Wow Ace Review

Wow ace move

Thirsterhall — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 21:50:58 +0000

Some of you may have noticed wowace.com has been down a bit and quite slow when it is working. They are moving to a new server which in a long run will be able to handle everything just fine but it’s going to take a bit to get everything all sorted out and for the dust to settle.

On the plus side the zip file repository is also changing in a way that I can give direct links to the most recent zip files for each addon. Once the dust settles over there I’ll update the links here.

XAD take 2

Thirsterhall — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 02:12:35 +0000

An update to XAD has been posted. This newer versions is a test of the new code base. It will look/act pretty much exactly like the previous version. It’s the code behind the sences that had a major overhall. I’m not useing a modular/plugin approch that will alow me to create a UI to let the user decided what each button does. So if you don’t want a hearthstone button you can turn it off or you can rearage the buttons etc. It also makes it very easy to create additional plugins for other button options, say some buttons to apply poisons for roges, a button for your mount or other potions you use on a regular bassis. Basicly anything you keep in your backback could have a plugin created for it.

Over this next week I’ll be working on additional plugins and the UI to configure everything.

DL link is the same as the previous posting.

XAD

Thirsterhall — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 02:27:42 +0000

I posted up today my own addon XAD. The Ace SVN was down last I checked so it’s not available via the standard ace links yet. However you can read all about it an get it at http://thirsterhall.googlepages.com/xad

Here’s a pic for ya.

Another setback

Thirsterhall — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 01:50:24 +0000

I had another setback with PartyWatch this week. Some things internal to FuBar_CorkFu changed that broke the way I was displaying the need icons. I’ve been able to mostly resolve things but still need to do a bit more work on the need lists. I’ve also found a few more other minor bugs I need to squash before I make a release. Crossing my fingers I’ll have it all good to go this week.

Getting back on track

Thirsterhall — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 01:56:20 +0000

Sorry for the lack of updates the past couple of weeks. It’s been a very busy couple of weeks for me.

I have PartyWatch nearly ready for release. I just need to squash a few minor bugs and it’s good to go. I have the flags working (resting, pvp, etc) and bascily everything I need out of a simple set of unit frames. I have decided to skip showing target buff/debuffs. When I take a look at my whole UI I really find I don’t need them on the unit frames. I’m running AceTimers which shows me the durations of the spells I’ve cast on targets and those are pretty much the only buffs/debuffs I’m really interested in anyway.

As for the targetstarget frame I’m also skipping that as anything that might show me is better covered by other specialized addons. I currently have perfecttargets and squishy installed that do a much better job of covering anything my own targetstarget would show me.

My plan for partywatch is to go though the code this week and clean it all up adding lots of comments and such. It should give anyone interesting in dabbling with tweaking an addon or even writting their own something to start with. Once I’ve got things cleaned up and fully tested I’ll get it released into the Ace SVN.

PartyWatch Phase 1b

Thirsterhall — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 06:14:17 +0000

Not much to show since I last posted on PartyWatch.

I spent a bunch of time testing and optimizing code the last couple of days. For starters the Need icons where taking up way too many resources they way I had it coded at first. Now thanks to SpecialEvents-Aura by Tekkub and some other change on my part things are back under control.

I’m also considering tossing out the target frame buff icons I was planning on adding. At first I was thinking I would want/need to see the buffs/debuffs on my target during a fight but after using it for a while I’ve found that I don’t really miss them. The only time I really need to see active buffs is when I’m healing and I want to see if the player has my HOT spells ticking way or not. However with AceTimer running I can see that just fine. AceTimer also let me know if I need to re-apply a dubuff or DoT and I don’t even need to keep the same guy targeted.

Current bugs:

When units die and come back to life they are still shown and dead.
When units die and come back to life their health/mana doesn’t update till the next refresh, ie their health/mana changes.

ToDo:

Add additional flags
Collapse the pet frame when no pet is active
Add targettarget frame

Here I am in a full party in the middle of a Barron run. Notice the lack of buff icons? Isn’t it great. Also notice the bug where Alona our tank is still shown ad Dead even though she really isn’t, also there is the extra space where the pet frame would go if I had a pet which I don’t as a druid LOL.

Step right up to the bar.

Thirsterhall — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 05:55:53 +0000

It’s bar review day here at WoW Ace Review. I have 3 addons that add status type bars to your screen.

First we have ElkBuffBar and replacement for the buff icons next to the minimap.

Second up is AceTimer a spell timer addon that shows how long your spell effect have left.

And last I have oCD and different way to show you spell and action cool-downs.

Ace SVN for delvelopers only

Thirsterhall — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 12:59:48 +0000

Per this post.

The WoW Ace SVN repository will no longer be available for non-developers. Simply put Ace has become a victim of it’s own success. The number of addons either new or ported over to the Ace library system has grown to the point that direct access to the svn for everyone is more than the SVN server can handle.

Cladhaire however hasn’t turned the rest of use out into the cold. When an addon gets checked into the SVN by a developer the SVN will automatically ZIP it up complete with all libraries and post it for down load at the below location. (A link has also been added to the sidebar here for the zip files) This means you still have access to the more recent code all in a single location just now via zip files instead of direct SVN access.
Direct ZIP file acess location: http://svn.wowace.com/files/
I’d also like to take a moment and thank Cladhaire for providing the SVN repository for Ace at his own expense. Without people like Clad Ace and the now 100′s of addons that use Ace wouldn’t exist.

