User:Jujin/Minimalus UI Mod

Minimalus UI Mod v2.1

What is Minimalus UI Mod?

Minimalus UI is a clean, lightweight and refined Guild Wars interface designed in 2015 to update the game in three major ways:

• to reduce the visual weight of interface to its functional minimum,
• to update Guild Wars' interface to modern design standards, and
• to enhance gameplay with a plethora of smart tweaks.

Minimalus enhances gameplay immersion by slimming down the visual profile of the interface. Each interface element has been retooled with slim 1px white borders and other optimizations to let you focus on gameplay. As a byproduct of streamlining the interface, the world and environments of Guild Wars will look considerably more vivid with a softer menu opacity.

Minimalus is lightweight and harmless to run, and the filesize sits at approximately 650KB at Orangedox (link to download). The project currently modifies 182 textures using a Texmod .tpf file.

Full interface sample #1. Click to expand.

Login screen sample. Click to expand.

Full interface sample #2. Click to expand.

Full interface #3. Click to expand.

I've been playtesting and tweaking this thing for several months now, and I've tuned it for pitch-perfect control during frantic Hard Mode battles. You have never had such precise control over your heroes, your targets, and your own skills. Interrupts flash brighter, health bars are slimmer and more clear, and the compass is slimmer and sexier.

More Samples

Here are some animated gifs of the interface with and without Minimalus:

Login Screen

Character Select

Stackable Hero Panels

Menus

Here are some other players using Minimalus:

https://youtu.be/PeL9O49IWZw (Barath running the Deep with 7 Hero)

https://youtu.be/c8kQScJEZ1k (Vivec running the Deep with a team)

https://youtu.be/r33D3fRGltQ (Letumret running MTSC)

https://youtu.be/wkoqu054kTM (Callahan running DoA)

More Exclusive Features

Minimalus UI's signature compass with all-new circular hero flags.

Stack your hero panels into a single colorful block. Notice that you can still monitor their skill usage.

• Frantic Combat:
  • Brighter interrupt flash on enemy casting bar for super satisfying interrupts. [1]
  • Stackable hero panels for space compression if desired. [2]
  • Crisp new font for floating damage/heal text. [3]
  • Bolder, brighter, cleaner overhead health bars for optimal visibility on the fly.
  • Color-coded hero command settings: red = fight; yellow = guard; green = avoid combat.
• Hyper-minimal compass (see right):
  • When placed, new circular hero flags don't obstruct the dots beneath them.
  • More precise aggro range ring and additional ring for spirit range.
  • Smaller & brighter compass dots, great for close quarters combat.
  • Dramatically slimmer compass border--the thinnest on the mod market or your money back! :) jk it's free.
  • Hero flag buttons now float so you can see behind them. They glow when placed. The cancel button also disappears entirely when you have no flags placed.
• Ultra clean skills & health bars:
  • Enhanced adrenaline charging UI. The new bold black line is perfectly glanceable for warriors, paragons, and dervishes!
  • Clean skills with no gleam over them, as well as a perfectly rectangular skill tray. Plus a minimal yellow border for your elites.
  • Flattened health/energy bars in brighter colors, including when hexed/diseased/bleeding, as well as a bright white upper indicator line for high glanceability.
• The crispest menus & buttons:
  • Perfect 1px menu borders. Rectangular with no swooping borders or gradients. All menu buttons, selectors, and options have been flattened and standardized. [4]
  • Refreshed login screen and character select.

Download

Minimalus UI v2.1.tpf at Orangedox. Original link no longer works.

Minimalus UI v2.1.tpf at Mega.

Note: Minimalus is a .tpf file and must be run through either Texmod or uMod each time you boot Guild Wars. It is NOT a hack and will not alter any files other than simple texture replacement. To remove the mod, simply launch Guild Wars normally without Texmod. I highly recommend using uMod if you are experiencing instability issues with Texmod like weird character shadows or random textures overlayed upon the screen. See below for a guide to uMod!!

