.
thank you very much. And since I forgot to rate the last time, I will fix that this time.
Annnnd.... SlimGUI v2.78 is out. Sorry for the two updates in one day, but i just started playing Dark Waters Chapter 3 (by Adam Miller) and noticed that the Two Weapon Fighting feats for my ranger didn't show at all in the feats panel. So i fixed it.
With v2.76 you can choose if you wish to install Custom Hotbars at all. You can install a specific custom hotbar witch will replace default hotbar.xml and give you the functionality of keyboard shortcuts (1-0 to activate specific slots and Shift+num to change hotbar pages). Or you can install both all Custom Hotbars and a default hotbar replacement and play around with them using buttons in the playermenu. See the screenshot for info what each button does.
@ myrk
Since i have never tried multiplayer and thus have never tested SlimGUI in such an enviroment i can't tell exactly why the hotbars are not working. It might just as well be some incompatibility with PW, but i can't be sure. Multiplayermenu.xml is a file i do not use in my mod, and when i looked it over i could not see anything that might cause the problem. Best solution i can offer at this time is to do what i advised a few post earlier:
1. Chose which hotbar you want to use and rename it to hotbar.xml. The numbers in the name refer to the following:
011232 means 1 row, 12 slots, size 32px-small. The default size hotbar is 011240 which means 1 row, 12 slots, size 40px. Just delete this numbers in the name, and do not modify anything else within the file.
2. Go to actionqueue.xml and open it in text editor, go to line 5 where it says
"OnAdd=UIObject_Misc_ExecuteServerScript("gui_slim_load","3.0")" and delete this OnAdd event (delete that is written here, nothing else). This will prevent the script from running and allow the hotbars to remain.
Hope this helps. Keep me posted if there are any other issues.
Great work Sliders. Love the UI, but the hotbars don't work on PWs. I understand the issue is with multiplayer stuff loading multiplayermenu.xml. Is there an easy fix to this?
@ Kunikos
1. I'll add the instructions, in a readme file, or maybe even an ingame screen.
2. Even if you have SoZ installed you only need a SoZ package if you are playing it. If you play any mod or OC or MotB it would work with the regular NWN2 package version.
3. I have disabled the default hotbar in the games options/interface menu, so it does not popup after area transitions.
4. The bottom button near the playermenu (the three buttons on the right of the playermenu) unloads the default hotbar and loads the custom one.
Posted by Kunikos at 2009-07-30 17:11:08 Voted 10.00
Do you think you could include those instructions to fix the hotbar.xml you wrote in reply below with the installer, so if you pick SoZ version off the installer menu it will display after it installs? Or maybe just do it automatically for the default one so that at least the default 011240 is shown after area transitions and the like? I have to fight the default OEI hotbar every module transition while playing Mysteries of Westgate with my SoZ NWN2 by re-applying the SlimGUI settings.
@ welps
Yes, what you tried should have worked, except that when you load a game a script is run that closes the default hotbar (hotbar.xml) and loads a custom or the one you used previously.
Originally, when i first added the hotbars, I added a few lines to the original hotbar.xml that executes that script. But with Storm of Zehir and Overland map I had to move it somewhere else, and finally it ended up in actionqueue.xml.
1. Chose which hotbar you want and rename it to hotbar.xml. The numbers in the name refer to the following:
011232 means 1 row, 12 slots, size 32px-small. The default size hotbar is 011240 which means 1 row, 12 slots, size 40px. Just delete this numbers in the name, and do not modify anything else within the file.
2. Go to actionqueue.xml and open it in text editor, go to line 5 where it says ” OnAdd=UIObject_Misc_ExecuteServerScript("gui_slim_load","3.0")” and delete this OnAdd event (delete that is written here, nothing else). This will prevent the script from running and allow the hotbars to remain.
Do this and it will work. I just tried it myself
10 - A Masterpiece, Genuinely Groundbreaking 9 - Outstanding, a Must Have 8 - Excellent, Recommended to Anyone 7 - Very Good, Deserves a Look 6 - Good, Qualified Recommendation 5 - Fair, Solid yet Unremarkable 4 - Some Merit, Requires Improvements 3 - Poor Execution, Potential Unrealized 2 - Very Little Appeal 1 - Not Recommended to Anyone