Dustwhisper

I toyed with the same idéa for video-recording bosskills without stressing the actual gamesystem with fraps. Relay all packets to sandbox and rebuild the fight on the fly with fraps there which means you could also have a freefloating camera.

 

Tanoh

Interesting. Still, going from proof of concept to a working addon is a long long way.

The effects on gameplay are quite big if they get it working properly. Imagine in "spread fights", such as Gruul, if at least one in each group broadcasted the locations of everyone in their group right around shatter everyone could calculate quite accurately exactly how close someone else is to them, and with some modifiers estimate the amount of damage they would recieve, and warn if it's lethal or not.

There has to be a reason why Blizzard isn't allowing the "get my map coordinate" call inside an instance, I think it's because they do not want addons to be able to do the things above.

 

Amorpheus

I think this would be an awesome feature to implement into the game by Blizzard. The most boring thing about ingame movies is that generally, you have one view of somebody playing - if you could change that to a totally free camera and handle everything afterwards it would make for far more interesting videos. It would also mean there is no inner conflict between the camera man and the player.

"You are better than I am," Inigo admitted.
"So it seems. But if that is true, then why are you smiling?"
"Because," Inigo answered, "I know something you don't know."
"And what is that?" asked the man in black.
"I'm not left-handed."

 

DrVanilla

Idea for a "movie"-like ability....Have the positions recorded with the GPS mod you're listing and have a program much like Wowmap viewer that shows the players in their positions with the glitch boxes that used to show up in wow beta. Have a list of what spells and abilities that person was using and firing at the "boss". But this probably violates something or other...or I just didn't understand what you were talking about to the point that I repeated one of your ideas :-/.

 

sarf

You can already do personal range detection within certain fuzzy limits, which is what a lot of bossmods do. GPSLib would be more appropriate for setting up waypoints and - as people have said - to watch the positions of people during a fight. Coupled with combat-tracking addons such as Recount, it should be quite neat.

AFAIK, GPSLib is actually working - no one has started using it is all. What is needed is an addon like Cartographer, that allows you to display dungeons and the people that have GPSLib installed on it.
It would be neat to have Waypoints (preferably looking just as Cartographer_Waypoints since that's a good enough one) but what is needed is first and foremost display with some ability to interact with the map.

In fact, it might be possible to just "patch" in current locations in the dungeon maps in Cartographer.

 

Tanoh

Yes, the keyword is fuzzy. Might just be a personal feeling, but I think that if these things becomes widespread and very accurate that Blizzard will (quite rightfully so) think it's an unfair advantage, and change the calls so they are usable by Blizzard only or some other way to remove the functionallity. As we've seen with mods in the past that have done things Blizzard doesn't want them to be able to do.

 

◊ Kalman

GPSLib is working, the only thing it needs is calibration and usage. (It needs to be individually calibrated per zoom level per instance, which is why DungeonCrawler only works in one instance.)

http://mmorchive.net

The WoW forums, explained:

 

amethyst

I've been thinking for a while that it'd be really cool to have a mod that was able to display and update some sort of 3D arrow on your screen, to show you the direction towards something.

Whether that be when resource gathering, for PvP to show flags, or linkable to some boss mod etc.

 

Opioid

Sounds feasible enough. Take the Cartographer waypoints system, switch it based on the nodes in Cartographer routes mentioned earlier.

 

◊ masanbol

What you're describing basically is Cartographer_Waypoints.

 

amethyst

Yeah, I know.

I was kinda referencing that as it'd been discussed a fair bit earlier in the thread. Was just one of those, "Would be really cool if someone could do this ... oh wow, they have!"

Of course, I don't see Cartographer being likely to add a module to track pvp objectives (flag runner etc) via that, but you never know!

 

Gearknight

That's 1 thing, but it would be a totally different ballgame if that arrow could show you what direction to move to get away from Shatter or incoming Malchezaar Infernals.

