I am in no way an expert Desktop X user, but I tried changing the UI's in the Screens folder just to see if it would do anything in-game, and after toying with it for a bit no matter what change I made, there was no apparent change ingame. I believe someone somewhere said that the UI's atm are hardcoded, or that we needed an API provided by Stardock in order to modify it.

Another interesting thing I've seen is that some Devs have told people with UI issues to delete their screens folder and that the game creates it upon start up.

So there's still no way to mod the UI?  I would desperately like to get at the UI graphics for this game.

May I suggest that the Wincustomize DesktopX forum may be a good source of information?

Most of the skinners there are not gamers  . . . so be patient with them

General DX:  https://forums.wincustomize.com/forum/37

DX tutorials: https://forums.wincustomize.com/forum/156

Part of the "my pretty princess" mod? 

I'd create a backup and then modify existing dxpack's states.  I don't think there should not be a impact  on performance.

Did you happen to notice the widget name in the DX Builder object list?  A bit of GalCiv2 ancestry there. 

While you have teh DXpack open, go to C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Stardock\DesktopX\CurrentTheme adn teh extracted images will be available to muck about with.  Is that what you needed?

Ah, and from that location, I can even delete the old image states that I am replacing from the DXpack file (or at least, they no longer show up in the scroll-down list of available appearance states) , which hopefully will keep the file sizes down.  I have no idea how much impact, if any, creeping up those file sizes would have on game performance, but it seems a good policy to keep them down and not laden them with unnecessary data if possible.

My intent, at least right now, is a complete graphical re-skin of the interface, more along the lines of what some people may enjoy in other games in the fantasy strategy genre, with highly ornate art...or at least as much as I can do without compromising performance and reasonable scalability.

I have no idea yet how  difficult it will be to make it into a non-destructive (of core game files) mod, that can be enabled or disabled at will.  Unlike many of the graphics in the GFX folder, just dropping a new Screens folder it into the Mods folder as an override and turning on mods doesn't seem to do anything.  So I'm hoping it will involve re-aiming relatively few data file entries, and not, say, an entry for each individual element. I'm a capable artist, but really dumb about that kind of stuff.

I really look forward to what you all create.  Have fun and if you have any more questions I'll try to answer or find an answer.

That method of replacement seems hit and miss in my experience. I dropped a modified GFX folder in there, and *some*, but not all of the test modifications I made were overridden, as opposed to the same folder in the core game directory, where all the changes I made showed up.  When I dropped a Screens folder in there, *none* of the test changes I made showed up. I think some things will need some deliberate xml editing.  Or perhaps the "Screens" folder requires a different file path for override.

But like I said, I really don't know what I'm talking about on that score yet.

My observations have been far from scientific, but one I recall offhand is the SplashScreen.png file in the gfx folder. The modified version of that one which I put in the main game directory showed up, but when I placed the same folder into the Mods directory, it did not override the image in the main game directory, and yet some of the other modified image files *were* apparent.

And of course, Ive not gotten any of the dxpack files in the screens folder to show up as simple overrides yet in the Mod directory. But I've only tried with one or two of those...MainGameTrayWnd.dxpack, and BuildListWnd.dxpack, I think...both of which I successfully altered in the main game directory.

Here, you want something a little trickier to help me figure out? ( Of course you do!)

I've figured out just about everything I think I need to at this point, about the way things work (enough to muddle along with trial and error, anyhow), to start in on the artistic side of things.  With one exception.

I would very much like to figure out the trick behind the behavior of those little diminishing status bars, for instance the hit points and mana bars you see on the right side of the main tray.

After some hunting and pecking, I determined that "MainContextWnd" is the DxPack in question. (or at least, it's the one Im working on...anywhere those diminishing status bars are used it'll be the same mechanism)

Here's what I know:

1) The status bar components are called "Main_Context_Action_Status_1, 2, 3, etc".  They have three States : Mouse Away, Mouse Down, and Mouse Over (even though they are not pressable buttons as those states might imply).

2) As near as I can tell, it is the "Mouse Down" State that has the contracting or diminishing behavior associated with it in some fashion. They have a semi opaque grey bar graphic in there, that "shrinks" as the value fed to it decreases.

3) Any graphic you put in there (in the appearance pull down) will also have the same shrinking behavior, but something about the grey of the Cut_Out_Status_Down.png also allows it to take on a color given to it from some other factor.  For instance, if you substitute the Cut_Out_Status_UP.png, it will contract as the value diminishes, but it will not take on the color. (The easiest way to see this in action is to play around with the magic slider: Start a new game, select your Sov and take a step--for some reason you can't cast spells until you take a step--and just cast some of your starting spells)

Here's what I *want* to know:

1) Where is that contracting behavior being defined? I cant find any associated script on the DXPack level.  I've looked through the data files, and can't find anything relevant. I'm wondering if this might be something not exposed.

2)More importantly, I need to know what it is that is influencing the color of those bars. Instinct says it should be some sort of overlay or variable in that component of the DXpack, but I've pulled it apart and looked through all the properties of every little piece, and I can't find what might be doing it.

If I'm stuck with the behavior of those bars, I can live with it..I can reshape and repetition them, but they'll still retain the same right to left diminishing behavior...although it's fun to think about changing this dynamic around.  But I would really like to be able to change the color, something that would seem to be fairly simple, but I just can't figure out where the hue value is coming from. There is a "tint" graphic in that DxPack, but it doesn't interact with the color bars in any way that I can see.

Anyhow, just throwing this out there to see if anyone else is as obsessive as I am:)