I made an addon, mainly developed for WoW Forever, that fades your UI away when nothing is happening. It brings the UI back the instant you need it, whether you’re in combat, targeting something, opening a window or hovering over a frame. Chat pops up when a message arrives, and buffs flash up when you gain one.
While the UI is hidden, the camera, colour and music take over:
Situational cameras: Flight, AFK, Cozy (campfires, /sit, /dance), Quest dialogue, Fishing, Vista (/stare), RP Walk, Auto-run and Death. Each one hands over smoothly to the next.
Mood: screen tints that follow the time of day, zone moods (pale blue snowfields, a golden Westfall, a smoky Ironforge), a warm glow in inns, and weather effects.
Music fades in with cinematic mode, with fatigue rules so it doesn’t restart all the time.
A hide-UI keybind for screenshots that keeps the tint and letterbox on screen.
It turns itself off in dungeons, raids, battlegrounds and cities if you want, and you can snooze it from the minimap button. Every camera and effect can be configured.
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There might be but I made this because I could not find anything like this, at least not for WoW Forever. This addon was not tested in retail but I can try it out. I am not a retail player but if most of the features work I could try supporting that too. Please check back later.
Dynamic Cam was something I looked at, and got some inspiration from, but it was missing the combination of hiding UI elements, tint adjustments, music queue, along with the camera movements. I wanted something that would combine all elements to make a more immersive experience.
Just wanted to add that I briefly tried the addon in Retail and it seems to be working pretty well out of the box, just by installing it normally through Curse. In this sense, I suggest other people to try it out and, if I may, I encourage you to consider the Retail side as well.
I don't want to enter into any particular debate, but one can have plenty of "immersive" experiences in many beautiful Retail zones, while doing campaign quests or sidequests or just exploring around. I intend to also try WoW Forever, but to have something like this in Retail would be fantastic. And I foresee that travelling around the renewed Northrend in The Last Titan will be quite the experience...
Thank you for the response! Surprisingly it has worked very well out of the box for retail in my limited testing. I have not had to do many adjustments between the two different versions. There are a lot of retail functions I am unfamiliar with (I don't even have a max level character) but as of right now I did add retail to my addon and will continue to improve it for both versions.
This is great to hear! And I am sure will also improve the overall visibility and popularity of the addon.
So far, I am under the impression that they are trying to keep the foundations of the UI as close as possible across the two versions of the game. Like, they already announced that the restrictions to addons during combat will be the same in Forever and Retail. It is probably easier to manage for the dev team as well.
If this is the case, I think most addons will operate on both sides with minimal effort, which would be a win win situation really...
I just came back to wow and I'm using EllesmereUI where I can have my hotbars only show up when I target an enemy or myself or am in combat (there are more options but it's what I'm using for immersion)
There's also an option to fade the chat when you don't use it.
It also has what I've always wanted: rectangle minimap (but you can choose square or circle).
I also use CameraOverShoulderFix (DynamicCam) WITHOUT the actual dynamic cam being active, that way the camera is still over the shoulder without all the wobbling around.
I also have a 2 hotbars on mouseover for hearthstones, mounts and stuff.
I'm doing loremaster right now and also use Lorewalker to have NPCs actually talk to you instead of reading a parchment, it has changed my questing experience a LOT. And it also comes with a fade for all UI when talking to an NPC.
This is what my regular gameplay looks like :
(the design of my combat hotbars are still a wip lol)
I love this, I notice that when the UI fades the letterbox shrinks in but, at least from the video when the UI comes back the letterbox doesn't expand again. Is that correct? If so is there anyway to make it snap back out of the letterbox?
The bars show whenever you’re in CineMode, a mode that starts on login and/or again after a short period with no combat. To have them go away in fights, tick “Turn off in: Combat” on the main page (it’s off by default). The addon has over 200 settings to help customize the game how you want to play it.
This is really cool, I tried it last night through today. It just ended up being a smidge too intrusive / I needed a bit more customization. Some of the camera effects I couldn't figure out in the list to turn off, I couldn't get my additional action bars to show when in combat, and I really need the default names / nameplates to show in order to find my way around. I was having to reset nameplates to default everytime I logged in
Thanks so much for giving it a real try, and for the detailed feedback!
Camera effects: the next update adds an “Always” column on the Camera modes page, so you can turn any camera off completely in one click.
Action bars in combat: by default, action bars 1–3 show in combat, along with the pet and stance bars, but bars 4 and up stay hidden. You can tick the extra bars to show in fights on the Combat page. If your bars come from another addon, add them on the Extra frames page first.
Nameplates: we realized we were hiding them too aggressively, so they now show when you target something and during combat. Enemy nameplates show by default, and you can turn on friendly ones too on the Nameplates page. If you still find yourself resetting them each time you log in, let me know which settings you change so I can track it down.
Excellent, I've tried to do this a lot over the years with conditional UI fades and what not to varying levels of success. Will definitely have my eye on this at launch 😁
OP (u/andaca91) - the addon is gorgeous!! I loved how it worked around a campfire in the NE starter town (level 6 zone) with some other elves around. But I had a few issues:
The chat box with my general chat on tab 1 and a 2nd combat tab wouldn't fate out, even when I marked for it to do so. Maybe the settings are not clear and I made a mistake.
My "Details!" combat meter third-party addon wouldn't fade out.
