has anyone modded the UI?

[jigsaw]

im curious to know if anyone has modded the UI in the game, whether by changing it's colours or whatever else. is it possible to change it?

[joelyboy911]

I think the SimMars guys changed the UI to a burnt-orange Mars-y type colour. Other than that, the GTM (God Terraforming in Mayor mode) mod moved the God-Mode tools to the Mayor-Mode menu. I don't know of any others. It's certainly possible, as most of the files for it are found in the SimCity_1.dat, and essentially anything in there can be modded (at least, that's my understanding of it) and added to a patch (of course some things should be left alone).

[fafalone]

Once I saw a all-black type UI mod on some obscure Japanese site, but I didn't DL it and no way I can remember what site it was. 

[Jonathan]

It's definitely possible, but there are some quite heavy restrictions like you can't add menus, menus must stay on the left side of the screen. But you can move the menus where you choose lots between different menus, and you can completely change the style of the UI. You can have different UIs for different resolutions without the user having to swap plugins in and out.

I tried a UI where I got rid of all the big menus and so all you had where the submenus up the side of the screen.
there were a few problems with this, I can't remember exactly what but I don't think they all fitted onthe screen resolution of 1920x1080.

[jigsaw]

that's good to know.

can we use the sims2 part more wisely, or remove it completely? could it be a new home for some plugins?

[joelyboy911]

That's actually a really good idea. That whole My Sims feature is basically a waste of space. Someone should look into whether or not the space can be more wisely utilised - though i suspect the guys that worked on what eventually became DAMN might have thought of it already.

[Jonathan]

I've looked into many of the more redundant features of the game, such as UDI menus. I can't remember if I looked at the My Sim menu, but I think I did.
As far as I remember the items in their menus they are stuck in there because the menus have speciifc properties which some items can't have. Not sure how to best explain it.

[jigsaw]

i found the black UI mod (by accident) that was discussed above. i dont know if i would use but it does look interesting

http://www.fukajun.net/simcity4/modules/d3downloads/index.php?page=singlefile&cid=3&lid=10

[jigsaw]

i have decided to re-colour the UI. its still only a work in progress att, only about 30% complete:

its aim is to be transparent. i have picked a smoked glass look with burnt orange trim.

[Jonathan]

Nice!! some new icons for the menus would also be nice
maybe not round?

[thingfishs]

I like the smoked glass but I'm not so keen on the orange trim. I would want the UI to be as soft as possible, what about with no trim?

[jigsaw]

no trim would be difficult, but maybe do-able.

this has all been done by hand so far. sometimes i have to zoom up to 1600% and paint pixel by pixel. it wont be ready for a while yet.

square buttons... i did think about that, but this first version will be just replacing one for one as it is. maybe the next version. new buttons will take a lot more work to do, as it affects other things around it.