Internal Mods

Jelloshots · 11/13/07, 3:05 PM

I apologize if this topic has been touched upon in detail elsewhere, but I haven't found it discussed at all.

I was inspired by this post - Options for reducing time investment in the raid game - to ask about internal mods. I imagine that most of these will be raid-related, and that many will not be open for discussion, let alone source viewing; I'm not interested in things that people aren't willing to share. With that in mind, here are my questions.

First, what did you have to code up yourself that you couldn't find anywhere else? The example in the link is good. I don't see small hacks as being a big deal, but I think significant modifications to existing code would count as well. In the case of modifications, what was the existing code not providing?

Lemmingherder · 11/13/07, 3:39 PM

We used to use a raid attendance tracking mod that was home grown way back in the day. It took an attendance poll every minute as well as tracked things like how much time someone was in an afk status and the like. If I remember right, we decided to develop it because we had a lot of issues with people coming and going from the raid at the time, and it was difficult to get a clear attendance picture off of just boss kill attendance polls. This was especially true as we were working on new content, the mod just kept a running total of how much time everyone spent in the raid.

We didn't use dkp, and were only really interested in keeping an accurate attendance average without having to worry about certain events triggering attendance polls, or have to remember to press a button. This was early on, back in the MC days however, and there wasn't really any decent tracking mods out there that I recall. There are more options now, but I still would prefer something similar to what we used to have. The guy who coded it for us stopped playing long ago, and one of the numerous patches since then broke it beyond my ability to hack it back to life.

The force a logoff command that was mentioned in the post you linked... that is actually something I would be very interested in picking up if you guys feel like releasing it to the public. :p Did some searching, and was not able to find anything with the same functionality (well still looking but, ya).

Elhana · 11/14/07, 6:33 AM

Guild doesn't have any special mods, but I use few of my own, one of which executes some logon macroses like enable combat logging, sets max camera distance and setup some event handlers.
Another one tracks kicks (and if i might need some other spell interrupts) for nearby players from combatlog and removes deaden from blizzard enemy castbar. Does not need anyone to install it yet I can see other people cooldowns/interrupts landed. /wave RoS - Too lazy to make it release quality.
My own !enchant addon. Same as eList, but without Ace. When I coded it there was no such addon and I got inspiration from LootLinkBot, actually reused some code of it.

Howard Roark · 11/14/07, 6:53 AM

I pretty much stripped and recoded power-auras into separate small mods for every boss fight we were having trouble on.
A gigantic flashing red skull and crossbones taking up all their screen will get someone to move better than a raid warning.

chrull · 11/14/07, 6:58 AM

Originally Posted by Howard Roark

I pretty much stripped and recoded power-auras into separate small mods for every boss fight we were having trouble on.
A gigantic flashing red skull and crossbones taking up all their screen will get someone to move better than a raid warning.

I never ever thought of using Power Auras that way... Thanks for the idea!

Malan · 11/14/07, 9:25 AM

Originally Posted by Howard Roark

I pretty much stripped and recoded power-auras into separate small mods for every boss fight we were having trouble on.
A gigantic flashing red skull and crossbones taking up all their screen will get someone to move better than a raid warning.

I would actually be interested in seeing this made available.

Polleke · 11/14/07, 9:45 AM

In my previous guild we used a self coded Berserker rage cooldown announcer to the rest of the raid in the form of a countdown bar. Used it on the fear fights like Nef, Ony, bug trio.

HealComm was developed by a guild on our server as internal mod. It was slowly being hyjacked by other guilds. And by then the guild released it as public mod.

Javyrha · 11/14/07, 3:39 PM

Originally Posted by Howard Roark

I pretty much stripped and recoded power-auras into separate small mods for every boss fight we were having trouble on.
A gigantic flashing red skull and crossbones taking up all their screen will get someone to move better than a raid warning.

If you have no qualms about other guilds using your code, please release this. It would be amazingly useful for a number of us!

world · 11/15/07, 1:34 PM

I used to maintain my guild's 'Boss mods' back in the Naxx days - this was when Bigwigs and DeadlyBossMods were nowhere near as complete and punctual as they are now. I also use a few pretty simple mods i wrote myself - a modified combat log, and a sort of 'Arena compilation' which alerts to things like Bop, Freedom, Innervate, and nearby enemies trying to res.

