Parchment/Legacy UI
This mod brings the legacy parchment UI + golden UI for WH1 factions and stone/silver UI for WH2 factions and adds an equivalent of similar UI to new WH3 factions making the UI overall less dark and flat.
If you wish to get legacy UI sounds as well, you can find that version of a mod here
The essential philosophy was to bring the original UI from WH1/WH2 into the third game and give the WH3 factions UI with similar feel, which I suspect was the original plan but then CA changed course at some point, for an inexplicable reason.
It is completely beyond me why CA decided to ♥♥♥♥ all over what they made in two previous games and replace it with something, in my opinion, completely inferior and scuffed.
I tried to stay as faithful as possible to the reference (two previous games) while preserving new WH3 UI features.
WH1 and WH2 factions have more or less the same UI as they had in the two previous games. WH3 factions now have an equivalent of that with recolored assets from the other two games into the bronze/rust/gingerbread color palette with parchment slightly burnt on the edges. Components that are completely new (Chaos Gifts, Ice Court, Formless Horror etc.) are completely left as they were.
The only exception to this are Warriors of Chaos as they got a large overhaul with Champions of Chaos DLC. The three original legendary lords (Archaon, Kholek, Sigvald) are where the old and new meets – the original UI components have WH1 golden skin mixed together with the new, bronze/rusty components and I’d say it looks pretty decent. The other WoC LLs have the regular WH3 UI.
Main menu has also been slightly changed so it’s slightly less dark and the lord selection movie doesn’t get horizontally stretched anymore (especially noticable on biggers screens).
I don’t play multiplayer, therefore I have no idea how the game is going to look in MP. Probably slightly screwed so bear that in mind.
If you encounter an issue and want it fixed, leave a comment with the information what is the issue and how can I reproduce it. If you wish to make my work faster and easier, upload a screenshot somewhere and attach a link. That would be perfect.
Common bugs/issues that can be caused by this mod at it’s current stage:
– overlapping/colliding textures
– difficult to read text – dark text on dark background or light text on light background
If you have any suggestions, you can leave a comment with them and I may or may not act upon them. I made the mod mainly for myself, meaning I’m not gonna implement something I’m not gonna like. Maybe harsh but honest.
– branches in technology tree are cut off in some cases, need to fiddle with them a bit but didn’t get to it yet
– in battle, hovering over a spell used to show (in WH1/WH2) how much are winds of magic going to decrease after casting the spell. Unfortunately, the UI callbacks have been changed in such a stupid way that this functions doesn’t exist anymore
– recruitment panel leather background is supposed to use purple leather for raise dead recruitment and red for all other non-global recruitment. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work anymore due to how stupidly CA reworked the UI callbacks. Therefore, I made it so the background is always purple for Vampire Counts and Vampire Coast factions and red for all other factions
– non-english localizations require a submod – there are 98 localization strings removing text coloring to fit the new background. Shouldn’t require too much work
– there are more but I already forgot them. I’ll add them to the list as I remember them or people report them to me
Save game compatible – yes. The mod is save game compatible as it only changes UI look.
MIXER – yes, compatible.
SFO – probably incompatible. You’d have to test and see, but probably submod is required.
Other UI mods – probably not. This is an extensive UI overhaul editing a large part of TWUI files. The mod is most likely not compatible with other UI mods. It has been reported that moving other UI mods above mine in the load order does help in some cases. You need to test and see.
In case of mods that add new mechanics/features to factions with their own components or give existing factions access to mechanics they normally don’t have an access to (such as warband upgrades), I can’t say with certainty how are they going to work and look.
Living World – excellent mod reshuffling starting positions in a loreful way, making campaigns more interesting and playing factions like Reikland less masochistic
ULTIMATE LIGHTING 2.0 – nobrainer. Makes the battles look better overall and eliminates the dumb vanilla blur of distant landscape
Campaign Weather Overhaul – probably not everyone’s cup of tea but I enjoy this one as it makes the game feel very loreful. However, some may find the omnipresent fog too obtrusive
Better Sound Levels Mod v5.4 – sadly, not only UI got scuffed and this mod fixes a lot of it. Makes the game feel much more immersive
Guns, Smoke & Spectacle – if you really like gunpowder
3D Porthole Lighting Fix – excellent mod to make portholes not vomit inducing
Points of Interest with Pictures – a nice flavor mod
Less buff and effect VFX 3 – less visual clutter in battles and better spectacle
Softer Corruption Graphics – because vanilla is meh
A very personal recommendation – while the WH3 overall looks pretty dark due to the vanilla dark UI and increased campaign map colors saturation, some genius at CA realized how dark the entire game is and decided to increase the gamma by 10% and then completely remove the option from the game. You can notice this by direct comparison of WH3 with my mod and WH2 and see that WH2 UI looks darker/more saturated. For this reason, I use a simple reshade filter.
If you wish to achieve the same, download reshade, turn on LiftGammaGain filter and move RGB Gamma value from 1.000 to 0.900 and the UI should now look the same as in previous installments.
u/LordChatalot – for giving me the initial idea by starting his work on parchment UI and then pissing me off by not finishing it which motivated me to start this
ChaosRobie – for making Before the Shadows campaign, which made several hundreds of my game loads significantly faster
Groove Wizard – for a bit of brainstorming and introducing me to LUA UIComponent wrapper
prop joe – for creating the amazing mod manager and the dev console, making play-testing much easier
Frodo45127 – for making RPFM without which making this would be hardly possible
Tomasz Wegrzanowski – for making TWUI -> XML converter without which directly replicating some stuff such as animations would be impossible
Müsliriegel – for giving me the permission to steal a few of his assets from Unique UI mod and saving me a bit of time
