Getting ready to mod WAR's UI

[raykor]

I've never modded a game's UI before, but I have a fair amount of programming experience. I believe I read someplace that the language for WAR's UI modding is Lua, so I grabbed a book on the subject.

To those with previous UI modding experience (or the devs if they see this), is there anything else I should be reading, learning, buying, etc. to get ready to mod WAR's UI? I want to hit the ground running when it releases.

Thanks.

[Midan]

From what I hear your not going to need to mod WAR's UI. I hear that It is capable of being customized in-game without such needed mods.

[raykor]

From what I hear your not going to need to mod WAR's UI. I hear that It is capable of being customized in-game without such needed mods.

I don't know if my information is current, but according to Lance Robertson, the Producer of WAR:


Q: What kind of features/support is planned for interface modification or addons?

A: We are aiming for the game interface to be very modifiable. The actual method we have chosen for WAR is to have LUA addons. Extracting ingame information like item stats, character profiles, quest information and similiar will be possible.

Source (http://news.de.curse.com/details/745/).

[Rizzen]

Heh, I pretty much did the same thing as you raykor. Got my Programming in Lua book right next to me. I don't think there is much we could do right now short of getting used to Lua and what not.

[Qvark]

I do have a lot of spare time atm, so thinking about doing the same. Don't have a lua book, so I'd rather look into some online tutorials.
Anyone know some good links for learning lua?

[Rizzen]

I had a few links on my modding forums, haven't visited them in a while though. I'll go see if I can dig some up.

[Tlear]

Their website has a free book in it for version 5.0 probably somewhat outdated but good enough for getting familiar with it.

Would be fun to write a kill tracker that creates a log with who you killed and when :) I might write one to get familiar with the language. I never bothered learning it for wow. One thing I wonder is how much external functionality will be available from lua inside WAR.

[Rizzen]

There is a lot of good stuff available on the official website as well as the Wiki page.
http://www.lua.org/
http://lua-users.org/wiki/

As well, if there is enough interest in it, maybe we should open up some sort of Modding forum. Write some scripts/mods for whatever and when the time comes, transfer them over to WAR.

Edit: And here is a link to the 5.0 Reference Manual. PDF format.
http://www.lua.org/ftp/refman-5.0.pdf

[Qvark]

Thanks,

Already found my way to this (http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaTutorial) tutorial.
Also found this (http://lua.gts-stolberg.de/en/index.php) site which seems pretty good, haven't looked much into though.

[CrazyGoldShield]

Wow, all of these resources are great. At this rate, I may just go ahead and make myself some test scripts. Following the tutorial, it just seems so... logical... :-D

[Rizzen]

Yeah, Lua seems to flow really nicely and it integrates like a charm with C++. Worked with a bit a few years ago for some NPC's in a BG2 mod.

[Rizzen]

Sorry for the double post, but here is a link to WoW's API. Has pretty much everything one would need to get started on UI mods:
http://www.wowwiki.com/WoWWiki:Interface_customization

[McMustard]

I messed around a bit with mods in WoW. The Lua is the easy part. The XML part, not so much. It's a lot of typing, and I think straight code would be easier for that, but this isn't a thread about WoW, so I'll stop with that.

If WAR uses all Lua and has official API documentation, I will be thrilled. Or even without the official docs (it would just be really nice).

[Elethil]

Their website has a free book in it for version 5.0 probably somewhat outdated but good enough for getting familiar with it.

Would be fun to write a kill tracker that creates a log with who you killed and when :) I might write one to get familiar with the language. I never bothered learning it for wow. One thing I wonder is how much external functionality will be available from lua inside WAR.


I'm hoping the TOK dose just that!

I'm all for mods but I pray that the ui team makes the need for them limited. I hate it when I spend more time messing with mods to customize the ui to do what It should just be able to make it do in the first place then actually playing the game!

[Rizzen]

I'm hoping the need for mods will be low, but there will always be that piece of information that is needed and not easily accessible for some reason. It's like a law of UI design or something.

With any luck the game will be so fun that I won't spend more time playing with my UI than I will playing the game.

[Heartless_]

My best suggestion is to get some time in working on World of Warcraft's UI. As much hate as the WAR community has for WoW, I bet the top UI mods on day one will be from some of the top WoW coders.

[Insight]

I jumped in joy when I read that WAR would be using LUA, it's such a lovely language. And if the framework is based on XML, then I'll be even happier since I know XML quite good already. The only problem is what to make, since the ToK seems to cover everything which has something to do with Data, and the Data-mods are most fun to code.

I'll check through those Lua-tutorials you posted - always good to update your brain-cells. ;)

[Navras]

As a machinima creator, I do hope there'll be a "warmodelviewer" available soon after retail.

[Rizzen]

As a machinima creator, I do hope there'll be a "warmodelviewer" available soon after retail.

