Fri, 3 Aug: Near death experiences at BlizzCon!
I got to the convention center about 10am. Met up with some of the others to sit together for the opening ceremony. Much cheering throughout. (Please note that from here on out it gets pretty confusing for me, and likely boring for you, since I spent as much time running in and out of various panels and stuff answering my cell phone and helping everyone keep track of each other as I did anything else.) Discovered during this time that the Blizzard Souvenir Program and BlizzCon Map both have the schedule mixed up. Point out to Slouken the error (since it says that the UI panel is supposed to be on Saturday according to the Program and Map) and he dashes off to find out what’s going on. Some people got the Revised Schedule of Events leaflet that they had printed up, but they weren’t being passed out very well. Luckily, they are announcing over the speakers the names of the panels as they were happening, so it wasn’t too bad.
After the Opening Ceremony folks wandered around a bit, got some food, checked out the line-ups for things, etc. A few of us ran out to snag lunch at IHOP (funnel cakes!) then it was back to the ‘con for the WoW Expansion II Demo. I know that has been covered extensively elsewhere, so I’ll just move on to my subsequent attempt at death.
Being the smart little chickie that I am, I decided that I was over heated and really needed something to cool down, but didn’t want just another drink. Oh! They have a Dippin’ Dots stand here! I’ve never tried it before, so I buy myself a little bowl of [chocolate] and wander around a bit to watch some of the WC3 Quarterfinals while I’m waiting for the Blizzard Sound/Music panel at 2:30. Hmmm, this is pretty neat ice cream, for all that I’ve only had a spoonful so far, but my tongue feels really weird. No, wait, it doesn’t feel weird at all. In fact, it doesn’t feel anything. And hey, hang on a sec here, it’s starting to get rather hard to breathe. Back to the booth and ask the lady there what it is made with. She has absolutely no clue at all. “All I know is they bring these big bags of the stuff and we pour it into the containers and dish it out”. Great, this isn’t helpful lady, and my throat is really swelling at this point. Over to the info booth and find out where the first aid station is. Get escorted to the first aid station and ask the nice nurse there if they happen to have any Benadryl. Thank goodness, they do. Force one down my rapidly closing throat and sit there and shake hoping that it’ll kick-in in time, to avoid a trip to the hospital (or worse). Yup, my allergy has definitely gotten worse since the last time I accidentally ingested some aspartame. Time to talk to my doc about an epi-pen. So, just for info folks – if you have an allergy to aspartame, make darn sure that the Dippin’ Dots you just got is in fact their chocolate and not their “No sugar added fat free Fudge”. You can bet your bottom dollar that I'm going to be writing to them and telling them just how happy I was about this lovely little adventure.
Okay, so, I’ve just spent the last hour or so sitting in the first aid office with the nurse, making sure that I’m going to be okay. Finally we’re both reassured enough that I’m willing to leave, although I’ve got another Benadryl in my purse now just in case. Time to go find everyone again and get back to having fun. Just really bummed that I missed the Music panel.
Ah well, off to the Dungeons & Raids panel. Again, it’s covered well elsewhere so I’ll just move right along.
On to the one we really cared about, the UI panel! Beladona covered a lot of it
here already along with a link to the YouTube video of it,
here, but here's some more. The members of the Blizzard UI team that were giving the presentation included: Derek (Horkin) Sakamoto, UI Programmer and Designer, weird fish thing avatar; Iriena (Rislyn) Pereira, UI Programmer and Designer, ninja lady; Tom Thompson, UI programmer and Designer; Eric Dodds, Game Designer in charge of UI, sad panda with no avatar; and of course Sam (Slouken) Lantinga, Lead Software Engineer, pirate.
They started the panel with a discussion of what their philosophy of the UI is.
They like to “Keep it Simple and Clean”. So easy that “Gramma can use it”. It has to be “fun and easy, but extensible” so that you can get more in-depth information and functionality (example the default raid UI) as needed. And of course, “If you want more complexity … make an AddOn.” From there they went on to the discussion about how to create a simple addon, introducing people to the three base files (.toc, .xml and .lua) and how they work together, using the “ShowMeTheMoney” tutorial that is included in the UI Extraction tool, found
here.
After they went through the tutorial, they told us about a couple new things that are coming. The first was the introduction of the new UI tool they have released, the EditingUI Mod. It too is available on the Blizzard UI page,
here.
This tool allows new and experienced authors to load it up, in game, and have:
Frame Explorer. This works sort of like Windows explorer, allowing you to see the entire tree of parent and child frames. The left side menu has all the parent frames and the right side shows you all the children of each frame. You can drill down through it selecting any frame and see all of its textures, all of its font strings and select them. That leads into the next part;
Live Positioning and Sizing. Once you have a part selected, you can use the arrows to move the various parts around on the screen. Along the bottom you can see the Anchor points for the item and change them manually, allowing you to set real time placement and sizing. Finally, that leads to the last part of the EditingUI mod;
Helper Functions. Things like a converter that changes Photoshop colour values to WoW colour values, get texture coordinates out of photoshop, the ability to copy your setpoints from one frame to another, the ability to copy the xml output for use in your (out of game) editor, and other such little things that help ease some of the tedium involved in UI creation and a reload button which allows;
The ability to do real-time reloads of your ui as you make changes to your code, instead of having to log all the way out of the game and back in. It is live now and is fully compatible with Patch 2.2 (which isn’t live yet) and mostly compatible with 2.13. The only thing it isn’t compatible with in 2.1.3 is key bindings, but it will be in 2.2, you’ll be able to go in and set keybindings to reload your ui and hiding and showing it the program itself.
Next they went on to discuss the new Combat Log that is coming in an upcoming patch (2.4, they hope) and finished off with a Q&A, both of which Beladona has already covered in his earlier post, so I’ll not bother to repeat that information.
After the UI panel, people got out those terrible things that I hate so very very much and subjected me to them for a while, then we all trouped downstairs to spend a bit more time watching stuff, buying swag, standing in line-ups, etc before we had to head to Disney for supper. Some of us watched/listened to the Sound-alike contest, the Dance contest and the beginnings of the Costume contest.
Then it was off to the
Rainforest Café for dinner. Slouken, Iriel, Esamynn, Qzot, Cladhaire, Tom, ForTheTribes, AnduinLothar and his girlfriend (sorry, I don’t recall her name at this point), MentalPower, Kaelten, Kristy, Beladona, Cogwheel, Mikina, Alex and I had a very pleasant meal and probably scared the heck out of everyone around us, wondering what this strange language was that we were speaking (code, of course, what else?). We were there until some late hour (I really don’t know just how long we were there, we were all too busy having fun to pay attention to the time) then it was back to our hotels to sleep and get ready for Saturday.