UI - Resizing Hotbars?

[Dulcimerist]

Is there a way to resize my hotbars in the game? My screen has native 1080p (1920x1080) resolution, but setting DDO to that resolution makes my hotbars a bit too small for my taste. I'm currently running something like 1280 x 720, or possibly a bit lower. During a quest last week, I accidentally hit windowed mode, which put DDO into native resolution and the game looked so much better and seemed to run a whole lot smoother. Is it possible that I'm taking a performance hit by not running DDO in the native resolution of my display?

Please tell me there's a way to resize my hotbars to appear a bit larger in higher resolution. (Last night I got physically ill running the Wheloon chain in the choppiness and coarseness of the lower resolution, so I might have to switch to 1080p even if I can't resize the hotbars. I still feel really sick still today, and may have had one of my mild seizures.)

[EllisDee37]

There is no way to resize hotbars in the game.

You might try kicking up your DPI, but I suspect that won't help. We can figure out if it helps by having you watch one of my youtube videos, since I have the same 1920x1080 resolution as you do and I set a custom DPI value (125%).

I've always used 125% DPI so all my captured videos will show what it looks like at that size. Try this video, switching to full screen mode on youtube. Do those hotbars look any bigger than yours? If they look the same size as yours (which I suspect they do) then changing your DPI won't have any effect.

I set a custom DPI by doing the following steps in Windows 10:

- Right-click desktop, choose Display Settings
- Custom Scaling
- 125% (it says not recommended, but I'm a rebel)

[Dulcimerist]

I already run at 125 DPI, and our hotbars are the same size in that resolution.

Perhaps I'll try playing for a while with the better resolution and the hotbars which are a lot smaller than I'm used to. I might get the hang of clicking smaller hotbar buttons, and it might be worth it if I can see a lot better and prevent my eyes and brain from getting messed up.

What I really need to do is learn Autohotkey so I can click one button for a series of attacks or a series of buffs. It's the pre-fight quick buffs and action boosts that get me mouse clicking on the hotbars most often.

[EllisDee37]

I never understood how people use hotbars. I click hotbar buttons when swapping gear (trapping, haggle) or placing torches in challenges, but other than that I really don't use the hotbars much at all. Most everything I do is with keyboard hotkeys, leaving the hotbars to just show me cooldowns. And also to remind me what keys do what.

My "action" keys are the numeric keypad, plus the bank of keys with home/end/etc...



Then my hotbars mimic those relative positions similar to the following, which is for my challenge farmer monk:



When I want to cleave I hit 7, great cleave is 8, etc... My attack key is 4, so I put my combat stance (power attack or precision) on 4 since the attack key isn't mapped to a hotbar location. For melee I put weaponsets along the outside of the numpad, with alternate versions mapped to the Alt key:



For example, I could put my +++ greensteel undead beaters mapped to ".", and a set of crafted undead beaters with better dps but no insta-kill for undead bosses mapped to "Alt+." Those weaponset mappings (and their Alt versions) are assigned to Hotbar 6, which isn't visible since they're the same for all my melees.

I also assign the entire Alt alphabet (Alt+A, Alt+B, Alt+C, ..., Alt+Z) to hotbars 8 to 10, and then move common actions to the appropriate letter. Alt+C is remove Curse, Alt+T is Teleport scroll, etc... I don't need those to be visible because they're set to be obvious and easily remembered.

And finally, Hotbar 7 is my shrine buff hotbar, which I map to Alt versions of the home/end/etc... bank of keys, meaning I get up to six shrine buffs for any one character. When entering a quest or after shrining, I hold down Alt and just rapid-fire through that bank of keys until they stop responding, meaning I did them all. Doesn't matter what the actual shrine buffs are; I always use the same keys for all characters so I never have to worry about forgetting any.

EDIT: The third image is very old. The "1" key has been Unbalancing Strike for years. I haven't used Storm Strike since the enhancement pass in 2013. Also, in the second picture, all those weaponsets in the home/end bank of keys are from years ago when I used to have crafted boss beaters for various niche bosses: monstrous humanoids (gregor in crystal cove), demons (devashta in extraplanar palace), reptiles (that squirrely boss in rushmore mansion), etc... I've long since switched to just using my trash beaters (Scraps of Enlightenment) for just about everything except undead and the lantern archon in kobold island.

[Pyed-Pyper]

I never understood how people use hotbars. I click hotbar buttons when swapping gear (trapping, haggle) or placing torches in challenges, but other than that I really don't use the hotbars much at all. Most everything I do is with keyboard hotkeys, leaving the hotbars to just show me cooldowns. And also to remind me what keys do what.

My "action" keys are the numeric keypad, plus the bank of keys with home/end/etc...



Then my hotbars mimic those relative positions similar to the following, which is for my challenge farmer monk:



When I want to cleave I hit 7, great cleave is 8, etc... My attack key is 4, so I put my combat stance (power attack or precision) on 4 since the attack key isn't mapped to a hotbar location. For melee I put weaponsets along the outside of the numpad, with alternate versions mapped to the Alt key:



For example, I could put my +++ greensteel undead beaters mapped to ".", and a set of crafted undead beaters with better dps but no insta-kill for undead bosses mapped to "Alt+." Those weaponset mappings (and their Alt versions) are assigned to Hotbar 6, which isn't visible since they're the same for all my melees.

I also assign the entire Alt alphabet (Alt+A, Alt+B, Alt+C, ..., Alt+Z) to hotbars 8 to 10, and then move common actions to the appropriate letter. Alt+C is remove Curse, Alt+T is Teleport scroll, etc... I don't need those to be visible because they're set to be obvious and easily remembered.