Minimalus Change Log

v2.1 (24 Apr 2015) FINAL

• Removed the vanilla border for the skill tray when in VERTICAL orientation (both 2x4 and 1x8). Apparently I never tried a vertical skill bar in all of my playtesting hehe.
• Removed the bottom element of the loading screen for a much sharper look.
• At this point Minimalus is "done" so enjoy :p

v2.0 (10 Mar 2015)

• Changed damage font to a highly modified version of Patua One. (My favorite font ever!!!) It's bolder, brighter, and cleaner than ever before!!! Sample: [5].

v1.9 (22 Feb 2015)

• Tweaked RED damage text to make it cleaner.
• "Cancel hero flag" button underneath compass now disappears entirely when you have no hero flags placed. The X is also better centered.
• Entirely eliminated the 1px border around all bars. Frees up LOTS of pixels in [P] Party menu, on target, on hero panels, and on your own health/energy bars. Sample: [6] (Notice the lack of outline around health bars, energy bars, exp bar, etc etc)
• Rounded edge of Menu button for aestheticz.

v1.8 (10 Feb 2015) - HUGE UPDATE!

• Character select screen alterations:
  • Adjusted white point of 3D character portrait borders.
  • New selected character highlight.
• Compass alterations.
  • Placed hero flags are now hyper minimal circles. You can finally see the green/red dots underneath your placed hero flags!
  • Hero flag buttons are cleaner and flatter with more legible numbers. Subtle, but striking.
  • Compass north "N" is now more stylish.
  • Smaller green and red ally/foe compass dots. This change is a lifesaver during close battles.
  • Skinned the quest starburst and off-compass quest pointer arrow.
  • Flatter, cleaner green NPC triangles.
  • Slightly lowered white point of compass ring.
  • Sample for all of these: [7].
• Combat zone alterations:
  • New floating combat damage/heal text font! Completely custom lettering!! Sample: [8]. JK updated away from this with v2.0.
  • "Flattened" the overhead health bars that float above all foes/allies for maximum visibility during combat. Look how striking this change is: [SAMPLE COMING SOON].
  • Skinned overhead chat bubble.
  • Also flattened overhead down-pointing arrow that floats above targeted ally/foe.
  • Skinned the purple interrupt indicator on the cast bar. Interrupts are now bright purple flashes for maximum visibility!
  • Flattened purp hex arrow / brown condition arrow / yellow ench arrow on health bars!
• Other interface alterations:
  • Skinned blue energy dots / cast time clock icon / spinny recharge arrow icon / spiky adrenaline icon / red sacrifice dot icon / upkeep indicator icon all in Skill [K] menu.
  • Skinned chat open/close button.
  • Cleaner connection indicator.
  • Fixed menu button so it can fit snugly into lower left corner of screen.
  • Slightly adjusted corner grab of all resizeable menus.
  • Lowered white point and sharpened hero command toggle icons.
  • Lowered white point and sharpened NM/HM toggle icons.
  • Even more perfect alignment of chat box with text entry field.
• This is a huge milestone because I think I have now skinned just about every single visible texture in the interface.. whew!! With v1.8 I wanted to make one last huge push to make Minimalus functionally complete.. Although somehow I think I will find some more things to tweak. Give it a try, you will enjoy it ;)

v1.7 (18 Jan 2015)

• Skinned the party menu ready/not ready toggle. Example: [9].
• Skinned the HM/NM toggle button. It struck me that I could give the button accents just like the hero attack/defend toggle. Example: [10]. In retrospect, using N and H is English-specific and not localized to different languages, so sorry about that!
• Hero target lock/drop bundle button has been vastly improved. Again, I took cues from the accents on the hero attack/defend buttons and skinned the "drop bundle" yellow to indicate it's actionable. So much cleaner. Example: [11]
• Figured out how to skin the empty skill slot texture. I turned it into a black square, which admittedly is not the greatest solution but maybe I'll tweak it again in the near future. I just couldn't really think of something minimal to fill the space besides black? I was really on the fence about making this edit because honestly the default doesn't look half bad... Regardless, let me know what you think of this change and give me suggestions if you can think of anything better!! Example: [12].
• Here are some old samples from v1.7: Login Screen • In-Game 1 • In-Game 2 • In-Game 3

v1.6 (11 Jan 2015)

