Reader UI of the Week: Todoroku's tower
by Mathew McCurley 
Mar 15th 2011 at 2:00PM
After a wonderful weekend at PAX East, I return to the convention-less world of writing, World of Warcraft, and cleaning a perpetually messy living room. Oh, how nice it is to get away from it all. PAX East was a lot of fun this year, and I very much appreciated all of the kind words from fans. I had no idea I was in any way recognizable.
Since we're back to reality, that means more insight into our own user interfaces by taking a look at some of the WoW Insider community's creations. This week, Todoroku's user interface is under our magnifying glass, exhibiting some nice panel work to make a comprehensive healer UI. Let's take a look.
Todoroku sent me this fine email:
Thanks for the email, Todoroku. More healer user interfaces, you say? I answer with healer user interfaces.Hi Mat,
I am a huge fan of Reader UI of the Week and have wanted to submit my UI for several months, but have never felt my UI was complete or ready to submit. I've gone through numerous changes since Vanilla WOW and wished I'd kept screen-shots of each iteration to show the progress from the mess my UI was when raiding MC. I finally feel my UI is in a state I can be proud to show.
As a Resto Druid, I like to have my raid frames right under my feet so I can easily heal and keep watch for things to not stand in (or to stand in for group heals) . I use Healbot for my raid frames because I like the the user interface and I've been using it since BC. From there I like to keep all the rest of my information close to the raid frames. The closer to the raid frames the more important the info. My Focus and Focus's Target are on the left hand side and my Target and Target's Target are on the right side with the targets buffs and debuffs above the Target. This way I can easily see them on either side of my raid frames. I have sexycooldown just above the raid frames, hotcandy above that so I can see the lifebloom timer, and quartz for the cast bar. I have my unit frame below the raid frames so I can see mana and the special bars (Cho'gall's corrupted blood and Atramedes' sound bar). I have bartender buttons below. I have SLDataText underneath, which I learned from reading this column. Under this I have XPBarNone to track my reputations and xp when on my alts.
To the right under the target I have Sexymap so I can make quick looks to see where out of range raid members are located and next to that I have skada so I can monitor my healing output and I have omen underneath. I don't use omen all that much but I like having there. Plus I like the layout with skada and omen.
On the left I have my chat frames. I use Prat for all of it's great chat customization. I hated the default chat tabs and I haven't found a chat addon that does anything with the tabs to customize the layout, so I created my own. Using KGPanels I create my own tab frames and scripted them to click on and show the state of the tab, such as the current tab selected(text colored white), and messages being received. When a message is received, the tab that receives those messages will change to the color of the type of message it was. The default color is grey if there are no messages. An example of this is when I've selected the combat tab and a guild chat message is received the guild tab text turns green. In the example pic you can see the General tab is yellow, Combat is white, Guild is green and Raid is Orange.
I use MikScrolling data to see my heals, but mostly to see crits. I have my Buffs to the left and my debuffs to the right using Satrina Buff Frames. Most of my addons allow for borders and backgrounds, but for the ones that won't let me do what I want I use KGPanels and script them for resizing. It's not pictured here on my main, but I use Carbonite for my alts when leveling. It's very useful for showing where to go for quests and has a cool zoom in feature for the map.
The following is a list of my addons I use that aren't mentioned above:
- Addon Control Panel
- Atlas
- AtlasLoot Enhanced
- Auctioneer
- Bartender4
- ButtonFacade
- ButtonFacade: Sleek
- Carbonite
- Deadly Boss Mods
- EPGPLootmaster
- Healbot Continued
- HotCandy
- KgPanels
- MikScrollingBattleText
- MoveAnything
- Omen Threat Meter
- OPie
- Pitbull Unit Frames
- Postal
- Prat
- Quartz
- SatinaBuffFrame
- SexyCooldown
- SexyMap
- Skada
- SLDataText
- TBag-Shefki
- Tidy Plates
- Tidy Plates: Clean Plates
- TinyTip
- XPBarNone
I hope you enjoyed my UI.
Thanks,
Todoroku, Level 85 Tauren Restoration Druid
As I am one to make up words and concepts, assigning a description to things that may be descriptionless, Todoroku's user interface is now an example of "the tower." The tower has three basic components.
- A tower UI is one with two to three different UI elements stacked on top of one another.
- The tower is generally concentrated in the center of the screen and expands outwards. Touching the edges of the screen does not usually happen.
- The Tower concentrates focus on a fairly robust set of group or party frames as its centerpiece. These components are indicative of the tower.
When fashioned together, these qualities create a user interface that, on its face, looks too intrusive. However, as you might have already guessed, this might not be such a bad way to work. The tower-type of user inteface is a great way of focusing the player's attention onto important UI aspects while keeping the eyes centered on the screen. For larger monitors and resolutions, this is almost imperitive.
While at PAX East, Fox Van Allen and myself went to a booth that was showing off an impressive 3-D, tri-monitor display of World of Warcraft. While a good amount of the game was prettier with the 3-D technology and filters applied, ultimately it felt shallow and wasted on a game not designed with the technology in mind. But past that, the size of the user interface available was almost too insane and too much to handle. To look at the auction house menu or his bags, Fox had to move his entire head to a different monitor.
