Lua UI Plugins in LOTRO

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Originally Posted by seafoodbasket

Alot of this type of stuff would kill alot of the fun, its one of the main reasons i dont play wow, i got sic of having to keep up with mods just to raid. Gear score is the biggest joke anyway, things like threat meters would take away the risk of being in SS as a hunter, you would know when to ease up so the tank doesnt lose aggro etc. knowing exactly when the boss is going to do a special attack well in advance also kinda wrecks alot of the fun of playing, having thiings flash when there off cd etc takes away all the skill or having a good rotation and watching multiple buffs/debuffs. I do hope they keep all this scripting stuff to a minimun.

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If you dont like it, dont use it. If your in a kin that wants to use them, then find a new kin.



Utopia, or anyone else with knowladge of the Lua stuffs:
Is there any way to adjust the size/color/opaqueness of the Examination Tooltip Display?

I want to be able to see what I'm looking at, it just doesn't have to be so big and getting in the way of stuffs.


Thx again, you guys rule!

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Originally Posted by Grampsaz

Utopia, or anyone else with knowladge of the Lua stuffs:
Is there any way to adjust the size/color/opaqueness of the Examination Tooltip Display?

I want to be able to see what I'm looking at, it just doesn't have to be so big and getting in the way of stuffs.


Thx again, you guys rule!

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Not that I can think of with the scripting. But I think you can skin the tooltip window to make it more opaque. That would probably affect other windows at the same time though, but I am not that familiar with skinning.

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Originally Posted by seafoodbasket

Alot of this type of stuff would kill alot of the fun, its one of the main reasons i dont play wow, i got sic of having to keep up with mods just to raid. Gear score is the biggest joke anyway, things like threat meters would take away the risk of being in SS as a hunter, you would know when to ease up so the tank doesnt lose aggro etc. knowing exactly when the boss is going to do a special attack well in advance also kinda wrecks alot of the fun of playing, having thiings flash when there off cd etc takes away all the skill or having a good rotation and watching multiple buffs/debuffs. I do hope they keep all this scripting stuff to a minimun.

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I agree 100%

I am not any kind of doomsayer, that kind of scripting didn’t kill WoW, but it did take a tremendous amount of fun out of playing.

As long as the API scripting has extensive limitations, so that it can only display what the UI already displays ( but in a different fashion ) I have no issue here.

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Originally Posted by Dayln

I agree 100%

I am not any kind of doomsayer, that kind of scripting didn’t kill WoW, but it did take a tremendous amount of fun out of playing.

As long as the API scripting has extensive limitations, so that it can only display what the UI already displays ( but in a different fashion ) I have no issue here.

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I think the most important difference is not that these things exist in WoW, but that the community itself made these things "mandatory". Although I don't have a problem with a lot of these ideas, such as aggro/dps meters, as there will always be those who want as much information as possible. The problem comes when there's a way for one player to enforce an arbitrary requirement on another. For that reason, I sincerely hope that plugin communication between players, and other methods of checking what plugins a player has never gets implemented.

In my mind, Lua plugins exist solely for players to improve their own experience within the game, not to govern what other players do.

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Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia

I think the most important difference is not that these things exist in WoW, but that the community itself made these things "mandatory". Although I don't have a problem with a lot of these ideas, such as aggro/dps meters, as there will always be those who want as much information as possible. The problem comes when there's a way for one player to enforce an arbitrary requirement on another. For that reason, I sincerely hope that plugin communication between players, and other methods of checking what plugins a player has never gets implemented.

In my mind, Lua plugins exist solely for players to improve their own experience within the game, not to govern what other players do.

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This should be stated over and over. The mandatory use of addons is wholly and entirely created by the community.


BTW D_U,

Are any of the following possible with the API?

Range Finder - shows the distance between you and your target, I doubt it since you can't access the target info yet.

A Graph paper type overlay for the screen. I had one of these in WoW. Pretty much you loaded it up and it placed lines across your screen so it looked just like graph paper. You could then move UI elements around and line them up nice and straight. Just a handy little tool to make the custom UI's nice and neat.

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Originally Posted by Grampsaz

That does help, thank you for the info!

So there is very little to get excited about then :D (For CHILDISH raiders)

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The fact that gearscore etc is not available is a great deal to get excited about.

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Originally Posted by Gedachtnis

This should be stated over and over. The mandatory use of addons is wholly and entirely created by the community.


BTW D_U,

Are any of the following possible with the API?

Range Finder - shows the distance between you and your target, I doubt it since you can't access the target info yet.

A Graph paper type overlay for the screen. I had one of these in WoW. Pretty much you loaded it up and it placed lines across your screen so it looked just like graph paper. You could then move UI elements around and line them up nice and straight. Just a handy little tool to make the custom UI's nice and neat.