• Finally "flattened" hex, disease/poison, deep wound, and bleeding health bar colors. Example: [13].
• Skinned the highlight border on cast finish. (Trust me on this one.. the "during" casting texture was square and the "finished" casting texture was round... was gross but now its fixed.) Example: [14].
• Tweaked the outline of the red PvP enemy health bar so that the Red doesnt overlap the border. Example: [15].
• Fixed two stray pixels on every health bar that created a weird "bulge" on the top and bottom. I think I tried to make a 50% health tick a while ago but because the texture is stretched horizontally it ended up being this white/gray smear rather than a nice pixel-tick, and I forgot to erase it until I just noticed it now. Moral of the story: I can't figure out how to make a 50% health bar tick but pls if you know how....... let me know. Example: [16].

v1.5 (7 Jan 2015)

• Finally fixed chat box alignment w/ text entry field! Example: [17]. Thanks Oth for pointing this out!
• Fixed Hero portrait 1px border. Example: [18].

v1.4 (25 Dec 2014)

• Enjoy a not-shitty menu button.

v1.3 (11 Nov 2014)

• AS REQUESTED: Updated with enhanced adrenaline display!! Enjoy the adrenal charging lines!
• Brighter map dots, perfect bars!
• Small interface tweaks.

v1.1 (14 Sep 2014)

• Added spirit range circle
• Modded hero command buttons with sexy accent colors
• purple skin for "H" menu faction/title bars

v1.0 (25 Aug 2014)

• Uploaded to wiki

More Info

uMod Guide

EDIT 8/20/15: In retrospect, uMod as a program is way buggier than TexMod, so if you can get uMod working then defintely enjoy but if you have problems getting uMod to work then by all means go ahead and use TexMod.

I highly recommend using uMod to run Minimalus instead of Texmod because Texmod has weird stability problems (like weird character shadows and random textures being overlaid over the screen). Download uMod here: [19]. To run Minimalus through uMod:

1) Open uMod and click on "Main" in the top left corner.

2) Choose "Start Game through uMod".

3) In the popup menu, navigate to your gw.exe game file in your program files.

4) Launch GW through it. As soon as GW launches, an empty tab called "gw" will appear next to the "main" tab in uMod. This tab will only appear while GW is running.

5) Drag and drop Minimalus .tpf file into the big white empty portion of the "gw" tab and it should automatically inject the mod live into the game.

6) Sometimes uMod crashes your GW while you are loading/updating .tpf files into the "gw" tab but that is no biggie, just retry and it should be super stable while playing the game.

7) uMod is really nice because it "remembers" what .tpf's and games you have selected, so every time that you start uMod after the first time then all you have to do is "main" > "launch game through uMod" > select Guild Wars from the list and boom, much less clicks than Texmod.

Tip: for a SUPER fast login, you can set uMod to "Global Hook" which will alter Guild Wars without launching specifically through uMod (I think uMod must still be running) combined with command line arguments to auto-insert your username, password, and character name. Note that command line arguments only work on SHORTCUTS to Guild Wars and not the .exe so be sure to make a shortcut. These two methods together make it so you can simply double click your GW shortcut and it will auto-mod the game file and log you directly to your character select.

My interface layout

• Here is a screenshot of the interface layout that I use if anyone is interested in dupicating it. Note that I play on a very small screen (11.6") so my interface is set to Small, which is actually one of the main reasons why I made Minimalus in the first place. [20] Screenshot from v1.7.

Known Issues:

• Kick/Leave/Search buttons on (P) Party Menu sometimes have little gaps on the left and right sides at low graphics settings. Example: [21]. To fix this, go to graphics settings and turn on "best texture filtering".
• The Hero Control Panel likewise has these two little gaps on either side of the panel... Example: [22]. For the life of me, I do not know why this gap exists but I think it has something to do with the way that the game renders the skill bar that it contains. This is the ONE unfixable error that has plagued me since the day I started designing Minimalus.
• Apparently in Combat Zones (not in town apparently), the VERTICAL skill bar orientation (1x8 / 2x4) might still be vanilla. I am aware of this problem and will fix it ~ Jujin talk 22:31, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Again, message me in game at Hope Once More or on my discussion page if you notice a problem, need help, or have an idea to improve the mod! I check Guildwiki pretty often. Generally at least weekly.. My goal is the most elite mod in the GW community and honestly I would love some feedback on this thing, so let me know! ~ Jujin talk 09:21, 12 February 2015 (UTC)