◊ masanbol

I find myself often scanning Curse, WoWAce and WoWI for mods that are new and interesting that can add something dynamic or uniquely functional to my UI. I'm a mod collector in the sense that I enjoy finding new mods and following the trends in mod adoption and usage among WoW players. So my question to you all is this: what new mods have you stumbled across that you think are so unique, functional or just plain badass that they could become the next big thing, and find their way into a large portion of the playerbase's UIs?

I'll start with a couple.

The first is Dash, a really cool idea that sort of fell flat because of a lack of development (and probably some coding limitations). This mod allowed you to autohide a portion of your UI frames by mousing over the top right corner of your screen, which could potentially save tons of space and allow modders to make some really amazing minimalist UIs without sacrificing functionality. Unfortunately it seems development stalled and there are quite a few bugs with many addons (such as weird issues with Pitbull party and raidframes, and odd behavior when switching the dash while in combat), so this one is a "might have been" for the moment.

Another interesting new mod is something I ran across on the wowace IRC, a new plugin for Cartographer called Cartographer_Routes. This plugin essentially lets you make visible route lines appear on the map and minimap that you can link between resource nodes to make a route to follow while farming. What I like the most about this is the (possible) potential for it to link anything, such as waypoints or flightpaths, although for the moment it is only linking resource nodes. It also has some nifty features like the ability to autogenerate the most efficient route between nodes of an entire zone.

Post your newfangled mods!

Some caveats: this is not the WHAT'S THAT MOD??? thread. Questions about what a particular mod is should be directed there. Second, this is also not the Post Your 2.2 WoW Interface thread. Linking a UI and saying "this is cool" or "tell me what you think" should be kept there. I realize I have less than zero power to enforce this, but please also try to link a full UI screenshot rather than embedding it in the thread, as it saves valuable time/bandwidth/brain cells.

 

koaschten

I dont know how often i begged the coders over @ #wowace to create something like that. And now someone made it happen. This really made my Monday at work.

edit: Just came home, LOVING it

 

Cohren

I'd have to say VisualThemes is an awsome mod. All it does it makes your windows like character or your social window expand from and collapse to the top left corner. Maybe it can do more but I like it for that.

VisualThemes

 

◊ masanbol

I almost forgot VisualThemes, that's a great example. I think that's a case where a mod is so good you forget that it isn't in the default UI, and it really should be.

 

Zapf

I don't think this really counts as a mod revolution, considering metamap had been doing that for a while (might have been a different map mod; I remember a goon releasing an outlands leveling guide with an extensive route list for quests a while back though). Autogenerating the most efficient route is pretty neat though.

 

Malan

The route optimization is the unique bit about it, not the path drawing.

Consider what you can do with that once it is no longer restricted to resource nodes - add cartographer notes representing quest locations and have the mod compute the most efficient route for each zone.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

◊ Sorrowheart

One mod similar to the route tracking that I'd love to see is a "Fly here" kind of mod. Sort of a bastard hybrid between Thaddius_Arrows and Cartographer.

For example: I take off in Shattrath flying on the Speedybird Express, heading towards Tempest Keep. What is the optimal path to take (and place a huge arrow in on my screen) so I can go afk for three minutes to get a drink while ensuring that I don't end up over Western Nagrand?

 

Malan

Can't you just eyeball that on the world map?

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Xinhuan

Hello,

As the author of the the route generation algorithm behind Cartographer_Routes, I would like to say that the route that is generated is not the "most efficient" but is close to optimal. If you repeated click "Optimize!" you will sometimes "randomly" get a better route, sometimes not. TSP is a NP-Hard problem and are very time consuming to calculate, especially while running an entire graphics engine and WoW at the same time.

As you can imagine, Routes isn't particularly useful in Azeroth/Kalimdor maps where you can't use flying mounts since it only uses the straight line distance between nodes. If anyone has any suggestions on how to feasibly allow routes to be calculated without requiring every square yard of Azeroth being mapped out (whether the terrain is passable, difficult, underground, etc) manually... Well I guess you can still use it in some flat and featureless zones like Tanaris and Barrens, but a route in Searing Gorge just isn't going to work.

Although Malan's suggestion has merit about mapping out efficient routes for questing and leveling guides, at the moment it just isn't feasible given the land mount restrictions and terrain issues and the lack of map data, on top of the complexity of the calculations.