One mod which I originally wrote when we were learning Kel'Thuzad, which I still use a lot, is an Interrupt tracker - it creates a bar for any nearby interrupt it detects, with the duration of the interrupt. Quite useful for RoS phase 2 for example, to know if it was the Counterspell or the Pummel that got the interrupt! Theres probably other mods out there that do this too, but I like the idea of being able to change this one if I ever feel the need. :P

Nethris · 11/15/07, 1:58 PM

Originally Posted by Lemmingherder

The force a logoff command that was mentioned in the post you linked... that is actually something I would be very interested in picking up if you guys feel like releasing it to the public. :p Did some searching, and was not able to find anything with the same functionality (well still looking but, ya).

Hmm, I think RDX had/has that, not sure if anyone has put a feature like that into a more public mod though, a standalone mod doing that, preferably with version/presence checking, would be really nice though - do tell if you find one

Probably not overly hard to code up the basic functionality, should just be a addon message and an API call at the other end, cleaning it up with a GUI and checks to avoid it being able to be abused in, say, AV to make it appropriate for public use would take more time than I have at the moment though. Forcing the acceptance of summons would be a huge bonus as well, lets you at least ensure that the people who went AFK right as the raid was getting together will at worst end up dead at the summoning stone...

On a more general note, I've never been in a guild that did this, but I'd imagine that adding timers to bossmods or adjusting the existing ones wouldn't be overly uncommon.

Docjowles · 11/15/07, 2:42 PM

Originally Posted by Malan

I would actually be interested in seeing this made available.

BigWigs recently added a "Flash n Shake" feature that sounds like essentially the same thing. Though if you're not running BigWigs, this mod could be very handy.

Malan · 11/15/07, 2:51 PM

DBM has had that for awhile too, and I make use of it, but its no giant skull and crossbones. Also I had it more in mind for some of our healers.

world · 11/15/07, 11:37 PM

I've had a few requests to make my Arena warner mod public, so I've hosted it at:

Warner.rar - FileFront.com

As I also wrote it to help my brother pvp on a Priest, it tracks Berserker rage and Deathwish cooldowns.

Firstly, I've included two dependencies with it - Chronos and STBar (neither of them written by me).

Secondly, as a personal preference, I favour functionality over looks, so you might not like the layout of either the mod ingame or the code! But it works for me, and thats who I wrote it for.

And lastly, if anyone has any suggestions / ideas about other things I could put in there, let me know.

Jelloshots · 11/16/07, 11:56 AM

Originally Posted by world

I used to maintain my guild's 'Boss mods' back in the Naxx days - this was when Bigwigs and DeadlyBossMods were nowhere near as complete and punctual as they are now. I also use a few pretty simple mods i wrote myself - a modified combat log, and a sort of 'Arena compilation' which alerts to things like Bop, Freedom, Innervate, and nearby enemies trying to res.

One mod which I originally wrote when we were learning Kel'Thuzad, which I still use a lot, is an Interrupt tracker - it creates a bar for any nearby interrupt it detects, with the duration of the interrupt. Quite useful for RoS phase 2 for example, to know if it was the Counterspell or the Pummel that got the interrupt! Theres probably other mods out there that do this too, but I like the idea of being able to change this one if I ever feel the need. :P

Since you've been kind enough to share some other things here for us, would you be so kind as to share the interrupt tracker? We've had to use, ehm, non-traditional interrupt chains, and I think this would help them out a lot. Thanks!

world · 11/16/07, 12:34 PM

Interrupt.rar - FileFront.com

Thats my Interrupt tracker mod.
Again, its pretty rough around the edges.

It works for pvp too, but will spaz out a bit when multiple people are interrupted at once (ie bars overlapping). And I haven't recoded it for the new Concentration aura (less lockout time).
Also, due to the way it works, it can't detect if a warrior interrupt was a pummel or a shield bash, so it assumes everything is a pummel to play it safe.

I find it works quite well in most cases however