There has been relatively little mention of the OpenRDX (Raid Data Exchange) project here on the EJ forums, and I personally think that's somewhat of a shame. For a brief bit of background on what the package is, it was previously a subscription based usage all-in-one raid package with near limitless potential. After a while, however, the original author saw fit to give up the project and turn the code over to the open source modding community.

I would like for this thread to serve as a place to discuss and share the various desktops, bossmods, unit frames, and so forth that the community has come up with and to bolster interest in this powerful mod package.

As a start, here are the official links regarding the project as it currently stands:

• OpenRDX - Homepage
• OpenRDX Forums
• OpenRDX Sourceforge project page
• Main Page - The OpenRDX Project Wiki

Pre-Made Setups (Posted by Xenios)

• Brethren_RaidFrames
• AF_Raid

I'm impressed, you already have more documentation available then Veni ever did.
I kind of miss my RDX healing grid, the Ace Grid just doesn't have the same effect.

I've looked through the wiki and the forums. I've heard a lot about RDX in the past, but I still haven't yet gotten a handle on exactly what it offers that other mods don't, besides (a) insane and frankly impenetrable on-the-fly customization and (b) raid castbars. Could someone familiar with the system give a short paragraph or two about what the concrete benefits of RDX are for those of us a little loath to spend a few weeks familiarizing ourselves with an arcane system of mods?

For what it's worth, I still use RDX 6.3.1 on my characters (the last Veni-published version). It still works, and I have everything the way I like it after using it for so long, so there's no real reason to switch away from RDX. Probably what I would use now if I were healing.

I haven't looked into OpenRDX much, because it appeared while I was away from the game. I imagine if it's turning out well (and it sounds like it is), I'll just start using their updates.

Probably won't contribute much, as my involvement with WoW is a bit more relaxed these days, but I can least make sure all of my bossmods still work.

Other than the absolutely crazy level of customization available (if you can dream it, you can build it), the biggest benefit was that people who knew what they were doing could fix other users UIs for them. Or design it all for them. It helped a lot of guilds overcome what they saw as weaknesses in standard UIs or as incompatibilities between their raider personalities and those UIs.

For example if you were forming a brand new guild with people who had never played WoW before and wanted those guys to dive right into raiding, you could build a totally custom UI for your healers, and send it to them in-game.

Or for a guild that desired standardization across the board, RDX can be used to eliminate stupid errors like people not having abilities keybound, things like that. Some guilds desired that every healer use the same raid healing setup, etc.

It seems like the people handling the OpenRDX project's main goal is to keep Veni's work up to date and working as Blizz changes their UI and scripting rules. While features are being added, the community has to make a strong case for them before the maintenance crew will actually implement them.

From what I can tell, the initial RDX package is barebones with nothing extra whatsoever. The toolkit, with no premade birdhouses as it were.That's one of the downfalls for new users under this "new" version of the system.

Right, downloading just RDX only gets you the framework. When Veni was working on it initially and there were dozens of guilds beta testing it, you could grab any number of pre-made setups and then just tweak them for your guild. I did that for my guild on Sargeras, it was my job to find new ways to utilize the RDX engine and then bring that into our guild package. It has a huge learning curve and a very lengthy setup time from scratch, but you can cut a lot of that down by using some pre packed windows and then adjusting them from there.

"Feature bloat"??

Is this something that invented on internet? Because being a software engineer for 7 years, it is the first time I hear something that is against having more features.

There's a reason a "minimalist" UI is so popular. Extraneous functions, doodads, and buttons are just as annoying in wow interfaces as they are in cars, consumer electronics, and all sorts of other stuff. You want your device to do just what you want, and not have features you don't use. It's one of the big reasons the Ipod is so successful in comparison to other feature filled mp3 players.

You're not a very good engineer, then. Features are only good if they're used, and bloat implies that a given feature is relatively unused - for a framework or library, a feature used by less than the majority of users of the framework probably doesn't belong.

Someone once said famously (well, not famously enough that I can remember who said it), 'A project is only finished once there's nothing left to remove that can be removed'.

There's a fine line between 'feature bloat' and 'wide appeal' though.

True enough, but just go download Nero Ultra version from Ahead Software to see "wide appeal" cross that line by around a few light years.

Back to RDX - yes, last time I used it was around the time everyone was hitting their heads against 4HM in Naxx. I'm definitely going to check out OpenRDX to see if it's worth another look.

Its definitely evolved far beyond the 4H era. The filter sets were awesome if you really wanted to be able to see some totally customized data sets of people in the raid.

How much of RDX's functionality is impaired if you were [one of] the only people using it?

The more people you have using it the better it is, but all of the data sorting options are available regardless of anyone else using it since its just checking against things available through the blizzard API anyways.

