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.

One section is one whole piece of the interface. A section is done when the game has shown it right and it has been accepted, which also makes it a piece nothing else is allowed to disturb.

Section	What it holds	State
Player frame	Frame and portrait, health and power bars, rest and combat states, threat, vehicle art, PvP icon, raid subgroup indicator, play time, incoming damage, and the death knight rune bar.	done
Target frame	Frame and portrait, health and power bars, the reputation band, and the art each classification calls for: ordinary, minus, rare, elite and rare elite dragons, world boss ring.	done
Cast bar	Standard, channelled and uninterruptable casts, the interrupted state and the shield.	done
Action bar	The button and all of its states, the page number block, the two gryphon end caps. The button art reaches every action button the client carries, the secondary bars included.	done
Stance bar	Forms, auras and aspects, on the smaller button they share with the pet bar.	done
Pet bar	The familiar's buttons and their states.	done
Micro menu and bags bar	The micro buttons, and beside them the backpack, the bag slots and the keyring.	done
Experience and reputation bars	Both bars, their fills, and the reputation colour per standing.	done
Bags	Panel, slots, search box, sort button, round portrait in its ring.	done
Character sheet	The window and its two panes, the 3D model, the equipment slots, the side tabs, the level and class line, resistances, the twelve stat lines and their two category selectors; and in the right pane the two tabs it opens on -- character stats, and the equipment manager: set cards in the player's own order, the worn-set check, rename and delete, New Set, and the icon picker beside the sheet. The right pane folds away, and the side tabs stay where they are.	done, except the reputation / skills / PvP / currency tabs
Dropdown lists	The list a dropdown opens, which is one and the same for every menu in the game: background, rows, font, check box and tick, and a width that follows the menu that opened it.	done
Minimap	--	not started
Chat	--	not started
Tooltips	--	not started
Buffs and debuffs	--	not started
Party and raid frames	--	not started
Spellbook and talents	--	not started
Character select and creation	--	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 -- unless a file was ADDED. The client lists an addon's files when it starts, and /reload replays the ones it already knows without discovering a new one: a new .lua needs the game closed and reopened, however plainly it sits in the .toc. 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.