Custom Action Bars

[horse21]

Hello,
I'm starting to play a little after having been gone for quite a while. I picked RDX back up, and I must say it's changed quite a bit!

One change I can't seem to figure out is the action bars. Before I was able to specify what action button range I wanted in my bar, now I can only find a selection of pre-defined bars. I make custom bars such as the one based on my keyboard (G15, has 18 extra macro buttons on the side), as well as placing a few buttons here and there.

I loved the ability to create custom action bar lengths, as I've always seen 12 buttons as a waste since I don't like to click when I play, and reaching across the keyboard is inefficient and hotkeying other keyboard buttons to the rest aren't intuitive visually.

Is there a way to create my own action bars, using custom ranges of action buttons, splitting them on multiple lines like I used to?

Edit: I've found through one of the themes how to split the buttons onto multiple rows, but haven't found how to customize which action buttons are used in the bar. I.E. Action buttons 1-8 on bar 1, action buttons 70-87 for my G15 keys (I forget the upper bound of how many action buttons there are)

[sigg]

Hi Horse21,

Sorry it is not possible anymore.
Each Blizzard bar contains 12 buttons by default.

It is more standard...

But I don't close the door to this request.
I just need to find an other way.

In my huge todo list.

[horse21]

I see, that's a shame When did Blizzard implement that? I may see if I can find a mod that's able to do custom bar sizes and point you in their direction.

Again, thanks for all the hard work! RDX is feeling better, and things are looking more polished! I was kind of shocked to see everything when I loaded up the game again

[Brainn]

its not a "hard limit" set by blizzard - a month ago it was still possible to create bars with more or less buttons.
i believe siggs decision to limit the bars to 12 buttons was mostly a way to remove the buttonid definitions required by the user, wich by itself is a good idea since it was rather complex to understand but provided no usefull function.
anyway, in my opinion a better way would have been to leave the option for custom defined number of buttons, but remove the need for id-definitions and replace that by some automated system running in the background.

[horse21]

Ah, well, it does make it easier for sharing of themes and everything. People will likely expect that their 12 buttons before they switch to the theme will be preserved, instead of having 1-8 be bar 1, then 9-16 be bar 2, splitting their previous bar up. And if they switch back, then their bars will be scattered everywhere again.

There are definitely outlying cases where customizing is necessary, my G15 macro buttons being one. It's between 12 and 24, so no matter what some buttons are unassigned/wasted.

When you say button id definitions, I assume you mean the ranges that we had to enter before? Like 1-8, 20-30? I see automated button id definitions being doable, and would make things more intuitive. The only time I could see custom button definitions being useful is if you're trying to use the same ones as another mod; Though at that point it's almost easier just to reassign the skills in the buttons rather than fiddle with the definitions to get them perfectly aligned.

In the past I spent a decent amount of time trying to get all of the definitions just right so I could make custom sized bars with all the druid forms and stealth and possess and everything switching out automatically. Having the mod take care of this would be nice.

I think Blizzard uses 1-12 as the main bar, 13-24 as bar 2, etc until like bar 7, where it starts providing the swap bars for the different forms/possess bars. My mental model of how expect it to work:
1-12 bar 1
13-24 form 2 swap
25-36 form 2 swap
etc for all forms of the class
12 buttons for possess bar
12 buttons for vehicle bar
split the remainder into extra bars: current bar 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

The only difference would be the number of buttons is definable, so
1 - x main bar 1
x+1 - x*2 form 1 swap
x*2+1 - x*3 form 2 swap
etc.

Doing so, if someone used a theme that had more/less than their accustomed number of buttons, they could go into the designs and just change the number of buttons, then their assigned action buttons should be aligned to the bar length properly, though they may have to modify the theme a little bit to account for the change.

A few concerns for coding/usability off the top of my head:

• Calculating the ranges dynamically for the different bars
• On changing which bars a bar can swap to or sizes of bars, buttons may shift from one bar to another, causing the user to have to reassign abilities (unavoidable? I see it as expected behavior, others may not)
• Making sure the user doesn't create too many total buttons over all of their bars
• Showing users how many buttons they have left to make bars with in the UI

Sorry for the length, I'm a more or less a flow of consciousness writer I suppose. This is what came to mind from what you said, Brainn. Did I come close to your mental model? There are probably things I'm not taking into account?