My "buff" window with 2 spell icons on it, from my third-party addon called "Cooldown Manager Centered - Better CDM CMC" wouldn't fade out.
Thanks for the detailed report, it made all three easy to track down.
For chat I don’t think you made a mistake. By default, a new message in General brings the chat back up for 8 seconds. In a busy zone that can keep it up nearly all the time. Try unticking General under the channels on the Chat page and see if it then fades. Mousing over chat will also bring it back but I think the first scenario is more likely.
Details! and Cooldown Manager Centered: both will fade on their own in the next version, no setup needed.
Downloaded it and gave it a spin. Any chance you might support controller UI as well since that's going to be supported in forever? Seems to work beautifully with the standard mouse and keyboard setup so nice work thus far!
So had some time to sit down and try this tonight. Overall it's working pretty well with a controller. However, every time I go to adjust any visual effects in the options panel wow crashes all together once I try to close the menu. This only happens when the gamepad mode is active. When it's just standard keyboard + mouse interface I'm not seeing any crashes. Something to potentially look into!
Thank you for the testing! Unfortunately this is a Blizzard Issue that a lot of other addon users have been experiencing. Gamepad mode is still in Alpha so bugs to be expected. Best to avoid changing settings in Gamepad mode for the time being.
I Was able to add a hack. There is now an option to force a reload when you exit settings in gamemode. This will force the game to reload and save your settings before the crash can happen. Also added an option to hide the minimap button as that also had a lot of issues.
Ahhh, right on. Hopefully Blizz can get it sorted on their side soon so you don't need the extra workarounds. Thanks for looking into this and doing some extra legwork. Definitely going to be using this come wow forever launch!
Awesome, thanks for doing this! I'll update and check it out in the next couple of days. Very much appreciate you putting in some extra work for us controller folk!
Only issue im having is that the keybind part of the options isnt working for me. No matter what selection i click to set a key it only places it in the very first option.
It might be a linux/steamOS issue, but just wanted to see if there was a command i can macro to toggle the whole addon, like the 'peak' button, that ill just place on the actionbar.
Love it! I just can't figure out why the tooltip disappears completely, it doesn't show when I mouseover, even in combat when the UI is visible. Any idea?
Glad you like it! Yes, I had a tooltip hider to help with hiding the UI. I am not fully happy with it so I will be removing it in an update later today but will revisit it in the future.
Once you download and load the addon you should see it take over right away. Tints will show and parts of your UI will hide/show dynamically. The cam modes will also trigger automatically based on certain events. Please let me know if you have any issues!
so many issues of it just like freaking out while just moving. had it run me off a zepp twice. it's nice when its not so disruptive. i just would like a lite version of this and i have played around with options and there are too many things to turn off or change. may want to just add a lite version that unless you are flying or resting or at a campfire just removes the UI elements but doesnt fuck with the camera.
Sorry for the bad experience. There are some camera modes that take trigger when you have auto walk enabled or when you stand still for a while. They are fully configurable to your liking but I understand not everyone wants to deal with setting up addons.
I am working on profiles with different levels of camera triggers that will let users select the experience out of the box. I hope you will try it again once that is ready.
Love the addon, I see that you added gamepad support which I appreciate. It functions well, but unfortunately my game crashes whenever I try to edit in the options menu. After I make my selections and press close, wow stops responding and crashes
Really happy you like it! Had this happen to me a few times. Was able to replicate it consistently thanks to your feedback! Spent a few hours on it but unfortunately this might be out of my hands for now. Gameplay is still in Alpha and there seems to be a pretty big bug that is happening. Found another reddit thread where people are having issues with it and addons https://www.reddit.com/r/wowaddons/comments/1wu1aa8/wow_forever_addons_permafreezecrash_the_game_when/
I created an issue in my github to track this for later. Hopefully it gets resolved by blizzard soon.
Thanks for the prompt response, and yes I’ve noticed a similar issue with a large portion of the addons I’ve installed today while running gamepad.
Hope that blizz can fix on their end. I plan to run an RP realm on launch for the first time, and I think that your addon would be a wonderful addition to that style of gameplay
I Was able to add a hack. There is now an option to force a reload when you exit settings in gamemode. This will force the game to reload and save your settings before the crash can happen. Also added an option to hide the minimap button as that also had a lot of issues.
An addon I've always wanted was one that only shows enemy name plates and party frames. Nothing else, including action bar. I know all my keybinds, I just want to see health bars
Please check out the options we have to achieve this! There configurations for almost every possible UI element. I believe I was able to produce what you might want with a few setting changes.
We also have options to temporarily bring back UI elements when you mouse over. So when you learn a new spell you can still drag and drop from you spell book without any fuss.
This is phenomenal, I've wanted this for so long. I'll definitely be checking this out for sure. In a perfect world, I would also want the text of enemy being too far away hidden, and enemy/allied names hidden, literally only physical bars, but that's just me being nit picky. I absolutely love this and will love using it
It allows you to tweak opacity levels of any UI feature based on conditionals (in combat, mouseover, etc). I do this exact thing you said for my UI, with the exception of one specific bar for me to just move all the cds I want to track.
I'll check it out ty. I've wanted to mythic+ heal like this. Not push keys, but like 10s for vault that are more casual. I tried finding it once upon a time to no avail. I found something I think it was called "move everything", broke my ui, and quit trying lol
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