I'm sure there will be one put out a couple weeks after the curve hits max rank. I wonder if there will be any sort of model/texture swapping available to be done...

[Thezdin]

Great thread everyone!

I personally was intimately involved in modding the DAoC interface where possible; eventually came up with a UI that received well over 20,000 downloads. I plan on doing quite a bit of work on building a free community UI resource in addition to writing mods for the WAR Community. A file and information repository if you will, at the very basic level.

If any of you guys are interested in helping contribute to, and test the website please feel free to contact me. I'm looking for highly motivated people that are very dedicated to the WAR community and that's pretty obvious here.

Kind regards,

Thezdin Bloodhaze
WARGuilds
thezdin@warhammerguilds.net

[Rizzen]

I'd love to as I'm currently toying in some Unit Frames for WoW that I'm hoping to transfer over to WAR when the time comes.

[blaakeee]

I'm no programmer, but this actually reminds me of the latest podcast video, where mark was talking about specialized testing in BETA. They should take a small group of maybe 10 of you guys, give you guys the WAR interface and game engine and just let you run with it, and maybe a small test zone just so you can quickly hop into the game to see if your creations can work, see what you can do, and maybe bring up any concerns over the interface.

[Tlear]

I'm no programmer, but this actually reminds me of the latest podcast video, where mark was talking about specialized testing in BETA. They should take a small group of maybe 10 of you guys, give you guys the WAR interface and game engine and just let you run with it, and maybe a small test zone just so you can quickly hop into the game to see if your creations can work, see what you can do, and maybe bring up any concerns over the interface.

Thats actually a brilliant idea. If they actually let community developers test the UI API that would rock!

[Rizzen]

Thats actually a brilliant idea. If they actually let community developers test the UI API that would rock!

That would be awesome, it would actually motivate me to throw something together now instead of before Open Beta/Release.

Would be great for feedback on the default UI as well.

[RealKrag]

Thats actually a brilliant idea. If they actually let community developers test the UI API that would rock!

Yeah, you know when they ask you if you have ever been in a beta before during your beta application? And they explain to you that beta is ...beta... can have bugs etc etc... ?

All software engineers live in a constant state of pre alpha so we kind of laugh at that :)))

By the way, as a professional curiosity.. anyone knows if they're using TDD/BDD in developing WAR ? I hope so, 'cause that would make them produce tools that let add-on developers od the same (I had to implement my own TDD tool in WOW and it was a pain)
~K

[zhindetz]

I hope there will be all-in-one site with Mods, moderated by devs.

[Dunhill]

I've never modded a game's UI before, but I have a fair amount of programming experience. I believe I read someplace that the language for WAR's UI modding is Lua, so I grabbed a book on the subject.

To those with previous UI modding experience (or the devs if they see this), is there anything else I should be reading, learning, buying, etc. to get ready to mod WAR's UI? I want to hit the ground running when it releases.

Thanks.

AWESOME!

Im really glad to see this. There was some really awesome ui mods that i have in WoW that i would really like to see in WAR. I just hope there will be more players like you interested in customizing the ui.

[Xul]

Yeah, you know when they ask you if you have ever been in a beta before during your beta application? And they explain to you that beta is ...beta... can have bugs etc etc... ?

All software engineers live in a constant state of pre alpha so we kind of laugh at that :)))

By the way, as a professional curiosity.. anyone knows if they're using TDD/BDD in developing WAR ? I hope so, 'cause that would make them produce tools that let add-on developers od the same (I had to implement my own TDD tool in WOW and it was a pain)
~K

TDD isn't intended to be used with visual interfaces, which is where the bulk of any functionality Mythic will give you will come from. It's fine for data and process validation, but you can't really write a test case for 'I want the buttons to have different borders and be at the bottom of the screen'. For TDD to work, you need to be able to programmatically validate the results, and visual interfaces just don't give you that ability.

Bear in mind too that TDD originated from the XP methodology, and while XP is fine for some projects, it's not feasible for something of the nature of an MMO, where frequent story-oriented iterations aren't the right way to develop. I would wager that the answer to both of your questions is no - I doubt they're using TDD methodology, and I doubt they'll release any TDD tools (or any tools at all, for that matter).

[sindbad]

I'm willing to bite the bullet and get to writing Lua code again, even though I don't quite like the language. It would be very nice for them to embed other languages as well, I'm personally partial to Python.

On another note, I wonder if they're planning on using LuaJIT.

[pewpewarrows]

I'm willing to bite the bullet and get to writing Lua code again, even though I don't quite like the language. It would be very nice for them to embed other languages as well, I'm personally partial to Python.

On another note, I wonder if they're planning on using LuaJIT.

Oh, what I would give to be able to script addons in Python :)

As to your inquiry, I doubt they would need LuaJIT. I've personally never had any problems in-game with a lua mod taking any significant run-time at all. Possibly I could see them implementing it to improve loading times for heavily modded interfaces, but anything at this point is pure speculation.