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Mod:     BufUI / BufUI_LoA
Version: 1.01
Status:  Stable
Author:  Lokiswaq
Date:    25-Apr-2004
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Essential info
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1. INTRODUCTION

This is my first mod for Dungeon Siege. I started it as an exercise, trying to learn how to work with skrit. If you find it useful, so much the better.

2. FUNCTIONALITY

The BufUI Mod adds a panel to the GUI that shows the selected character's active buffs, their count and their corresponding expiration times. I thought that the dockbar was hiding information about the active buffs rather than showing them, so I made this panel that shows up to 12 active buffs. If you apply more buffs than the maximum shown, the extra ones will apppear in the panel as soon as one of the already shown expires. Up to 20 concurrent buffs are tracked by the BufUI, I doubt anybody will use more than that at the same time.

There are two views of the panel. An icon one (default) and a text one that shows the buffs' descriptions (like the ones shown on the dockbar). You can toggle between them via the extra GUI button next to the health/mana potions. Both views show the remaining time for each buff in the form of h:mm:ss (text panel) or mm:ss (icons panel). The timer will turn red when 10 or less seconds remain.

3. INSTRUCTIONS

Just put the BufUI_v1.01.dsres into the Resources folder of your Dungeon Siege installation. If you want to play using the Legends of Aranna executable, use the BufUI_LoA_v1.01.dsres instead. You'd better not have them both there at the same time. When you start the game, click on the white spellbook button (next to the potion buttons) to show/hide the panel and right-click on it to toggle between the graphical/text views.

You can also assign a hotkey to show/hide the BufUI panel. Just go to options/input/hotkeys and find the "Game Timer (and BufUI)" hotkey under the "User Interface" section. The primary hotkey should be ";" (semicolon) by default. Assign "SHIFT-;" to the secondary hotkey. If the primary hotkey is set to something else (say "Y") you should assign "SHIFT-Y" to the secondary one, get it? ;) Save and return to the game. Now, each time you press "SHIFT-;" the BufUI panel will show/hide along with the timer. Just pressing ";" will toggle only the timer and leave the BufUI alone.

4. COMPATIBILITY

The BufUI Mod has been tested in single and multi-player game with Dungeon Siege (1.11) and Dungeon Siege Legends of Aranna (1.50). Use the appropriate version of the mod, they are not interchangeable!.

The BufUI Mod will be incompatible with any other mod that also alters data_bar.gas, heroes.gas, spell_status_effect.skrit, etc... See the FILES.txt file for more information on which files I have altered.

5. BONUS

The mod also fixes a bug in the original spell_mass_enchant.skrit that caused abnormal behavior when similar spells (like magic_armor and stone_skin for example) were applied on the same character in a specific order.

6. LICENSE

You may examine the code if you like to know how it works but if you'd like to include the BufUI (or parts of it) in your own mods, please drop me an e-mail beforehand and ask me. Use it, don't abuse it!.

You may also redistribute the mod as long as you leave the archive and its contents (dsres and txt files) unchanged.

7. AKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Trying to make this mod, I read quite a lot of tutorials, forum posts and lines of open source code and I feel obliged to all members of the community that shared their knowledge. Special credit goes to the following people:

- Jim "Xaa" Farris, for his 30-day skrit tutorial and his personal comments during the development phase.
- Kaikopere (Team Elemental) for his UITutorial.
- Jason "Unkle Ernsie" Ernsdorff (GPG) for his Dynamic Tables Tutorial.
- Jason "Ikkyo" Gripp for his spell_override mod.
- Monsoon for his MonsoonsUI mod.
- TomCat39 for his spell tree (saved me a lot of time).

My thanks also go to all people who beta-tested and commented on my work at siegenetwork.com forums.

Enjoy :)


Greg 'Lokiswaq' Papangeles

lokiswaq @ afaik.gr
http://www.afaik.gr