[New Plugin] SequenceBars

[ChromiteSwiftpaw]

It is a minor feature, but hard to implement a UI for it. I need to put a slider in a pulldown menu, or just have a (not exhaustive) list of individual sizes that you can choose from. I'll look into it though.

Sorry.. by minor I meant "feature request low on the totem pole" hehe. As in something to do if you're bored and feeling randy!

[Gildoriel]

Hi, I might be looking in the wrong place or this might have already been asked, but a google search came up almost empty, at least not with what I'm looking for.

My question: Can I define a sort of "globar bar" which will be available on all my chars? E. g. I have the emotes needed for Northern Kingdoms Dale weekly on a bar on one char. I would like to load the same bar to five other chars who can do those dailies without having to make the bar anew for every char. Is it possible and if yes how?

Thank you!

[Thurallor]

Hi, I might be looking in the wrong place or this might have already been asked, but a google search came up almost empty, at least not with what I'm looking for.

My question: Can I define a sort of "globar bar" which will be available on all my chars? E. g. I have the emotes needed for Northern Kingdoms Dale weekly on a bar on one char. I would like to load the same bar to five other chars who can do those dailies without having to make the bar anew for every char. Is it possible and if yes how?

You can't make a "global bar". However, you can "export" a bar from one character and "import" it to another.

1. Right-click on the bar's title and click "Export".
2. Save the text to the clipboard (Ctrl+C)
3. Login as the other character
4. In the Plugin Manager: choose "SequenceBars" on the left; click "Options" at the top; click "Directory" to view the list of bars.
5. Right-click on "Gildoriel's SequenceBars" or any other group, and choose "Import".
6. Paste the text from the clipboard (Ctrl+V)

[Gildoriel]

You can't make a "global bar". However, you can "export" a bar from one character and "import" it to another.

1. Right-click on the bar's title and click "Export".
2. Save the text to the clipboard (Ctrl+C)
3. Login as the other character
4. In the Plugin Manager: choose "SequenceBars" on the left; click "Options" at the top; click "Directory" to view the list of bars.
5. Right-click on "Gildoriel's SequenceBars" or any other group, and choose "Import".
6. Paste the text from the clipboard (Ctrl+V)

Thank you for your answer! I had found the option to export/import a bar, but I wanted to avoid having to change the bar on all my chars if I want to adjust something. But ok, I'll copy/paste then

[Davouts]

Hello Thurallor, Sequencebars is a truly great plugin. I use it extensively, but as with all great things, the more it is used the more you start to look for more specific possibilities.

I note in the manual I see reference to "Target has effect", yet I cannot access this in the plugin. From a look around forums I note that there was an issue noted back in 2018 yet cannot find what the issue was other than something in the the interface. Can you let me know if this is a possibility.

In short I wish to make it so that a skill is not selectable IF the TARGET has effect Temporary Stun Imunity. Can you confirm if this is still an issue, and if so is there a possible work around?

Another query..... regarding stealth. Is it possible to detect if I am in stealth, then make certain skills only available if actually in stealth?

Kind Regards Davouts

[Thurallor]

Hello Thurallor, Sequencebars is a truly great plugin. I use it extensively, but as with all great things, the more it is used the more you start to look for more specific possibilities.

I note in the manual I see reference to "Target has effect", yet I cannot access this in the plugin. From a look around forums I note that there was an issue noted back in 2018 yet cannot find what the issue was other than something in the the interface. Can you let me know if this is a possibility.

In short I wish to make it so that a skill is not selectable IF the TARGET has effect Temporary Stun Imunity. Can you confirm if this is still an issue, and if so is there a possible work around?

Another query..... regarding stealth. Is it possible to detect if I am in stealth, then make certain skills only available if actually in stealth?

Hi Davouts,

I'm glad you like the plugin, but unfortunately you can't do either of those things (currently).

• The "Target has effect" feature is disabled, because of the game client's buggy implementation of target effect tracking. I tried, but was unable to find workaround for this bug, to reliably track the effects on a mob.

• The only way to detect stealth is if the stealth skill puts an effect on your character while it's active (e.g. the "Careful Step" buff for wardens). In that case you detect it just like any other effect.

Near the top of my to-do list is a new feature that will allow you to generate a "user event" when a message occurs in the chat window. This could be used to track target effects (to the extent that they can be tracked by reading the combat log) or stealth (same). But I have no estimate for when I will get around to implementing it.

[Davouts]

Hi Davouts,

I'm glad you like the plugin, but unfortunately you can't do either of those things (currently).

• The "Target has effect" feature is disabled, because of the game client's buggy implementation of target effect tracking. I tried, but was unable to find workaround for this bug, to reliably track the effects on a mob.

• The only way to detect stealth is if the stealth skill puts an effect on your character while it's active (e.g. the "Careful Step" buff for wardens). In that case you detect it just like any other effect.

Near the top of my to-do list is a new feature that will allow you to generate a "user event" when a message occurs in the chat window. This could be used to track target effects (to the extent that they can be tracked by reading the combat log) or stealth (same). But I have no estimate for when I will get around to implementing it.

