UI addon changes in 3.20 RC2

[stefanEgo]

In 3.20 the filename for ui-addons was changed. The old filename used to be
[addon].xml

the new filename is now
ui.xml

In case you modified the ego_detailmonitor-addon, that means:
old: ui/addons/ego_detailmonitor/ego_detailmonitor.xml
new: ui/addons/ego_detailmonitor/ui.xml

The content of the file did not change and is compatible to the < 3.20 versions.

To update your mod, all you should be required to do is to rename the xml-files to ui.xml.

There was one fix regarding ego_helptext, which specified the incorrect addon name. It's now correctly called ego_helptext (old name was helptext). If you hooked into ego_helptext, you might have to update ur addon accordingly.

Please note that we do not officially open-up any UI-modding support yet. That said, it's likely that a future patch will impose compatibility issues, if you use the unsupported way to hook into the UI-system.

On the bright side, we are working hard to officially open-up the UI-modding support in an upcoming version which will extend your capabilities to modify the UI significantly compared to what is possible atm.

[wysiwyg]

Great news! - Many thanks for taking time out to announce this!

BR
Wysi

[BigBANGtheory]

its not good news, its Great News

Right-click on objects mod ftw

[blackmilan]

On the bright side, we are working hard to officially open-up the UI-modding support in an upcoming version which will extend your capabilities to modify the UI significantly compared to what is possible atm.

Thank you for the update. These are great news. I am looking forward to more UI modding possibilities. Keep up the good work.

[BigBANGtheory]

I came across an interesting analogy the other day that I thought was relevant to this topic...

Modern day Synthesisers (your Yamaha's, Rolands and Korg) are complicated beasts, they have very powerful sound engines with a lyrical shit ton of options to achieve a desired sound. They also tend to have a small LCD screen that give the players all the options but isn't especially user friendly.

So how they get around this is firstly give all the options, menus, config items etc with the keyboard and its built-in UI, but they also allow through the Midi interface a means to control and send commands to the keyboard from an external source. For example this can be a software program with its own UI running on a MAC/PC with a big monitor able to display all the dials and sliders at the same time.

So if XR is the synth/keyboard and its scripting language or APIs are the Midi interface then Egosoft or other parties should be able to bring some serious UI value to the party as long as the fundamental commands are supported and offered to the player in the ribbon menu.

Apologies if I am stating the obvious here, its so rare we get to have meaningful discussions on the UI.

[YorrickVander]

Woo thanks Stefan, good news