And finally, Hotbar 7 is my shrine buff hotbar, which I map to Alt versions of the home/end/etc... bank of keys, meaning I get up to six shrine buffs for any one character. When entering a quest or after shrining, I hold down Alt and just rapid-fire through that bank of keys until they stop responding, meaning I did them all. Doesn't matter what the actual shrine buffs are; I always use the same keys for all characters so I never have to worry about forgetting any.

EDIT: The third image is very old. The "1" key has been Unbalancing Strike for years. I haven't used Storm Strike since the enhancement pass in 2013. Also, in the second picture, all those weaponsets in the home/end bank of keys are from years ago when I used to have crafted boss beaters for various niche bosses: monstrous humanoids (gregor in crystal cove), demons (devashta in extraplanar palace), reptiles (that squirrely boss in rushmore mansion), etc... I've long since switched to just using my trash beaters (Scraps of Enlightenment) for just about everything except undead and the lantern archon in kobold island.

My method is similar, except that I use a lot more key bindings. If running a caster, every spell (and variations thereof, including metas) used in combat would have its own binding. That means the keypad keys, ctrl+numkeypad, ctrl+shift+numkeypad etc. The computer and/or keyboard would affect choices over the years. Often, I've run out of binding space because of either keyboard combos causing problems or the inherent mapping limitations. I'd align the hotbars together to represent the keymapping so as best as possible to align to the actual keyboard configuration. Depending on how the UI evolved and changed the toolbar border over the years, applying one of the UI skins out there would open more visibility for gaming.

With the keymapping and bars for clickies and other things, I was happy if I could get my hotbar count under 15, especially with a smaller screen.

Discovering the UI setup and save commands drastically reduced my TR downtime.

One thing that would be nice is to have instead of bars is location-lockable individual arrangeable and mappable cells, but I know (that in a world of copy-paste programming and years-old typos) that just isn't going to happen.

[Dulcimerist]

Wow! I really love the diagram!

I've been starting to explore the keypad for shortcuts, using 0, 1, 2, 3 for special attacks. Looks like I should take advantage of the real estate above those keys. I've always used the arrow keys for moving. Currently I have right Alt runearm for my arty, and the funky button next to right Ctrl as target. I had never thought of using the six-pack of keys above the arrows, so I will play around with those.

Looks like I will switch to the better resolution. I still plan to explore Autohotkey to combo up special attacks and buffs, since my keyboard precision is impaired. I'm 6'8" with size 18 (54 Euro) shoes, so my giant hands pretty much button mash and ensure not to program adjacent keys with things I don't want to accidentally hit during combat.

Thanks for the help! Hopefully the better resolution will reduce my lag and help me be more effective in parties. The shortcut keys diagram and advice will definitely make me more efficient and effective!

[boredGamer]

I use num keys as well but not for in action things (generally) .- because I don't understand how you use above and use mouse look.

Cleave should be easily reachable by left hand, for instance.

Don't not use mouse look. It is just worse.

[cmecu]

I never understood how people use hotbars. I click hotbar buttons when swapping gear (trapping, haggle) or placing torches in challenges, but other than that I really don't use the hotbars much at all. Most everything I do is with keyboard hotkeys, leaving the hotbars to just show me cooldowns. And also to remind me what keys do what.

My "action" keys are the numeric keypad, plus the bank of keys with home/end/etc...



Then my hotbars mimic those relative positions similar to the following, which is for my challenge farmer monk:



When I want to cleave I hit 7, great cleave is 8, etc... My attack key is 4, so I put my combat stance (power attack or precision) on 4 since the attack key isn't mapped to a hotbar location. For melee I put weaponsets along the outside of the numpad, with alternate versions mapped to the Alt key:



For example, I could put my +++ greensteel undead beaters mapped to ".", and a set of crafted undead beaters with better dps but no insta-kill for undead bosses mapped to "Alt+." Those weaponset mappings (and their Alt versions) are assigned to Hotbar 6, which isn't visible since they're the same for all my melees.

I also assign the entire Alt alphabet (Alt+A, Alt+B, Alt+C, ..., Alt+Z) to hotbars 8 to 10, and then move common actions to the appropriate letter. Alt+C is remove Curse, Alt+T is Teleport scroll, etc... I don't need those to be visible because they're set to be obvious and easily remembered.

And finally, Hotbar 7 is my shrine buff hotbar, which I map to Alt versions of the home/end/etc... bank of keys, meaning I get up to six shrine buffs for any one character. When entering a quest or after shrining, I hold down Alt and just rapid-fire through that bank of keys until they stop responding, meaning I did them all. Doesn't matter what the actual shrine buffs are; I always use the same keys for all characters so I never have to worry about forgetting any.

EDIT: The third image is very old. The "1" key has been Unbalancing Strike for years. I haven't used Storm Strike since the enhancement pass in 2013. Also, in the second picture, all those weaponsets in the home/end bank of keys are from years ago when I used to have crafted boss beaters for various niche bosses: monstrous humanoids (gregor in crystal cove), demons (devashta in extraplanar palace), reptiles (that squirrely boss in rushmore mansion), etc... I've long since switched to just using my trash beaters (Scraps of Enlightenment) for just about everything except undead and the lantern archon in kobold island.

I know this is an old thread, but I was also looking how to make my my bars and everything smaller. Be nice to not have bars covering up entire bottom of my screen. Then i seen this post when i was searching and realize you do the same exact thing as I do on how we use our keyboard. I too use number pad, and I set up my abilities on the hotbars the same shape as my number pad.. It works perfect like that. I also use the arrow keys just the up and right one.. along with the pg dwn end del etc.... wouldnt do it any other way.