One of my favorite things about PC games is customizing my HUD and my UI. Â Unfortunately, as most of us know, 1.0's UI options were pretty crappy and limited. Â With the wealth of options that ARR brings us, and the semi-large number of "hidden" options means there's lots of possibilities that might not be apparent at the start.
After lots of tinkering, here's my preferred layout for A Realm Reborn:
![[Image: 2cIpz3q.png]](http://i.imgur.com/2cIpz3q.png)
When I play games as beautiful as this, I like leaving as much real estate as possible to actually SEE the screen. Â The default positions have most of the UI elements slightly inwards, so my first step was to push everthing to the edges, into the corner. Â The default action bars are 2 stacked on top of each other, but when I push the rest of the stuff to the sides, I can free up some leg room and put them side by side. Â I have my most-used skills on the left bar, so that one button push will activate them, and the less common ones can be clicked on the side. Â I would like to permanently remove the Menu Icons on the lower right, but I haven't gotten that far yet.
The biggest change I've made is to add a vertical taskbar to the upper righthand corner. Â Up there I've moved all of my non-hotkey skills, or skills that have a longer cooldown that might not be connected to my main job, which at the moment is Paladin.
I've got sprint up there, in addition to my two mount choices. Â A small gap and there's Return and Teleport, a small gap then Protect/Stoneskin, a small gap and then Raise. Â It seems to be working out really well, giving me at-hand options without taking up space for things I might need at a moments' notice.
The secret to premium space management is overlapping.
![[Image: Vjm26Lh.png]](http://i.imgur.com/Vjm26Lh.png)
When I was arranging my HUD, I noticed that the bounding boxes are considerably larger than the things they're boxing. Â By the precise science of "squinting really hard", I smooshed everything as close together as possible so that the parts I can actually see are pretty flush next to each other. Â Notice the cluster of boxes in the lower and upper right where lots of things meet. Â Also, by overlapping my hotbars in the middle slightly I was able to gain almost a whole extra word's worth of chatlog space per line, which adds up quickly in a long RP session.
I just thought I'd share a cool HUD option for people and the reasoning behind it. Â SHARE YOUR UI's BELOW!
After lots of tinkering, here's my preferred layout for A Realm Reborn:
When I play games as beautiful as this, I like leaving as much real estate as possible to actually SEE the screen. Â The default positions have most of the UI elements slightly inwards, so my first step was to push everthing to the edges, into the corner. Â The default action bars are 2 stacked on top of each other, but when I push the rest of the stuff to the sides, I can free up some leg room and put them side by side. Â I have my most-used skills on the left bar, so that one button push will activate them, and the less common ones can be clicked on the side. Â I would like to permanently remove the Menu Icons on the lower right, but I haven't gotten that far yet.
The biggest change I've made is to add a vertical taskbar to the upper righthand corner. Â Up there I've moved all of my non-hotkey skills, or skills that have a longer cooldown that might not be connected to my main job, which at the moment is Paladin.
I've got sprint up there, in addition to my two mount choices. Â A small gap and there's Return and Teleport, a small gap then Protect/Stoneskin, a small gap and then Raise. Â It seems to be working out really well, giving me at-hand options without taking up space for things I might need at a moments' notice.
The secret to premium space management is overlapping.
When I was arranging my HUD, I noticed that the bounding boxes are considerably larger than the things they're boxing. Â By the precise science of "squinting really hard", I smooshed everything as close together as possible so that the parts I can actually see are pretty flush next to each other. Â Notice the cluster of boxes in the lower and upper right where lots of things meet. Â Also, by overlapping my hotbars in the middle slightly I was able to gain almost a whole extra word's worth of chatlog space per line, which adds up quickly in a long RP session.
I just thought I'd share a cool HUD option for people and the reasoning behind it. Â SHARE YOUR UI's BELOW!
![[Image: BSbIYeD.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/BSbIYeD.jpg)
![[Image: xivpads.png]](http://xivpads.com/i/sigs/24820/xivpads.png)