HD Theme for FFXI - xiPrime
Hello everyone, for the past year or so, I've been hard at work on some custom UI modding for the game. My intent when I started out was just to develop a few things here and there for personal use, but that has grown into a pretty substantial overhaul. This started out as a few personal-use tweaks to RadialArcana’s status icons and other .DAT mods, but I eventually got into it and expanded towards trying to fix up all of the dated vanilla UI the best that I can. I'm pretty happy with the state of the mods at this point, so I figure others might also appreciate this attempt to modernize the game a bit. While a few of the mods I’m sharing here replace the commonly-used ‘XIView’, I’m referring to the overall theme as ‘xiPrime’, and trying to offer each mod à la carte style to that people can easily change out only the things that they want. Presently, there are at least 3 different variants of XIView going around (Caradog, Kenshi, RA, maybe others…), and I didn’t want to further add onto the confusion.
Status / Ability Icons
First up are the icons for status effects and spells/JAs. This mod includes:
▪
ROM/0/12.DAT - Buff/Debuff icons that appear in the upper-left corner of the screen (JP version)
▪
ROM/119/57.DAT - Buff/Debuff icons that appear in the upper-left corner of the screen (English version)
▪
ROM/280/15.DAT - Spell/JA icons that appear in the menu
▪
ROM/324/95.DAT - More spell/JA icons that appear in the menu (lvl 96 SPs, which are stored in a separate place from other spell/JA icons)
▪ Also included are .png versions of the icons for compatibility with addons such as PartyBuffs and XivParty
▪ These icons are up-to-date as of this posting, and includes icons for the new Aria, Black Sanctus, and Animated statuses
▪ Descriptions have been edited for Corsair rolls to include lucky/unlucky numbers
More screenshots and details:
This icon pack is heavily inspired by RadialArcana's from
this post.
Frankly, my entire endeavor to get into .DAT modding in this game is from RA's XIView variant release, and my desire to "tweak" a few things here and there (which then became much more). The 57.DAT file in my pack is based off of his, and includes some of the icons from his pack (most of which have been modified in some way). I also continued his trend of using FFXIV icons as a basis for JAs when modding 15.DAT and 95.DAT.
I also took inspiration (and a couple icons) from the Caradog/Kenshi releases of XIView (
Caradog,
Kenshi). I also use recolored versions of the 'circle' icons (Ancient Circle, Holy Circle, etc.) from
Jean Paul's set.
My goals for this icon pack were to:
▪ Keep the icons stylistically similar to the default game icons- the goal is to enhance the FFXI experience, not replace it.
▪ Make the icons vibrant and easily-discernable from each other, as soft subtle coloring makes it difficult to find a specific buff/debuff out of a list of 20+ in the middle of content.
▪ Keep the icons informative without having them too cluttered.
▪ Loosely maintain a consistent coloring convention throughout the pack (there are a few intentional exceptions such as pro/shell, marches, etc.):
Quote:
Red - Fire / STR / Attack / Haste
Purple - Thunder / DEX / Accuracy / Crits
Orange/Yellow - Earth / VIT / Physical Defense
Green - Wind / AGI / Evasion / Ranged
Cyan - Ice / INT / Magic Attack / Fast Cast
Blue - Water / MND / Magic Defense
In general, this guide should help give a rough idea of what kind of stat an icon is boosting if the icon isn't immediately recognizable.
Also, I took heavy inspiration from RadialArcana's COR roll icons. Although I made these myself, they follow the same convention of lucky number on the left face of the die and unlucky number on the right face. Also, I use the artifact headgear for each job to illustrate the associated job for the roll, and the coloring of the die itself loosely follows the color guide above.
Icon Installation Instructions
To install the pack, just copy the entire 'ROM' folder from the 'DAT Mods' directory in the attached .zip, and overwrite the 'ROM' folder in your Final Fantasy XI installation directory.
Alternatively, for those using the XIPivot addon for Windower/Ashita, the status icon files (ROM/0/12.DAT and ROM/119/57.DAT) are compatible with XIPivot, so you can use that instead to prevent overwriting system files. Unfortunately, the game loads the menu icons before XIPivot loads, so those .DATs must be replaced manually as per the above instructions.
For PartyBuffs, XIVParty, and other addons that use .png icons, the 'icons' directory from the attached .zip can be simply copied over the addon's directory, and replace the default icons there.
(Latest Update: 01-06-2024)
Menu/Nameplate Mods
The next mod that I wanted to release is a customization of the menu backgrounds, buttons, and namplates. For those familiar with XIView, this is the other half of that mod (with the first half being the status/menu icons). This following mod combined with the previous one is a replacement for XIView.
This mod includes:
▪
ROM/119/51.DAT - Nameplate font/icons, menu buttons, weather/day icons
▪
ROM/0/21.DAT - Menu background
The menu background is a recolored mod of the 'blue squares chocobo' background from RadialArcana's post.
