OpenRDX and You: Replace that UI
May 23, 2010 in Guides, News by Derfel
Good evening all! Derfel here with a strong and somewhat healthy dose of technical savvy to hopefully sink your teeth into. Ok, so, as I have said, I took some time off from the good ole’ fatihful World of Warcraft. However, recently, the strong urges to come back overtook me.
It took me all of 10 minutes to remember why i hate and utterly despise the WoW vanilla interface. So, of course, i took myself straight over to wow.curse.com, logged in, and had curse client fired up in moments, scanning the curse library for mine, and many other’s, favorite mods.
Next on my list are those few and far neglected mods that other’s let pass un-noticed over on the www.wowinterface.com forums. I snagged up a couple of my oldie but goodie fav’s. And in scanning the UI forums, took note of a new sub-category under the projects and developmental systems.
Enter OpenRDX.
at first glance, OpenRDX is a modders dream, minus working too much with .LUA coding. You can literally craft from pure nothingness almost, some of your favorite mods. As of right now, my OpenRDX configuration, based mostly on impossible DUI by unlimit (available on those nifty www.wowinterface.com forums) replaced half my mods, right off the bat. pitbull, that memory hungry beast, gone. Grid, that annoying pain in the butt to configure mod, adios! recount, damagemeters, who need em? latter. Omen, wtf is that? too, gone. Squeenix? oh my, i hardly knew you. Buffalo? while nice, no longer necessary to screw with. Now, i run OpenRDX for every single mod i’ve just mentioned, and am learning to make it replace even more.
this really is a God send. I had spent a couple of my nights recently editing, tweaking, and even nuking (more on that here in a minute) the whole UI. the limit to what you can do to this thing is just short of nothing. Also, a great point i’d like to mention, my machine, running the few addons i love and OpenRDX, cranked out 70+ FPS in ICC 10-man, even on the Dreamwalker encounter. Before, all those large, bulky, and sometimes pesky addons barely fetched me 35FPS.
Of course, i am sure Sigg and all the OpenRDX Dev team would love me to continue talking up thier hard work, but, i must admit, sadly, there are a few drawbacks and features currently not available in the most recent itteration of OpenRDX. The ability to intercept raid encoutners is still best left to those respective mods. DBM and BigWigs are still the dominate force in these areas, so don’t count or rule them out yet.
while setting up my UI on my shaman, i noted a very sore lack of a totem bar. Understanding that unlimit either doesn’t have a shammy or play one, i figured that he just didn’t have a need to create the bar. However, this seems to be a point of error on the OpenRDX forums on wowinterface. I am using my time learning about OpenRDX to explore creating one that will suit my needs.
Also, some of the literature that accompanies the mod is one or two versions out of date. I’ve mentioned this on the forums, but i am unclear as to how regularly they are checked. Instead of trying to sort out the mess i made of a simple auto execute script (which is only one line, mind you), I instead turned my focus upon a working set of OOBE files.
OOBE files are the packages that install and set the UI components. It’s like an addon meets a UI compilation. it’s the set of files that tells OpenRDX how to make the various UI elements look, appear, act, where they are placed, and what elements are shown based on what you’re doing (I.E. solo play, 5-man dungeons, 10- or 25-man Raids, PvP or Arena setups, if that’s your thing).
So, in closing, OpenRDX is a great platform. It makes creating a very unique UI a grand experience. For it’s few drawbacks, it is still quickly becoming a mainstay in my mod repritoire. Hopefully through community help and my own inginuity, soon i’ll be posting my awesome UI and getting amazing framerates while some other’s still clunk around with overloaded and bloated addons, trying to make sense why they’re so choppy in 25-man riads.
My Screenshot of my Party Configuration:
Final Notes: I went looking for the openRDX community website, but it looks dead and abandoned. www.openrdx.com in case anyone wanted to go take a look. I recommend this link to start you out http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info11127-OpenRDX.html
Its funny you mention that Derfel I just downloaded Nui+ off of wow interface and its the first UI Ive ever used. I gotta say I am loving it but I want to try open rdx now.
I am really growing partial to the Nui+ all ready and its easy use of setting key bindings and the HUD that comes with it is irreplaceable. The preconfigured UI brought a few addons to my attention I never really used that make life a little easier.
i never tried Nui+ but still. sounds cool. i've always hated coding (thinks back to college Java and C) but at the same time, to truly get what you want, you're oging to have to code it (mostly) yourself. This format takes a lot of the guess work out of .LUA code and puts it into terms you understand and adds pictures and images, plus a preview pane, to show you what it is you are doing. export, cokmpy and paste, rename a couple of items, then BOOM, you've successfully coded a UI mod, not to mention, it runs so lightly. those &)+ FPS were no joking matter to me. It'sthe smoothest i've ever ran in a raid encounter. period.
I used to use nUI, and it has a lot of good functionality, but there are some things about the setup that are just killer for me.. For instance, the buff/debuff setup along the sides. It's really hard to read because the writing is so small. I also used it when it had some MAJOR lfaws with the interfacing as far as action bars between shifted forms and vehicles and key-bindings not working properly after the form changes. It was really frustrating to me, and in the end I just ended up deleting it and setting my UI up in my own way with a bunch of addons.