Broken UI was not ready for game day

Broken feature?
They expect us to test?

Sounds like modern games.
Did they have on something that says early access, the UI is in game, but its early access aka it means since your using its not complete yet so you are technically a tester a free one.

Usually UI/UX testers make like $60000, so you pretty good at not paid, might wanna think about it. All they do is press buttons. Follow instructions. Report bugs.

Modern day video game company they love free testers,
its in early access aka free testers yet you gotta pay for it but just know your technically a tester.

Game like Quake Champions, was in early access for like 2016-2021 or so. Had to pay to play at one point. Then they eventually made it free game.
Whenever something was broke "early access" its a free pass to anything broke. Modern day games. Broken on delivery.

Because those are two different things. One part is visible, the other is not. Maybe it is needed to revamp everything for the 4k users but most players would had been happy with just a better design and layout and different skins for different screen resolutions. Variable scaling and docking does make things complicated. The ancient game does get turned into a hot rod which might look cool and modern but is hardly controllable. It might even destroy the classic EQ feeling and turning the game into a monster (like a hot rod). Do not underestimate that because this game does ONLY exist from nostalgia and old players who do hate massive changes.

It is stupid to listen to a dumb crowd who does want 4k and other modern crap that does not fit to EQ. What is next,... embedding Alexa and other spy mechanics into the game just because they are modern and the dumb brainwashed crowd does want them ?



The direction this game is heading to is not good. Instead of creating a revamped version as a new game the devs decided to convert the existing game into a modern version which does destroy the classic game inevitable and it has already started with all those disney and political stuff (LGBT) like duck and squirrel mounts and colorfull bunny familiars, which do represent a style change for a new target group which seem to be kids and teens. The veteran players (40-60 years old) which is the majority of the players base, do obviously not matter anymore. And it is not possible to serve both groups at once without annoying one group or the other.

And when the current UI engine is hard to work with and likely can't do the things they want to do with a revamp they don't have a lot of choice about not upgrading it. This isn't something they are doing because they think it would be fun.

this post is incredibly dense but this stands out. Higher resolutions aren't a fad, are certainly not used because people are dumb and brainwashed, and they are not remotely in any way related to things like Alexa or spyware. Stop this nonsense.

Everquest doesn't exist in a vacuum. More displays and more computers are using resolutions higher than 1080p and having to shrink my computer's resolution down, or having to play with a tiny unscaled illegible user interface isn't necessary. You can still play in 1080p or lower, if you want to. Right now, 4k isn't a realistic option unless your face is three inches away from the screen.

They did promise that it would work on Launch and be identical to the existing one. It is not. They did promise that there would be a working converter at launch. The converter does not work at all.

Why do you think the convertor is going to be fully functional when all the windows have yet to be converted over? Is there some confusion over what was meant by launch being the full conversion of all windows or when the first converted windows get launched?

Personally I thought when they started releasing windows you would have the choice off all windows on the old engine or you could chose to use the converted windows on the new engine.

My confusion is why they still haven't backed out the "update", so people can play the game properly whilst they actually fix it.

Might be part of the Great Reset: Kill, crush and destroy... and then present a new game. Ordo ab chao.

Because there is no go backs in EQ

But I think what they did was to leave the old UI in the files so players could try and get what they had. The only problem with that is the guys who did that didn't tell anyone and it still doesn't solve many of the white screen, green line issues.

Its not the first time the right hand didn't know what the left foot was doing in this game.

If the converter was fully functional it would be able to convert the existing windows.

Why do you think that all the windows need to be converted BEFORE the converter is functional ?

Why are you so laser focused on the convertor when that is a minor issue compared to all the other issues that the UI currently has?

I don't see the fact that you can't auto convert 4 UI windows as soon as they got released when not only is it a partial release but there are other issues with the UI still. Not sure I want them to be focused on the convertor side instead of the functionality side of the UI.

I have mad respect for all the EverQuest UI creators and feel Darkpaw should do a better job of supporting them. The new UI should not have been released in the way it was. As it stands, it's a par-baked Alpha release.

Do better, Darkpaw.

Why do you seem to be under the impression that the converter can only convert windows that have already been converted ?

The entire point of the 'LayoutConverter' is to convert the original UI! NOT to 'convert' the already converted new UI windows.

e.g.

Original 'old' default UI -> LayoutConverter -> New converted default UI.

I don't understand why this tool not working exactly as you think it should right after the first set of windows gets released is that big of an issue. Should the issue be with all the other problems the new UI seems to have? Yes, it doesn't work but I don't see that as the real issue here which is making sure the UI works and people don't have issues with it.

At this stage they are unlikely to have tested for many (if any) custom UI differences as they are focusing on getting their side done not accounting for what custom UI's do differently.

The issue is they released a tool to convert the existing windows to the new engine.
IT DOES NOT WORK.

If they cannot even get their own tool to successfully convert their own default UI from the old system to the new system, what exactly is the point of the tool ?

If the convert actually worked, they could convert the entire default UI, load it onto the test server for a month or two and get all the bugs out of it.

But, instead, they have a convert that does not work, 4 UI windows which were manually converted to the new system, which also do not work, yet they decided to launch this mess onto the live servers!

And this has nothing to do with them testing custom UIs, honestly I doubt they ever will, they have always said they do not support custom UIs. This is about the default UI, which, at this time, does not work.

Just for the record, I was able to recreate, and fix, a white screen issue, at least partially.

Turns out that while I was tinkering with the new UI stuff, I replaced one of the images in the uiresources/default/assets/images folder. In my case it was the "window_pieces01.png" file. I had replaced it with one from Vert UI. So the mappings (in atlas.json) were off and my inventory and amount selector windows were all white boxes where the image didn't map properly. When I deleted the entire uiresources/default folder and let the launch re-download it, it was cleared up. For some reason it didn't reset it (like the html and css files are) unless the file was missing though.

Sounds similar to the fix Elimari discovered which is to just make a new folder and stick your old UI in it and then log in and do a "load Skin" for whatever you named the new folder.

Fixed white inventory window and selector bar but did not fix the number windows for items/buy/sell/loot/trader etc

If it was that easy to convert a window they would have done the entire thing at once instead of just releasing the 4 windows that they did. The problem is that it is more complicated to do then you are acting like it is. Not to mention when you start throwing in custom UI's that do things that the devs didn't think of it gets more complicated. This is likely just an issue of being in a state where only some things are able to be converted over to the new UI and as they get more work done it will get fixed.

Noone is expecting this 'tool' to handle custom UIs out of the box.
The issue is that it cannot handle ANYTHING.
It is completely 100% totally and utterly useless.
If their 'tool' does not do what it was designed to do then why on earth even bother releasing it ?
It cannot even convert their own default UI.

So, if they cannot use their own converter to convert their own UI and have to manually convert them, what exactly is the point of having this ?
They could have simply stated that no custom UI would work without a complete rewrite on their new engine, and that would have been the end of it.

What is it that you think this LayoutConverter is supposed to do since apparently you don't appear to think it should be converting UIs ?

What do you mean it can't handle anything? I tried the windows that have been converted using the default UI and it worked with only a couple of warnings.

For now we should worry about getting the new UI working before we worry about custom UI's