The tower solves many people's problems of eye darting, as I call it, and can keep you focused. There are ways to make the tower less daunting or manageable, which we can get to in just a second.
Todoroku's tower
Todoroku's tower sounds like a game I played on the NES at some point in my childhood, and it makes me happy just to say it. Todoroku's healer tower is focused on providing healer information front and center. And since Todo is a raider, healing is especially important. Action bars and wider UI elements make up the base and middle of the tower, with the more configurable and smaller pieces lining the right side and a Prat chat interface holding up the left wall. The target and target of target frames are cleverly placed above the Skada and Sexymap elements, much like a Tetris block. I'm a fan.
I talk about Tetris a good deal when discussing interface creation because I feel it is a very apt comparison. It is a universal metaphor for gamers and stacking things. Quality tower-based user interfaces are all about quality stacking.
I think that Todo's tower is a good construct. While I understand the predictable placement complaint ("How will I see what is directly under me?"), healers have been dealing with that very sort of issue since the dawn of healing user interfaces and giant Grid/Healbot/Vuhdo interfaces hit the scene. The trick is to pull the camera back more.
We can, however, improve the tower a bit. Last time, we talked about transparency and hiding interface elements. For a healer, a very small set of UI elements need to be out at once, always visible during combat. The rest of the UI can be hidden and the tower restacked once combat is finished. Using Kong, you could get rid of some of the stack in combat or just make it transparent so you get more of a sense of awareness directly under the character. However, I don't know if that is too big of a deal.
Great job with the tower, Todoroku. It's a great setup, and I hope our healer readers and enthusiasts will take to heart the lessons of the tower -- ease of heal-awareness and every UI element nice and packed together. I know that I didn't talk about the kgPanels scripting awesomeness that Todo has done for the Prat interface; it is incredibly awesome but a little outside readers' ability. This might be a time to change that. If people have some great resources for the novice scripter, let me know, and maybe a Reader UI of the Week focused on some cool scripting techniques could be worked out.
Until then, see you guys next week, and thanks for coming out at PAX East.
Interested in getting the most out of your user interface? Come back once a week for more examples of reader UIs. For more details on individual addons, check out Addon Spotlight, or visit Addons 101 for help getting started.
Filed under: Add-Ons, Reader UI of the Week
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
zubbiefish Mar 15th 2011 2:01PM
What's a towet?
zubbiefish Mar 15th 2011 2:01PM
Oh, tower typo. Nevermind. Delete these, please.
Amaxe Mar 15th 2011 2:26PM
Must be nice to have a widescreen monitor where this stuff is non-intrusive. I have a 4:3 CRT with a whopping 1024x768 resolution.
This is the reason I don't get a chance to try these interfaces, cool as they look.
Elleyna Mar 15th 2011 2:29PM
My 24" widescreen Samsung monitor was something like $225 on newegg.com. You can get smaller ones (19" is a decent size) for much cheaper, anywhere from $100-$175 depending on brand/model.
I remember my first LCD monitor was a 17" 4:3 shelf model and that ran me $550 (that was probably about 7-8 years ago).
Aaron Mar 15th 2011 3:48PM
I bought myself a 24" widescreen monitor for Christmas so I know what you mean. I think I paid about $179, it's a Samsung and the picture is amazing. I run dual monitors now and it definitely outshines the old monitor.
If you ever get a chance to upgrade (always ask for giftcards for b-days and Christmas) go for it. :D
evets25 Mar 15th 2011 5:14PM
I too have a non-widescreen moniter, although mine is one step up being an older LCD at 1280x1024. I recently overhauled my UI, and working in the constraints of a non-widescreen was challenging. So, I think I may submit my UI very soon so that other people in the same boat as us can benefit from my work! I know when I go back to playing wow on my widescreen laptop I'll have to redesign my UI again and I'm not looking forward to that.
Making a non-widescreen UI is hard!
Amaxe Mar 15th 2011 9:44PM
Well, my problem is I had a debt forgiveness back in 2009 which counts as income. So a lot of my spare income now (including this year's tax refund) goes to pay for that.
I did see a good one at Dell which seems to match the requirements for gaming which ran $199. It may be obsolete now.
Elleyna Mar 15th 2011 2:27PM
I like it, my only question is why is your cast bar shown twice (once on top of your own unit frame and once again above the raid members (maybe that's not 2 cast bars, just looks like it to me).
Elleyna Mar 15th 2011 2:31PM
Oh, one other thing, your SatrinaBuffFrames seems a bit awkwardly placed and takes up a lot of real estate. Unless there's a specific reason it's there/that big, I'd move it and, not sure if SBF lets you do this, filter out some buffs that aren't relevant (tabard buff, hunting party, etc).
Saeadame Mar 15th 2011 3:06PM
I think it could be solved by making the buffs buttons instead of bars... it's the bars that are taking up a lot of room. SBF can also filter out buffs, or have it not show auras or buffs longer than x amount of time, but the issue with that is then you don't know if you have ____ buff. I switched to a different buff addon when you couldn't right click off buffs in SBF, but there may be options to change settings depending on whether you're in combat, perhaps.