PartyWatch Phase 1

Thirsterhall — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 05:59:11 +0000

I got the basics of party watch working last night. There remains much to do which I’ll list in the todo section at the bottom of this post.

Lets start with a few Screen Shots of Party watch.

In the above SS we can see my little level 24 druid with Innkeeper Firebrew in the target frame. Just to the right of my frame you can see I still need to cast thorns on myself, remember I’m showing needs not current buffs. To the right of PartyWatch is ElkBuffBar showing my buffs. EldBuffBar is a buff bar replacement for the default Blizzard buff icons that show next to the mini map. I’ll do a review on it soon. Since Innkeeper Firebrew is a friendly npc, you can tell that by the green color to his name, I can also cast Mark of the Wild and Thorns on him if you wanted. The icons next to the health/mana bars are click-able to cast the shown buffs. In the above SS you’ll also notice if the name-level-class text gets too long for the area it simply work wraps around.

Here is my hunter after a very bad fight. Again next to PartyWatch you can see ElkBuffBar showing the debuff Ghost. Not also I’ve switched to my hunter here so I could show you the pet frame.

Ahh much better now that I’m back to the living and I’ve called my pet FurBall out. Another nice feature of CorkFu is it will monitor your pets happiness for you and show a need to feed your little buddy. If you have Feed-o-Matic installed the not only will you get a little dog biscuit icon when you pet gets hungry but you can click on it to feed them.

Here I am getting ready to take out a Shadowhide Darkweaver. Notice my Aspect of the Hawk need icon is now gone which is a good thing. Always want to have that up when going into battle.

And here we are mid fight. Looks like this is going to be an easy one.

Yup he’s dead

ToDO List

Add flags to left of units
Add Group needs icons
Add target buff/debuffs
Add targettarget frame
cleanup icon/buff code.
cleanup code in general
Add Squishy flag support

Current Optional addons

Optional addons are ones that arn’t require to run PartWatch but if enabled add additional functions to PartWatch.

FuBar_CorkFu – need icons to the right of unit frames
Feed-o-matic – for hunter pet feeding. Only used via CorkFu so if you don’t have CorkFu than PartyWatch won’t use Feed-o-Matic either
Clique – for click casting.

Special Thanks

Special thanks need to go out to the following for their great addons and code which I’ve literally cut/past nearly every line of code for PartyWatch so far.

Industrial for idUnitWatch ad idUnitFrames from which 90% of my current code was cut and past from.
Tekkub for CorkFu. Not only a great addon itself but I cut/past the code from to add CorkFu needs to PartyWatch.
Cladhaire for Clique and his built in plugin support making adding Clique support a trivial matter.
And of course everyone that has worked on Ace and Ace2.

The making of an addon

Thirsterhall — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 07:41:53 +0000

After looking over the various options out there for a unit frame addon nothing really quite works exactly as I want. That’s not to say there arn’t some really good unit frame addons out there. But that’s the thing with this type of addon. Everyone wants something just a little bit different and thus the end result is unit frame addons end up having a ton of options. While options are good they also have a price is performance. The perfect unit frame addon would work exactly as you wanted it to work by default without the need for any options at all. But since no two people can agree on what that is you get lots of options so you can tweak it to what you want and pay the price in performance.

After looking over some of Industrial’s code and the advent of the library system in Ace2 etc. I came to the realization that writing my own unitframe addon that does everything exactly as I wanted without the need for any built in options might not be that hard at all.

So I started work on laying out and coding my own custom unit frame addon, PartyWatch.

Upon reviewing the unit frame I’ve liked best over my time with WoW CastParty comes to mind. For those that havn’t used it, it created a small set of health/mana bars stacked on top of each other for each member of your party with your own health/mana being on the top of the stack. What I liked about it so much is it put everything I needed in once small concise location. I would place it in the center of my screen just below my chars feet and above a centered set of action buttons.

My layout for PartyWatch is below.

There will be initially 7 units will be supported, target, player, pet, party1, party2, party3 and party4 show in the same order as above. The top space is reserved for targettarget to be added at a later date so for now ignore the top set of bars.

On the right will be click-able buff icons that will show actual buff/debuff needs not the buffs the unit has. IE instead of showing what buff the unit has on them only show the buffs you can cast that they don’t have or the ailments that you can cure they have. For this I plan to hook into CorkFu. On the bottom I plan on adding the group needs that come from CorkFu.

The set of icons on the left will be flags such as resting, pvp, combat, party leader, loot master etc. I also plan on tying into squishy and adding flags for currently being healed, has agro etc.

The set of icons above the target frame and below the future targettarget frame will be the current buffs/debuffs on your target. The target frame will be special in this case in that it will have both a needs icon area and more standard buff/debuff bar.

As far as options go there won’t be many. As I stated this is all about making the perfect unitframe addon for me. Currently I only plan on having a lock option to lock/unlock the parent frame to alow moving the whole thing around.