Wiki Page: Cartographer Routes - WowAce Wiki
Download: Index of /Cartographer_Routes/

---------

Oh, I've also written another addon called WoWEquip which functions like an in-game CT-profiles. Set up dream gear sets, socket any gem/enchant, compare and share profiles, see cumulative gear stats, etc. Feel free to check it out too. Its both meant to be for Gear Planning, as well as for general use where you can inspect people with it and see their gear cumulative stats (and save their gear profile for future reference).

Thread and Screenshots: WoWEquip (Official Thread)
Download: Index of /WoWEquip/

 

Camaris

I just use Cartographer's Waypoints. It's just one big giant arrow, but birds fly in straight lines at suffiecient altitude.. it even says how long your bio break can be.

 

Xinhuan

You can use this macro to show up the Battle Map in any zone currently.

Yes, Blizzard is renaming it in patch 2.3 and making it available to all zones but you could always have used it anyway. Cartographer_Routes can optionally draw the route on that Battle Map as well.

 

Malan

I don't think that's a big deal at all. There's a meta map modification leveling guide by a guy named Braxis that does just this - he plots out the quest locations and has them connected in a linear fashion. You obviously can't just follow the line over terrain, but that's not the point of the line really - its not a line to be followed, its more like a direction indicator to the next area.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

◊ Anias

There's a larger problem, which is that many quests are linears, with "do this, then do that" type structures.

ant colony solving for the path will frequently arrive at "that" before "this". It's probably possible to anticipate this with some clever node building, but it's still an issue.

I'd put off my for-personal-use braxis style guide until cartographer had settled on a framework, but had become resigned to having to do the path optimizations on my own. Anyone more familiar with cartographer care to weigh in with your opinion on when the framework/module methods will be stable?

Xin: Is there any plan to allow importing routes? If so I'll focus on standardizing my notes on a sane format, rather than recreate the wheel.

Math is very easy, explaining math is quite difficult.

 

◊ Sorrowheart

Yea, mostly. I was just feeling lazy this morning. Probably should have thought that one through more

 

The Truculent Gentleman

I would just like to second Dash as a mod with fantastic potential. I'm not a coder myself, but I think it would be great if someone could step up and complete development of this mod or something similar.

It's great to have a clear screen and hit a single key that will toggle all the background adds you don't need to be watching during battle (recount, extra action bars, damage chat log, etc).

I am using it in its currently buggy state and wish it was a bit smoother (toggle in combat, use with detached mini buttons, etc).

 

Malan

I can kind of see a problem with the Cartographer Routes - when it comes to resource nodes one does not need to travel directly to each node. Its only necessary to get close enough for the client to be at min distance from the node so that the server can say "yes its up". So the pathing is optimized if you wanted to visit every single node, but that's not really what we want to do - we want to fly as close as necessary to each cluster of nodes.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Xerophyte

Anias: TourGuide is the Cartographer addon you want to look at. Leveling guides with routes. The guides should be rather similar to Braxis', from what I can tell of Braxis' stuff.

As for flying and going AFK, Cartographer handles that fine. Create a note where you're heading - I have ones for BT, TK, SSC and so on - set it as waypoint, follow the giant arrow. Doesn't really need further tweaking.

 

Malan

Holy geez, Tour Guide is perfect for what a few of us have been wanting.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

koaschten

You dont even have to set a marker. Just ctrl + right-click and you will get an option to set the cursor position as waypoint.

 

Kameril

Glad to see my mod, VisualThemes, is starting to get known.

I hadn't seen Dash before, but after messing with it some I see amazing potential; and will probably work on a "spiritual successor" of sorts if no one else picks up the torch by the time my current project is complete (hopefully within a week or two).

 

◊ masanbol

This would make me a happy man.

 

Nite_Moogle

VisualThemes is outstanding and is my new favorite mod that does not have data or timers in it.

 

Darkmantle

I'm glad you came to the thread and said this. From the initial post I was wondering how you solved one of the more intractible mathematical problems of all time!

As for resource nodes, the biggest problem I find is I fly so fast that I can sometimes skim right over a node only to have it load 30 yards behind when the game is finally catching up to where I am. It leads to this annoying situation were I will fly to a spot and wait for the nodes to load then fly further and wait there and so on

 

cerement

Tour Guide is not a plugin to Cartographer, it's a fully functional addon.

Either way though, it is a very interesting idea and certainly one I hope tekkub keeps working on (before he gets distracted again ...)

 

sarf

Hmm... if TourGuide could just rip out data from LightHeaded, it should be close to perfect. Unfortunately LightHeaded does not actually contain data for objectives - it depends on a human deciphering coordinates and objectives from the comments.