As with the above mod, this is inspired heavily by RadialArcana's post on the AH forums. He found a way to increase the resolution of the nameplate text and icons that was previously not possible with XIView. My version uses some different icons, and has been updated to support the latest version of 51.DAT, providing support for the new Config/Gamepad option. There are couple important differences with my version, though, so please keep this in mind.
Mod Details:
▪ I use a different method for upscaling the nameplate icons, so it is not natively compatible with the alternate icon packs provided with different versions of XIView. I can provide some help for those of you who’d like to customize your own icons, but I don't plan to offer alternative variants of the mod (please keep in mind this is a personal-use mod that I’m sharing). The upside, though, is that this mod upscales ALL of the nameplate icons, instead of only the most commonly-used ones, as is the case in RA’s mod. This offers support for popular fan-favorite content such as Pankration, Beligerency, Brenner, and more…
▪ Secondly, and this change is important, there are no widescreen or condensed variants of the mod. I use a great plugin made by Velyn for Ashita/Windower to handle the widescreen stretching compensation.
▪ For context, the game was designed for a standard screen aspect ratio, and when playing in widescreen, the nameplates appear stretched horizontally. Other XIView mods have tried to compensate for this in a variety of ways by essentially ‘pre-stretching’ the images. This has worked well, and I am grateful for those efforts. Unfortunately, while pre-stretching looks ‘better’ on widescreen displays it still doesn’t display everything completely correctly (true to the source image files in the .DATs), it’s resolution-dependent (will look different on different widescreen aspect ratios), and pre-stretching and then re-stretching the images degrades the image quality (albeit minimally).
▪ On the other hand, a member of the community, Velyn, has developed a fantastic plugin for Ashita/Windower that eliminates all of the game’s nameplate stretching (as well as providing a ton of other nameplate customization features such as the ability to resize nameplates and hide/show nameplate contents including stars, icons, and text on the player, PCs, NPCs, etc.). The mod I’m posting keeps all of the image files in their standard resolution, and assumes that one is using Velyn’s nameplate plugin to compensate for the nameplate stretching.
▪ The advantages are that all icons/text display correctly regardless of screen resolution, and I only have to update/maintain a single version of the mod. The downside is that the plugin requires the user to use Ashita/Windower along with a 3rd party plugin. So, while the .DAT mod itself works fine, nameplate stretching compensation is not compatible with vanilla (for all the folks who play that way).
Another thing I should point out is that unfortunately Velyn seems to have disappeared. Their site where the plugin was hosted has been taken down, their Github is no longer active, and they’ve left some (all?) of the FFXI Discord channels. I am including their nameplate plugin in my download link. Previous releases of XIView have historically bundled supporting software such as ChangeTex, Tex Hammer, FFXI Icon Change, etc., so I hope bundling Velyn’s plugin with my mods is acceptable.
More screenshots:
Menu / Nameplate Installation Instructions:
To install the nameplate plugin (for Windower, I don't use Ashita personally so I assume it's installed like any other Ashita plugin), place the .dll in your Windower/plugins directory, and use the command
in game. After loading the plugin, you can use the command
to see a list of the customization commands.
To install the pack, just copy the entire 'ROM' folder from the attached .zip, and overwrite the 'ROM' folder in your Final Fantasy XI installation directory.
To get the window background to display properly, make sure to set
Quote:
Config > Windows > Shared > Window Type > 8
from your in-game menu.
(Latest Update: 12-30-2023)
Balloon Theme
Another matching theme I made is for the Balloon addon by Ghosty, which is designed to give classic Final Fantasy style dialogues. I think this makes the storyline cutscenes much more enjoyable to watch, but that's certainly a matter of personal preference.
Some screenshots of the theme in action:
The Balloon addon is available
here from Ghosty's Github page
Balloon Theme Installation Instructions
First, install the Balloon addon from the above link. Then. download the attached .zip, and place the xiPrime folder in Balloon's themes directory. Load up the Balloon addon in game, and use the command
Quote:
//bl theme xiPrime
to turn on this theme.
(Latest Update: 11-24-2023)
Cursors
I also made a custom cursor pack based on the ones by Sithel from
this post.
Preview:
Alternative POL Cursors:
In the FFXI Modding Discord, atom0s posted a tool he made to extract the encrypted images from POL, and Vekien used that to dump all of the images including the cursors. I made some matching in-game cursors from those source images if anyone is interested.
Cursor Installation Instructions
Just copy all of the cursor files into your FFXI installation directory (typically C:\Program Files (x86)\PlayOnline\SquareEnix\FINAL FANTASY XI) overwriting the cursor files in there.
(Latest Update: 12-30-2023)