Things that are not available unless the other guys in the group are using RDX - checking inventories for specific items (potions etc), reading the talent composition of the player (although the RDX team can update this since Blizzard has made it available), grabbing the combat log of anyone in the raid for analysis (basically what Assessment or Recount do), viewing the Cooldowns on major abilties like shield wall/innervate.

If you're a healer and just want to use it to heal, or maybe just a dps class that really likes to know things about the raid, it can be used independently of anyone else having it.

I don't think predictive healing will work either, though I am not 100% on that.

This is correct, predictive healing only works with those who are also running rdx. ie. the total amount of healing being applied to someone, rather than only showing up on those who have rdx. It will always show up for your heals.

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On a side note, if you where ever interested in trying out rdx but did not have the time / pacentce to set it up, now would be a great time to test it out. There are a few excellent full packages that require zero work to get started.

There are two major full packages (that i know of) that provided everything you would need for any situation.

* Brethren Raid Frames - "A complete package that combines popular styles with simple customizability so everyone will enjoy." (Ya, a shameless plug. But hey it got all the nonbelievers in my guild to switch over, as well as many others. Oh and very handy for those priests out their than feel it was a pain keeping tack of renews on many targets.)

* AF_Raid - Has a good collection of desktops and windows for all classes. Has a nice look to it, and alot of people use it.

And if you don't like these offerings, they offer an excellent base to start with if you wanted to go in your own direction. This has been your public RDX service announcement

OpenRDX in few words.

- A powerfull workshop center :

Use the editors to create some UI windows you need. (unitframes, raidframes, auraframes, damagemeterframes ...)

Windows Editor :
- Choose what to show, you, your target, the raid or the target of each member of your raid...
- Use conditions, show only members with damage more than 100000, show only members who has aggro, show members with specific debuff or show only shadow priests...
- Use sort operation, sort by aggro (integration Threatlib 2.0 available), sort by damage, sort by HP ...
- Add some clicks functions
Frames Editor :
- Draw the frame that will be used for each member in the window
- Add many subframes, attach features to your subframes :
Bars : life, mana, cast, aura, xp, faction
Icons : aura, leader, combat, PVP, cooldowns
Texts : nameplates, static, dynamic or custom texts.
- Backdrops, Fonts, Textures editors (integration sharemedia 3.0 available)


- A Database objects :
All yours interfaces and objects are stored in the database
Share InGame elements of your database with yours friends
Use the recovery package to save and to restore packages
Upload OOBE from community users into your database.


- multiple engines, core roster(UID base, name base), combatlog roster(GUID base), encounter monitor
Select and run the windows you have created on your desktop.
Switch desktops, select a desktop for solo, group and raid.
Use the profiler VFL to monitor CPU used of each window.
Omniscience Combat log parser for all OpenRDX modules


The main focus of OpenRDX is :
- Anyone can draw all the windows he wishs
- There is no LUA knowledege required

More Info on OpenRDX web site :
OpenRDX

Core OpenRDX available download under sourceforge.
Version : OpenRDX 6.4.8

A lot of UI windows are available under forum web site.
Upload the OOBE in your database, or use recovery function to restore packages.


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Stop LUA coding
Just draw it!
OpenRDX
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The following screens show you what you can draw using OpenRDX

Player frames :

Caith UI OpenRDX version


Cognac_UI


Konyagi_UI


Raid frames :

Aichi's Gridraid


Tiras porah Raidframes


Simple raid frames :



Buff / debuff info


Buff windows


Paladin buff windows


Shaman totem :



Cooldown window :


Multi track windows :


Status windows :


Damage meters windows :

The last experience I had with RDX was buying it a few months before Veni discontinued which left a bad taste in my mouth but I kept using it until some patch or other broke it. I am glad to hear that it is still going on though as it was a great tool.

The best thing about RDX imo was the ability to transmit packages to your raidmates in-game. We pulled 4HM, got some estimates on timers, wiped, and by the time we'd released to our corpses, Veni was transmitting an update, and all we had to do was click Accept on the transmission. When we got to Sapphiron, we copied over the old proximity window from C'thun and used it, until one of our tanks said "try this" and transmitted a window he'd made that used the new raidstatus module to count "people near me" as a statistic, and display people too close and ice blocks in range in a much more compact form that even Veni hadn't anticipated. Everyone switched to the new window in one attempt.

I still use one of the last releases of RDX 6, since it does raid frames and assist windows better than any other mod I've tried, but I think it's misleading to say you don't lose much from RDX if you're the only person using it - you lose sharing packages in-game, which was the most amazing feature you could have when dealing with new content (either new just to your guild, or completely new in the game).