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No to the first one, but the 2nd one should be more than possible. I was thinking about creating a "Drawing" class similar to other languages that allows you to draw lines, shapes etc. And I was also playing around with a cheap MS Paint type idea, unfortunately the latter doesn't work too well, because there seems to be a delay between successive mouse position calls.

So yeah, in short - it would be relatively easy to place a graph on the screen with a transparent background, and making it so it isn't MouseVisible.

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Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia

No to the first one, but the 2nd one should be more than possible. I was thinking about creating a "Drawing" class similar to other languages that allows you to draw lines, shapes etc. And I was also playing around with a cheap MS Paint type idea, unfortunately the latter doesn't work too well, because there seems to be a delay between successive mouse position calls.

So yeah, in short - it would be relatively easy to place a graph on the screen with a transparent background, and making it so it isn't MouseVisible.

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Ahh yes, Align for WoW. This my OCD would love for perfectly aligned and positioned windows. mmm...

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Originally Posted by myskaal

Ahh yes, Align for WoW. This my OCD would love for perfectly aligned and positioned windows. mmm...

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ALIGN!! That was it, and yes I'm right there with ya, spending hours getting it just right :D

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Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia

No to the first one, but the 2nd one should be more than possible. I was thinking about creating a "Drawing" class similar to other languages that allows you to draw lines, shapes etc. And I was also playing around with a cheap MS Paint type idea, unfortunately the latter doesn't work too well, because there seems to be a delay between successive mouse position calls.

So yeah, in short - it would be relatively easy to place a graph on the screen with a transparent background, and making it so it isn't MouseVisible.

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Do you use Notepad++ or something similar to write with?

I'm an IDE type and NP++ seems to be the best thing I can find to mess around with Lua. I'm also a C#/C++/Java type and the syntax and style is a little odd. Would you recommend playing with regular Lua scripting to get started? I don't want to bork my game trying to get used to plugins.

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Originally Posted by FyreBrand

Do you use Notepad++ or something similar to write with?

I'm an IDE type and NP++ seems to be the best thing I can find to mess around with Lua. I'm also a C#/C++/Java type and the syntax and style is a little odd. Would you recommend playing with regular Lua scripting to get started? I don't want to bork my game trying to get used to plugins.

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I use Ultra-Edit for most scripting, including Lua (C# I use the VS IDE), and I actually did put up syntax highlighting plugins for UE/Np++/PSPad - although admittedly they aren't as perfect as I'd like them to be - but they do include all the API classes/functions/keywords.

As far as learning it goes - while it is different than the standard C-based languages, it's not completely so. The best I could suggest is keeping this on hand for examples of structure.

The first thing to keep in mind is that Lua doesn't assume that when you're calling a function via an instance of a class (i.e. myPlayer.GetLevel()) that you're actually passing that instance to the function. So instead you'll have to use the ":" operator (i.e. myPlayer:GetLevel())

Most of the rest is just difference in structure, and some operators. for example:

if/elseif/else

Code:

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if (x ~= true and y==false)then
    --do something
elseif (x==true and y~=false)then
    --do something else
else
    --do whatever
end

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other than the wordy replacement for brackets, there's a couple other things to note: First, -- is the Lua equivalent of // (--[[ and ]]-- are block comments) . Second, ~= is the Lua equivalent of != .

for

Code:

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for x=1,200 do
    --do something
end

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That actually would be the equivalent of doing:

Code:

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if (x=0;x<=200;x++){
    //do something
}

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You can however add your own incremental as a 3rd parameter to the if statement, otherwise it will automatically increment by 1.

while

Code:

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while (x < 20) do
  --do something
end

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There's a few quirks here and there, as well as stuff like scoping and "self", but most of that can be easily picked up on just by looking over the Turbine example plugins as well as the plugins of other authors.

Overall though, there's relatively few actual Lua functions we'll have access to. We're limited to the base functions, as well as the math library, so the lion's share of functions will be from the LotRO API. So while you could take the time to learn the language from scratch, you'll probably be better off just adapting like you probably have been - think of how you'd do it in your "native" language, and adapt it to Lua syntax/structure.

Just to let you know, don't be surprised if you have to go in and fix errors from accidentally falling back on c-based operators/structure pretty frequently at first. I think all of us have had that problem - and to an extent still do. :p

Thanks. That is super helpful.

Where are these beta UI plugins available? I got a beta toon and I'd love to try them out.

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Originally Posted by couillon

Where are these beta UI plugins available? I got a beta toon and I'd love to try them out.

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umm...in the beta forums???

probably in a sticky with Lua in the title

:D

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Originally Posted by couillon

Where are these beta UI plugins available? I got a beta toon and I'd love to try them out.

