Im toying with ideas atm, what im basicly looking for in the end is a minimal ui, with wich it displays needed information in a nonintrusive and at best not in the way and at the same time readable from peripheral view(go tunnelers!). Minimal amount of art themed around class and spec, while maximizing actual in-game screen space. In a full 25 and or 40player raid enviorment.
A real upfront lack of numbers in general, cause, numbers arnt fun. You need the number information normally to recheck something, id rather it not be on the screen all the time unless i want\need it to. Its just not a visually appealing way to display information at all times.
So less numbers on the screen the better imo. Anyway as you can see its not nearly a visual wonder to look upon, but once iv figured out the best way to display stuff the style should normalize to something consistently and hopefully have that nice look of a real ui compilation. Im taking inspiration from action based games where temporary icons/sounds/animations and such tell you all you need to know about your current situation, without numbers, like ehm power ups and or powerdowns i guess.
When you get down to it once you know your class/spec/encounter, ur actually not spending alot of time looking at your ui cause "you know it like the back of your hand". Apart from healers i guess who need to worry about raidframes constantly. This is something i want to involve aswell, not currently playing any healer class so i just havnt worried about it to much. But my initial idea is to move the raidframes where my current runes, gcd and coollines(the addon) are. It seem like the best way to keep an eye on the entire raid while still doing your thing on the battlefield.
Anyways im still at the point of how i want information to be displayed what information really is critical, and what just doesn't need to be seen other then by a tooltip for details or perhaps maybe some sort of cheat-sheet button, for like bindings and or other details on screen if you actually need them. lets say i bind my toggle details to h, or some other accessible button. keeping my ui almost number free and animations to display information keeping it fun and clean.
As you can see iv only included icons for spells which actually have a cool-down, the rest are not actually needed on screen, as long as you can remember what key they are bound to(a hint key showing all your spells and what there binded to would be cool, (lol just covered that awell), and where your global cooldown is at, which i have solved in a crafty way imo =) its the frosty line that goes form healthorb to runic power orb if you didnt notice
. I really didn't like the old design of the gcd being displayed on every other icon, so ugly and distracting.
Something i really want to do is replace my buff bar so that it only shows stuff that im missing, and target debuffs aswell. Since some are implemented in both ways. And normally you usually want to know what buffs/debuffs your missing more than what buffs you currently have. In my case anyway. that would free up some screenspace, quite a bit imo, and also let you know if somethings missing, wich can be hard to decipher without special addon(s). Another benefit would be towards your short buffs which your probably already tracking via powerauras/weakauras already anyway, but if you wherent there would be alot less icons to keep track of. Ie less distracting.
Looking for any and all type of feedback, and or discussions, links, hints, captain obvious's statement's, proffessor
write's comments on spelling and formating or doctor fails harsh words of wonder. But please keep the lols at my failing on the encounter to a minimum =).
Thank you for your input or otherwise.
http://www.youtube.com/rhozac
edit: if anyone knows why those icons in my "hidden in combat" chatframe are still showing please let me know, annoying.