 

Constie

Eh. Do we really want that?

Come on, die young.

 

amethyst

Well, if you ever spent time wiping, because 2-3 people in your raid just couldn't work out which way to run, but you didn't have others to replace them with, then yeah, this kind of thing would be a godsend!

I realise that it's getting closer to, "Press this button to defeat boss" level of modding, but sometimes the "less able" raid members really need some help.

 

Rhagok

Well most times the "less able" Raid members are also the ones not using the newest addons, not being fully prepared ... I don´t think a mod can compensate missing playskill. Also the arrows on Gruul would change drastically depending on how everybody else is moving. This at least should be impossible to code and solve in the given time (Tenth of seconds so you can run away after seeing the arrow ^^)

 

Wobin

Which way -is- the right way to run from Shatter? Figuring out a direction where -noone- else is running may be a solution, but certainly not an easy one, as everyone would be changing directions on the fly, making recalculations necessary, further muddying up the directions required, etc...

Of course, since the location detection is fuzzy within instances, it may be difficult to figure out anyway since the fuzziness precludes the accuracy required for such a manoeuvre. For outdoor encounters, where we -can- get the coords of any raid member, such a functionality might be feasible.

But then, to what end =)

 

Wobin

One thing I should mention, is that, while there -are- some altitude mods out there (somewhere) the coordinate system offered by Blizzard is entirely two dimensional, so it does not take height into consideration. So any usage of waypoints etc, cannot calculate altitude. It's also limited by what the API offers in terms of returning locations for targets. Mobs, for example, would not be able to be used, as we have no method for determining their co-ordinates. Flag runners, similarly, -unless- they were your faction (and thus in the raid group), and even then you run into the problem of being in an instance and not being able to get accurate results.

If we could get accurate results for people in instances, it could lead to interesting mods such as "Point me to where the biggest fight is in the BG" and it would search for the largest group of raid members within a certain proximity to one another that were in combat, grab their subzone (eg Blood Elf Tower) and display a waypoint with those details.

 

◊ Daxxiz

Which is remarkably similar to a feature Planetside had, which did exactly that. I cant remember what it was called, but it put various sized markets on your map depending on the amount of action happening in that area.

 

sarf

As far as I know, Battlegrounds are for all intents and purposes normal maps, not instances. This allows you to use the regular "retrieve coordinates of raid members" routines, which allows you to do such an addon *right this minute*.

It would be quite neat, too, as my Cartographer quite often messes up in BGs (mostly AV) and hides all the raid members behind colorful flowers and veins.

 

Wobin

Hm, you're right...


*looks into it...*

 

Tys

Don't get me wrong but isn't it the whole point of the game (in PvE) that you get all your raidmembers to do the right thing to beat a Boss? And wouln't such an Addon make the Bossfights you used as an example, well, pointless? You could as well ask for an Addon that clicks cubes at Magtheridon at the right time, or that does the ghost stuff at Gorefind, because some people don't get it right, as the only thing you need to do right at Gruul is to move, so that you don't kill your mates, thats what the fight is about.

 

sarf

Well, there is prior art in the "Thaddius arrows" thingy from Naxx, I think.

Seriously though, if GPSLib is calibrated for more instances and someone adds a way to preplan encounters (much like that raid-wide notepad-ish boss addon that I can't remember the name of), it could actually work quite well. You could use the fuzzy range detector for nearby people and automatically recommend diverging paths that would (if everyone runs mostly where there arrows tell them) get people out of the way in the least amount of time.

Of course, it has an even better purpose at Mother Shahraz, if I understand that fight correctly, what with the "do damage to everyone around you until all 3 with debuffs get together" as well as "getting the heck out of the way from everyone".

The possibilities are indeed nifty, but it is just a tool - you will still need people who follow the recommendations made with the tool.

Remember, addons can only recommend actions, it can't force them or perform them on its own (especially if it involves interacting with the 3D environment).

 

chadcook1999