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nm, logged my beta forum acct and viola!, all the beta forums become visible at the bottome of the page, doh! :)

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Originally Posted by breteob

nm, logged my beta forum acct and viola!, all the beta forums become visible at the bottome of the page, doh! :)

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why did you make a separate account instead of adding the beta key to the sub'd one?

:D

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Originally Posted by Darej

why did you make a separate account instead of adding the beta key to the sub'd one?

:D

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Because that's what some of us were asked to do? ;)

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Originally Posted by breteob

nm, logged my beta forum acct and viola!, all the beta forums become visible at the bottome of the page, doh! :)

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Apologies, I have 2 accts. Ony one acct rec'd a beta invite. While logged in the non-beta sub acct, i tried to find the beta forums...doh!, not visible to me. I then logged into my beta sub acct and viola, there was the beta forums.

Digital, I played around with the buffbars addon, not yours (yet) but the other one. If you are aware of it, there is a cooldown timer for pots when you use them to cure a debuff thats applied, or morale pots ect.

I'm assuming its able to do this because these pots are placed in the custom UI slot for that addon.

If that is able to be written, is it still not possible to write one for skills on other UIs?
I'd love to see a bar with timer for skills and a filter for skills with cooldowns under 10s over 5m ect.

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Originally Posted by Grampsaz

Digital, I played around with the buffbars addon, not yours (yet) but the other one. If you are aware of it, there is a cooldown timer for pots when you use them to cure a debuff thats applied, or morale pots ect.

I'm assuming its able to do this because these pots are placed in the custom UI slot for that addon.

If that is able to be written, is it still not possible to write one for skills on other UIs?
I'd love to see a bar with timer for skills and a filter for skills with cooldowns under 10s over 5m ect.

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Not to speak for D_U but the author for BuffBars found a workaround for the pot cd's.

Basically BuffBars watches for a change in the stack size of the relevent pot. when the stack decreases BuffBars starts it's own 2 min timer. Split a stack of pots in your bags, it sets the timer off ;)

I know there was some talk with one of the addons at some point about having a timer trigger off of a keystroke. I'm not sure how far that idea got though. Pretty much you would have to define the keystroke, then define the length of cooldown for each one you want to track and change it anytime you changed Quickslots. Also try splitting a stack of pots in your inventory multiple times, it will trigger a cd timer each time, I imagine you'd have the same issue if you tried using the keystroke before the cd was finished.

EDIT: It doesn't matter which pots are in BuffBars Quickslots, if it's watching potion CD's any stack split or use will trigger it.

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Originally Posted by Gedachtnis

Not to speak for D_U but the author for BuffBars found a workaround for the pot cd's.

Basically BuffBars watches for a change in the stack size of the relevent pot. when the stack decreases BuffBars starts it's own 2 min timer. Split a stack of pots in your bags, it sets the timer off ;)

I know there was some talk with one of the addons at some point about having a timer trigger off of a keystroke. I'm not sure how far that idea got though. Pretty much you would have to define the keystroke, then define the length of cooldown for each one you want to track and change it anytime you changed Quickslots. Also try splitting a stack of pots in your inventory multiple times, it will trigger a cd timer each time, I imagine you'd have the same issue if you tried using the keystroke before the cd was finished.

EDIT: It doesn't matter which pots are in BuffBars Quickslots, if it's watching potion CD's any stack split or use will trigger it.

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Ahh gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up.

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Originally Posted by auximenes

Thanks for the clarification.

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I just got a -Rep for this post. :confused: Whatevah.

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Originally Posted by Gedachtnis

A Graph paper type overlay for the screen. I had one of these in WoW. Pretty much you loaded it up and it placed lines across your screen so it looked just like graph paper. You could then move UI elements around and line them up nice and straight. Just a handy little tool to make the custom UI's nice and neat.

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You can manually edit the location coordinates by loading up the UI save file and tweaking it with a text editor like Notepad. That's how I get my UI elements to line up nicely.

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Originally Posted by auximenes

You can manually edit the location coordinates by loading up the UI save file and tweaking it with a text editor like Notepad. That's how I get my UI elements to line up nicely.

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There's a reason I write overviews of addons in action and not actual addons ;)

I'm one of those people who knows just enough to be dangerous to themselves. :eek:

Text editors and such are mine enimies!

Since this is the only place to talk about this (I dont post on beta forums) I hope nobody minds me asking another question :D

The "Noob" Plugin, great fun, but me and a kinmate are thinking about a plugin for champs (could be done for hunters/tanks/wardens/WL) That would take some tech for Buffbars, recognize when a stance was off, and instead of NOOB on your screen a really big "Hows that no stance treating ya?" would pop up.

A few of us think that would be great fun and have some actual practical usage.


Thx.