Holy crap, I love you guys.
I have some
real work to do now, but I will
definitely be all over this later tonight.
Thanks so much for the help, both of you. Rest assured I'll report back when I have a chance to sit down with all this.
PS:
Yes, I will be adding multiple bars, as well as other elements. The end goal is to have configuration options for everything in my "kit" (
screenie ).
So, one of these widgets for each bar, horizontal and vertical, and probably a variation for the smaller elements, like a slider for each griffon that would toggle it between an assortment of images (lion, griffon, wyvern, right facing or left facing, etc.). At that point, it wouldn't be difficult (even for me) to break up the AddOn a bit into more of a "plugin" system, so users could only install the files that had the images they actually wanted to use if they wanted to keep it "lite". (We've already discussed that this won't have much of an impact on most systems, but "
perception is reality." At the very least, this AddOn is pretty texture heavy, and busting it up into optional "expansions" would probably lighten the bandwidth load for Cairenn here).
I also want to ultimately include a "hide" checkbox, and a "lock" checkbox (to toggle moveability). I hadn't gotten far enough to sort how those variables would be saved yet either. I had thought originally the hide value at least could be a value outside the slider range, but now I'm not so sure. Regardless, the plan was to default all this crap to being checked "locked" and "hidden" so the user could selectively un-hide and manipulate elements as they set up their interface. Right now, they have that entire mess presented at first, and have to navigate within the restraints of a
loooong MoveAnything scroll box to configure their set up. It's fairly unwieldy for even simply tweaking a layout in its presently released state. While I can't speak for all, I know I tend to "tweak" a
lot.
The goal is to reduce MoveAnything! to an optional dependency, with a much shorter list for its MAPredefined frames file if the user opts to employ it. The purpose of this being mainly just so an individual could re-size an element if they desired. (I'm quite happy with MoveAnything's functionality for re-sizing, and don't see any reason to re-invent that particular wheel) All other functionality could be handled by DiivSkins. I think (with both your help) I'm getting much closer, and I can't thank you enough.
The possibilities start to get pretty broad, but its all the same basic principal. Ultimately, I'd like to think this could even "set a stage" for some actual artists to maybe have a go at doing some real tangible reskinning work on default elements, and still maintain configurability for the user. Now
that would be exciting, much more so than my cut-and-paste hack job for a bunch of superfluous images on screen.
I was just trying to get this first bit working correctly first, and hopefully learn enough along the way that I wouldn't need to keep badgering gracious souls such as yourselves.
Much of what I detailed above I can now handle, but there's obviously a few "gaps" in my fledgling knowledge base just yet.
(I've already learned so much that I snikker at myself when I look at the currently released mod's code, and that's almost entirely just XML. Heck, I didn't even comment things very logically.
)