mod-forever-ui

The modern World of Warcraft interface, rebuilt for a 3.3.5a client.

This is not a module the server loads: it is a client addon plus the art it needs. The art comes from a modern client, read sheet by sheet, and is served to 3.3.5 the way the modern client serves it -- one texture, a rectangle read inside it -- because 3.3.5 has no SetAtlas.

What is rebuilt	State
Player frame, its portrait, threat and combat states, vehicle art	done
Death knight runes	done
Target frame, classification rings, target of target	done
Cast bar	done
Action bar, page block, end caps	done
Micro menu, bags bar	done
Experience and reputation bars	done
Bags: panel, slots, search box, sort button	done
Minimap, chat, tooltips, auras, party and raid frames, panels	not started

Everything ForeverUI places is a movable system: /fui opens the edit mode, /fui reset puts a piece -- or all of them -- back where the reference puts it.

Layout of this folder

data/addon/ForeverUI/     the addon itself, .lua and .toc -- the source
data/art/interface/       the .blp that go into the client patch, each with
                          a .png beside it to see what it holds
docs/AMELIORATIONS.md     what is known to be improvable, and why
docs/reference/           screenshots of the real thing, to check against
tools/deployer.py         puts the addon in a client and the art in patch-Z
tools/test_addon.py       a mock client that loads the addon and checks it
tools/ajouter_feuilles.py brings an atlas sheet in with its preview, and
                          regenerates the atlas table

Working on it

This folder is the workspace, and the only place anything is edited. The addon in the client and the art in patch-Z.MPQ are copies the deployer makes; editing either of them directly means the work is lost the next time anything is deployed, and nobody can say afterwards what the game is actually showing. The rule holds both ways: what sits under Interface\ForeverUI in the patch is exactly what data/art holds, file for file, byte for byte. --verifier reports what is missing, what differs and what is left over, and a deploy removes from the archive anything this folder no longer carries.

New art follows the same path: the .blp and its .png preview land in data/art first, then the deployer puts the .blp in the patch.

python tools/deployer.py --verifier      compare the client with this folder
python tools/deployer.py                 addon and art
python tools/deployer.py --addon         the addon alone, client may stay open
python tools/deployer.py --art           the art alone, close the client first

The addon files are read at login: after --addon, a /reload in game is enough. The art lives in patch-Z.MPQ, which the client keeps locked while it runs: close the game before --art, and start it again afterwards.

Before delivering anything, run the mock client -- it loads the whole addon and checks the measurements taken from the reference:

python tools/test_addon.py

It checks numbers, nothing else. What a thing looks like is settled in the game, and only there. Composing the art in Python and looking at the picture was tried and thrown away: such a picture only proves the arithmetic, since it knows nothing of draw order, of what the client draws over it, or of the scale it ends up at -- it showed windows as correct that the game showed wrong. The screenshots under docs/reference/ are the other half: they are the real client, and they are what a result is compared against.

Where the reference comes from

Every size, offset and texture name is read from the interface code of a modern client, not guessed. Each file of the addon opens with the survey it was built from: the file, the template and the line that gives each number. When this addon departs from that reference -- because 3.3.5 cannot do it, or because the result was wrong on screen -- the departure is written down at that spot, with what was measured.

The art set is the one that client actually displays: sheets whose names carry the c60 suffix, and the camelot suffix for the status bars.

Licence

GPL-2.0-or-later, see LICENSE. tools/foreverui/mpq.py reads and writes MPQ archives; it is the copy this module carries, as each module in this repository carries its own.