UI Clinic: Segment8
The UI Clinic is a series of segments created by Bouvi for The AIE Podcast which help you turn your back on the default UI and create a UI to be proud of.
Welcome AIE
Hello AIE and welcome to this edition of the UI Clinic. I am Bouvi your host with the most. Sorry for the noise but we are on an ugent mission. We found a user using the default UI and this engineering copter is taking us there. Climb aboard because are in a hurry.
Here put these on, there that is better. OK while enroute I found one heck of an addon that I know you all will love. Lunarsphere was mentioned on the forums by Rayya and I went and checked it out.
<KABOOM> Whew that was close. See I was not the only one blown away by this addon. Let me break it down for you.
What separates this addon from the other sphere addons is that every button is customizable. When you load up LunarSphere for the first time, you can load up a template for your specific class which will contain every spell that your character knows and attach it to the sphere. While this is nice, I found starting from a blank slate for each character works well for me. The best thing about this addon is it can be used for any class you have. You are not tied to a specific class like other sphere addons are.
Sphere
LunarSphere gives you a large sphere on the screen. Around said sphere, you will find 10 buttons that circle around it. These buttons, known as "main buttons," can take left, middle, and right click assignments to store spells, items, or macros. These buttons can also be turned into menu buttons, allowing an additional 12 buttons per menu button to exist, giving a total of 130 total buttons that you could possibly use, if you desire. The sphere can also function like a button, making the total up to 131 buttons.
Sphere Gauges/Display
The sphere provides up to two gauges (They look like rings or circular bars) that can display certain information such as health, mana, experience, rep, combo points, and more. You can also set text to be displayed on the middle section of the sphere, to also display your health, mana, rep, and more.
The sphere provides up to two gauges (They look like rings or circular bars) that can display certain information such as health, mana, experience, rep, combo points, and more. You can also set text to be displayed on the middle section of the sphere, to also display your health, mana, rep, and more.
Buttons
The buttons can take actions that to assign them, but there are also special button types that you can assign the the button, such as "Use strongest water," "Use random epic flying mount," "Apply best Instant Poison to Main-hand" and more. Some can be seen as specific for certain classes, other button types can be used by all. Lots of "auto bar" type action assignments will happen within LunarSphere, if you assign such actions.
Reagent Restocking
LunarSphere can restock reagents from a custom list you define. Helpful for tailors who constantly need to restock on thread, or rogues you need poisons, hunters with ammo, priests with candles, and more.
Random Speeches
The random speeches that were trademark of most sphere addons? Yeah, LunarSphere can do that too. The addon comes pre-loaded with a few speeches for your mounts and for resurrecting people, but the sky is the limit since you can create your own speeches and assign them to items and spells that are used. Great for roleplayers, great for people who want to annoy their raid, or make them laugh.
Skinning
LunarSphere lets you skin the buttons with over 38 circular button skins and any color tinting you want to apply to them. LunarSphere was built to be customizable to fit most, if not all interfaces, no matter the color or design.
Longevity
Lastly, LunarSphere was made to last. When new drinks, food, potions, mounts, bandages and more are added to World of Warcraft, LunarSphere will usually pick up those new items without a version update. When new spells come out, you can just add them to your sphere just like dragging a spell from your spellbook to an action bar. That's some of the power and flexibility that LunarSphere provides, so that the only time you need to update LunarSphere will be for bells and whistle feature updates or bug fixes, but never so that you can finally use your new spell.
But wait, there's more
Tooltip handling and coloring, junk item selling, bank restocking, user interface object hiding (such as the action bar artwork, the main menu buttons, the mini-map zoom buttons, and more), and more can be handled by LunarSphere. If you want to use it as a full action bar replacement, you can hide all the action bars, assign the menu buttons and bag opening features to LunarSphere buttons, and clean up your screen.
As you can see this addon does quite a bit. I have been pleased with it's performance and like to thank Rayya for mentioning it in the forums.
Time's Up
Well we are coming in for a landing and I will be busy trying to teach people the error of their ways. Who uses the default UI anymore? You can reach me ingame at Bouvi (B-O-U-V-I) or e-mail me at bouvi@uiclinic.com. Take care and see you next time at the UI Clinic.