Possible Love for Former FFXI Players?

[Wizerd]

Alright, I feel kinda silly posting here considering I have some programming/scripting background, but with little time on my hands to learn and understand LUA, combined with my abysmal graphical ability (and thus integrating graphics into UIs), I figured it might be a good idea to see about this here.

Basically, I've run into a problem after recently hitting 80 where I find myself having headaches after running dungeons, or I feel I could have performed better if I could actually keep *track* of everything. Now I realize the Blizzard default UI isn't everyone's (anyone's?) favorite, and it's not mine either, but I do love the graphics and the general look. It's where things are that irks me, and certain elements that should be distinguishable, but aren't.

As Retribution Paladin, my eyes dart between the health bars and my mana bar (top left), my buffs (top right), my debuffs (just below that), my action bars (main ones being bottom left general, 2 rows), and, of course, the actual action in the middle of my screen. This may not seem like all that much, but...

Coming from FFXI, my eyes were watching pretty much the opposite portions of the screen; party members' HP and MP were at the bottom left, with the target above it, the chat log (which would be similar to watching ability cooldowns in WoW I suppose) was the bottom left, and my buffs were at the top left. Overall it was significantly less to watch, but of course there was less data available in general.

What I'm trying to find is something that doesn't require a complete revamp of the WoW look, and still put things where I want them:

Myself and party members at the bottom right of the screen, with my current target above that, and without the god awful pictures that show up to the left of the bars (honestly, race doesn't matter that much). Buffs showing left to right from near the top left of the screen (I want to stab whoever decided it'd be fun to display buffs from right to left...), and to accommodate these, I'd like to be able to put the Right bar and Right bar 2 action bars on the left side, without using an addon that rapes the normal WoW graphics.

Some other things would be nice, but after reading over what I just wrote, I feel like I'm asking an awful lot. @_@

In case anyone's curious, the other "ideal" things included:
- The ability to set party members' names in different colors; specifically Red for tanks and Green for healers.
- The ability to re-order party members as needed (so I can, for example, put the tank second to last and healer at the bottom, so when I'm running a dungeon or raid I can always hit F4 for the tank and F5 for the healer if I need to, though I'm not sure this is possible at all).
- The only second bar that needs to be a bar is mana; it would be nice to see Rage, Energy, and Runic power as a small number from 0-100, without the bar.
- Omen integrated into the party bars, adding a third bar for threat, or something.
- Finally, (and I don't know if the game already does this, but I don't think it does because I've never noticed it...) health numbers should change color as it gets lower; yellow for 50-74.9%, orange for 25-49.9%, and red for the bottom 25%. To me, this would allow me to catch lower health players easier and quicker if I need to toss them a bubble or a Lay on Hands.

A lot, right? Maybe. If not, I'd be willing to answer any questions about what I want. If so, does anyone know if there's a way to yoink just Omen's numbers for implementation of them in another way? (in case I decide to sit down and learn LUA more and attempt to write this myself)

[Akryn]

Honestly my *real* suggestion would just be to download a full unitframes replacement addon and play with it for a couple days, before you decide you don't want to use one, but...

...does anyone know if there's a way to yoink just Omen's numbers for implementation of them in another way? (in case I decide to sit down and learn LUA more and attempt to write this myself)

Omen is just a shell, it uses Blizzard API functions to determine the numbers, see http://www.wowwiki.com/API_UnitDetailedThreatSituation

For just moving things around, see for example:
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...eAnything.html
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...uidFrames.html

For buffs, I'm not sure of an addon that *just* changes the ordering. A lot of unit frame addons can do this and if you can't find a better way you could technically get one of those and just disable everything else.

As far as manipulating the unit frames, there may be something you like here:
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/index.php?cid=21
or http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...it-frames.aspx

[Wizerd]

Originally Posted by Akryn Honestly my *real* suggestion would just be to download a full unitframes replacement addon and play with it for a couple days, before you decide you don't want to use one, but...

And you'd be right. Not long after I made this thread, an old FFXI player on some other forums I visit brought up Xperl (I find curse and this website really hard to navigate through all the crap addons to figure out which are actually decent, despite recommendations for certain things on front pages, etc.). A response to that showed their UI, using Xperl, and it looked pretty nice, so I downloaded it and tried it out.

The only things I haven't obtained from my list above are buff ordering (can do without), re-ordering party members (I think), and Rage/Energy as number only instead of a bar (not a big deal).

I have the buffs under the party members/myself now, which means having the party frames in the top left is fine, since I can stick to the top left, middle, and bottom of the screen, rather than having to dart to the right-hand side. All of my frequent actions are tied to CTRL-1 through 6 and ALT-1 through 6, with a few being Shift-1 through 4 (less common but emergency use, and Divine Plea). I can't try it out until tonight but it seems like it'll work.

My apologies for this thread. If I'd just waited 20 minutes I wouldn't have even needed to post it.

Thanks for the response, though.

[Gemini_II]

XPerl is one of my favorite addons. You should be able to accomplish alot of what you asked for by using it.

You can't make the entire bar disappear, but XPerl will show number values for rage, Energy, etc.

For buffs... I'm thinking that Buffalo might work... been awhile. Otherwise something like Satrina Buff Frames, but that sounds a bit heavy for what you want.

[MidgetMage55]

If your really bored you can get just the text for the values you want from pitbull for certain (the bars can be turned off) and i also vaguely remember Aguf being able to do this as well. Both take a bit of work to configure though so its up to you.