Todoroku Mar 15th 2011 8:25PM
There are two cast bars. Only reason it's there on the unit frame is I just like having it on. I know a lot of people are saying the SBF bars take up a lot of screen real estate. Most of my attention is directed in the middle of my screen so I don't really pay much attention to what's way out on the sides. So it doesn't really bother me too much. I did have the buffs as just buttons before but, I like the buff bars so I can see how long I have left on Clearcasting and ToL with just a glance. Although when I'm questing or flying around it would be nice to have it transparent out of combat or something. I might mess with it some more after reading some suggestions here.
Stardusted Mar 15th 2011 2:38PM
Whenever I look over these UI's I often find myself wondering how powerful of a PC you need to run that many adds and still have WoW run smoothly.
For example, my computer (with better specs than the minimum system requirements), WoW becomes unplayable if I try to run healbot and DBM at the same time (one of the reasons I haven't raided since naxx was end game content in wrath).
Saeadame Mar 15th 2011 3:01PM
Are your graphics turned down a lot? I have a computer that runs WoW quite laggy at the "normal" settings even without addons, but with my video settings turned down low, I can easily run Vuhdo, Skada and DBM and it's only about as laggy as it was at the normal settings.
It's hard to compare machines, though.
talkaboom Mar 15th 2011 3:30PM
I use a considerable number of Add-ons, though always striving to find the "leanest" ones, but if your computer starts lagging with just DBM and Healbot, something else is wrong.
DBM is module based by default, which means it would not load data for BWD when you are inside Baradin Hold. Healbot is a luxury that can be avoided by simple mouse-over macros. If you are using it just for raidframes, get something leaner like OUF_Freebgrid etc.
But that said, i think you need to look into your video settings.
Stardusted Mar 15th 2011 3:57PM
I keep all of my video settings to the bare minimum, no doubt about that. I don't blame the game, I know it is my computer dying, wasn't meant to be a complaint at all. I really was just curious about how good the specs on a machine would have to be to run WoW and all those add ons smoothly. After all, I know my computer is dying, and I will have to replace it.
Khirsah Mar 15th 2011 4:34PM
I am currently waiting for Intel to fix the problems with the Sandy Bridge line, but until then I am stuck with my 2003 Dell, single core running 30 fps at the best of times, sometimes less than 10 fps in a 25 man raid. I don't do those very often, obviously, because I usually have to bail due to not being able to see anything.
But what I have found, based on experiments conducted with the assistance of add-on control panel (if you don't have it, get it!), is that add-ons are not the make-it or break-it part of running a smooth game. I use 22 add-ons, including Grid, IceHUD, DBM, and Auctionator. I use AOCP to quickly turn off those that are not immediately needed, so I actually only use about 18 at once, and I get about 30 fps, as I mentioned.
But you know what, under similar conditions, with all 22 running, I only dropped to about 25 fps. So I turned everything off, and only came up to about 37. Those 7 fps are not worth it to lose all the functionality I get from the add-ons.
Take hints from here and the add-on spotlight column to find the smaller footprint add-ons, but don't avoid them just because you are afraid they are slowing down your performance too much. It really does not make a huge difference. :)
The Dewd Mar 15th 2011 4:34PM
That actually happens to me from time to time. I keep a can of compressed air on my desk and, if need be, open the case and have at it with the air. This is a particular problem for me because I have a videocard with a heatsink but no fan attached. I refuse to buy a new card at this point because I'm waiting to upgrade the whole machine. (Most of the components are probably 3-4 years old and it was pieced together on the cheap at that point.)
TL;DR: If you have more slowdowns than you can account for - or than you used to - make sure the inside of your case is as dust-free as possible.
perasitewow Mar 15th 2011 2:59PM
I really like the layout. It runs a tad higher on the screen than I'd like, but that could be fixed by making raid frames smaller or something similar. I'd love to see how the chat from was scripted. That is simply an awesome idea.
talkaboom Mar 15th 2011 3:23PM
Lots of real estate being wasted. A few points that are my 2 cents:
1. SBF is too powerful to waste so much space. If you like to see your buffs as bars, go elkano. SBF is being discontinued anyway.
2. Any special reason for having 72 buttons? I am sure that can go down.
3. Healbot frames are quite large, can be made a lot smaller, even if u heal 10 mans only.
on that note, all the unit frames could be made a lot smaller.
This is definitely one of the most cluttered UIs I have ever seen. But what works for one person, never seems to work for another. Many people would find this UI perfect. And quite a few elements are definitely very good. Most notably, timers and healbot locations used here is very optimal as it can prevent a lot of tunnel vision.
Saeadame Mar 15th 2011 4:04PM
Agreed on the buffs, at the very least some screen space could be saved if they were buttons.
As for the buttons, I too like to have almost every ability or macro I could every possibly want to use in any situation on my action bars. I have the stuff I use more often closer too my area of vision, but especially as a druid there are just so many situational abilities that you want to stab yourself when you realise it could have been useful in such and such situation, but it wasn't on your bars.