The_Larch's UI Mod

Hi Everyone,

I've been a lurker here for a few civ releases now, taking advantage of all the great strategy advice and mods that these forums are so great for. With the release of Civ V I thought it was time I finally sign up, and give back a bit. With that I present to you The_Larch's UI Mod! (A creative title to be sure)

My mod has been designed to make the playing space more open. Rather than having big screens and buttons in each corner, I've removed and reduced the sizes where possible.


Features:
-Reduced the sizes of both the minimap and unit panels
-Removed the large diplomacy, advisors, and policy buttons from the top right
-Added advisor and policy menu options to the top right pop up menu
-Changed the choose technology notification to open the full tech tree. This means that the top left info panel will not constantly be reset to show the technology panel
-Removed some of the sillier notifications (do I really need to be told every turn my city is shrinking, or I discover a natural wonder?)
-Removed the second tooltip in the bottom right when hovering over tiles. Still shows the tooltip by the mouse.
-Beakers per turn in the top left replaced with the tech being researched and how many turns to completion (can still hover for BPT)
-Clicking on the gold per turn opens the economic advisor screen (don't know why this wasnt there, when bpt opened the tech tree and cpt opened policies)

I think thats everything I've done so far. It started off small and sort of grew over time, so I wasn't keeping track of everything . Hopefully this mod will be of use to someone else out there. You can download it in the civ v mod browser under user interface->other section.

Let me know of any bugs or future feature requests, and I'll see what I can do about them. I'm learning as I go, so please bear with me

ToDo:
-Create menu options for everything.

Edit: Heres a screenshot. I knew I forgot something

Sounds great, but a screenshot would be even greater

indeed a screen is better than 1000 words ^^

I get several overlapping elements at the bottom when using this mod. Top is fine.

The "NEXT TURN" button is on top of the mini map.
The unit actions buttons is behind the unit info panel.

I'm guessing resolution issues? I'm running 1920x1080.

Screenshot looks awesome though, just wish mine looked like that.

There's some things I like in here, most notably the tech being displayed instead of the BPT and the XP bar being removed in favor of a simple text string.

Don't really like the smaller mini map though. Already small.

I am also having problems with the Mini Map being cut off at the bottom of the screen. I'm running the game at 1280x1040. Aside from this I love the view!!

The_Larch said:

-Removed some of the sillier notifications

Click to expand...

Does that include the barbarian encampment loot popup?

Great job overall but I'm having a similar problem with the minimap; the buttons to the left of it are missing and it's partially cut off at the bottom.

I like the mode, but have the same problem as Dict. The buttons to the left of mini map are missing. I use 1366x768 resolution.

Attach a screenshot:

For all those with the minimap problem, I have a quick fix for you. Fortunately, it doesn't have anything to do with resolution. Unfortunately, it involves changing your config file manually.

If you go to My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 5/config.ini, and do a ctrl+f for [MiniMap] you'll see a couple of entries. Change them both to be one half of what they are now. mini-map width becomes 160, and mini-map height becomes 95. I don't play multiplayer, but would changing that file cause people to not be compatible with each other? I know you can't edit the game variables, but I think config.ini should be safe, right?

I'm working on finding a better solution to this, but the only in game variable I can find is MINIMAP_RENDER_SIZE in globaldefines.xml, and changing it doesn't seem to do anything.

@Inverted: The notifications only mean the circle buttons that pop up on the right hand side telling you about the goings on in the world. The pop-ups are for a future version. The barb one annoys me too. I don't know why its not included with the already there menu option 'no reward popups'.

@Opera: I'm working on making everything customizable in an options screen in game, so you can pick and choose which parts you want to use. That will take some time though. For now, its all or nothing

Thanks for all the feedback. keep it coming!

Thanks a lot! This is must have Mod for all the unfortunate folks like me running very low screen resolution.

Thanks !

all i want is the Research tweak in the top left, it should be a simple matter to extract that section, but where do i start?

edit: upon closer inspection the whole top panel is radicool, if i just hack out the lower screen sections and append the modinfo file in the root folder to reflect those changes, it should work, right?

Spendoza said:

all i want is the Research tweak in the top left, it should be a simple matter to extract that section, but where do i start?

Click to expand...

If I am not wrong, you should leave the files TopPanel.lua i TopPanel.xml.

well i figured that part out and it works perfectly. i actually made a custom mash-up using elements of copasetic's and larch's UI with a side of Luxury Resource Display with the goal of familiarizing myself with the whole modding process... Now the problem is adding the right hand side clock.... i added the code from "Simple 24h Clock" TopPanel.xml to the TopPanel.xml of my UI, and appended the modinfo file in the root, but it will only display "TEST TIME" on the right hand side instead of the actual system time.
what am i doing wrong?

I imagine theres some code in the toppanel.lua thats been inserted for the clock to work/update. Probably somewhere in the UpdateData() function.

i totally gave up on incorporating it into your mod.
i ended up just running Simple 24h clock separately, and edited the order so it goes:
Luxuries () CLOCK | TURNS: YEAR: | HELP | MENU
incredibly pleased with the outcome.
thanks for all your tips, everyone. i am learning so much about Civ 5, in-game and out!

I can't find the download.

Any chance you could update this for the latest patch? I really like the idea of having a more streamlined interface. Great work so far!

Where can i find the download?