User friendly XUi programs?

[poly]

Hi all,

 

I've been modding for over year, just basic stuff. But I've encountered the XUi xml files for the first time yesterday and it has completely blown my mind how muddled (to my mind) it all looks.

I'm trying to customize a user interface for a workstation but because there are so many <window>, <panel>,<rect>,<grid> et al boxes all with different widths/heights and relative pos co-ords it is taking me an eternity just to move something 1 inch to the left. Plus I have no idea what's in the empty spaces - I may have boxes there that are redundant.

I used to play around with HTML/CSS years ago and remember the <border> attribute, which was incredibly useful when editing relative positions/widths etc.

Is there anything like that which I can turn on - if only in the editing stages - just to make it a bit easier for me to design? After I get the absolute positions correct I will overlay with an image anyway.

Is there an online program that gives you a live result as you edit?

Thanks 

 

 

[khzmusik]

If you're asking for something like "live reload" for XUi, then AFAIK there is no way to do this. The game loads some of those XML files before the starting screen is even visible, and even for those that are loaded later, they are loaded only once and never reloaded.

 

Keep in mind that XUi is specific to 7D2D, and the controllers are all in the game's compiled executable, so I don't see how an online tool could replicate it.

 

I suppose someone could write a Unity app that mimics it, but that would be a lot of work (like hundreds of hours of work), so I'd be surprised if anyone did it.

 

But, I'm sure there are tips and tricks to work with XUi that I don't know about, that would help you even without any kind of "live reload" or "preview" app. If nobody here answers, then you might want to go to Guppy's Discord and ask there.

 

(Also: This should probably go in the "Discussion and Requests" forum.)

Edited December 23, 2022 by khzmusik (see edit history)