Thank you for your response Thurallor.

Out of curiosity what was the "bug" doing that was causing issues with checking "Target has effect"?

Irrespective of not having these two possibilities (yet). the plugin is a great boon (personally my favourite) for the community and I know your efforts are very welcome among the community at large.

Please, if you are able keep up the great work.

[Thurallor]

Out of curiosity what was the "bug" doing that was causing issues with checking "Target has effect"?

See discussion thread.

Irrespective of not having these two possibilities (yet). the plugin is a great boon (personally my favourite) for the community and I know your efforts are very welcome among the community at large.

Please, if you are able keep up the great work.

Thanks, I will do so, but free time and the right mood have to coincide.

[Thurallor]

Version 3.46 of SequenceBars is now available at lotrointerface. Thanks to Darkytcho for translating the plugin into Portuguese!

Version 3.46 release notes

New features:

• Added support for the Portugese language.
• Added the ability to independently scale each individual bar. Feature requested by ChromiteSwiftpaw.
• Added the ability to distinguish between curable and noncurable debuffs (fear, poison, wound, disease). Feature requested by MiniMiez.

Other changes:

• Improved the settings menu by replacing long, multi-page lists with sliders.
• The sequence editor will now be moved onto the screen when opened, if its saved position was off-screen (due to previously using larger screen dimensions).

[Thurallor]

Version 3.47 of SequenceBars is now available at lotrointerface.

Version 3.47 release notes

Bug fixes:

• The "Save Target" special slot now works with Loremaster pets. It doesn't work with foes, though, and apparently never did. I have added a notice to that effect in the sequence editor. Thanks to lefty for the bug report.
• Minstrels can now use "If skill is ready" : "Coda of Melody" in other stances than Melody. While in Dissonance or Resonance stance, the skill will still be called "Coda of Melody" in the drop-down list, but the conditional will work for "Coda of Resonance" or "Coda of Fury". Thanks to akourbat for the bug report.
• Drop-down lists will no longer be displayed off the right edge of the screen if opened too close to it.

[ChromiteSwiftpaw]

Oh wow! You added the scaling request! Thanks so much, Thur.

Your work always amazes me...

[Thurallor]

Oh wow! You added the scaling request! Thanks so much, Thur.

You're welcome!

Version 3.48 of SequenceBars is now available at lotrointerface.

Version 3.48 release notes

Bug fix:

• When you reduce the number of visible slots (right-click, settings -> width/height) below the current cursor home position, the cursor home position was not being updated, so it had an invalid value, and the bar displayed incorrectly. This bug (introduced in version 3.46) is now fixed.

Other changes:

• Added the advanced Burglar skills "Quite a Snag" and "Improved Feint Attack" to the SkillData database.

[liverpaste]

Man I love this plugin but as of the last lotro update it has stopped loading..

Online/PluginData/xxxxx/SequenceBars.plugindata:1: unexpected symbol
...gs Online\Plugins\Thurallor\SequenceBars\Manager.lua:56: Unable to parse file!

Help a brother out?

[Garan]

Man I love this plugin but as of the last lotro update it has stopped loading..

Online/PluginData/xxxxx/SequenceBars.plugindata:1: unexpected symbol
...gs Online\Plugins\Thurallor\SequenceBars\Manager.lua:56: Unable to parse file!

Help a brother out?

That looks like the error that occurs when a plugindata file is manually edited and saved with the wrong UTF8 encoding (a Notepad glitch and likely common to other basic text editors). LotRO's implementation of Lua can only read UTF8 encoding without BOM (Byte Order Mark) and Notepad saves UTF8 files with BOM. Without seeing the first couple of bytes of the file I can not be sure if this is the issue but it seems likely since it appears to be the first byte of the file that is causing the error.

Have you recently tried to manually edit the SequenceBars.plugindata file? Even opening the file in Notepad and saving without making any changes would be enough to change the encoding. If so, use an editor like Notepad++ to change the encoding to UTF8 without BOM. Otherwise it is likely that the file has simply become corrupted and you may only be able to delete the file and start over. If you do opt to edit or delete the file, make a back up copy of it first.

[Kaladin_Stormblessed]

Any thoughts on fostering a community approach to sharing various bars and sequences? Like bars for skill or buff rotations per class and trait line? I created some bars for my Warden depending on trait loadout and role that could be useful for others.

[Thurallor]

Man I love this plugin but as of the last lotro update it has stopped loading..

Since it generally takes a while to configure SequenceBars the way you like it, I hope the .plugindata file isn't irretrievably corrupted. Unfortunately, I think that is the most likely case, unless (as Garan noted) you have edited the file manually. I think what can happen is, if the game happens to crash when SequenceBars is saving its data, the file can be overwritten with an empty file. If the file isn't completely empty, you can try what Garan said, or send me the file and I might be able to fix it for you. It is located at

Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/PluginData/account/server/character/SequenceBars.plugindata

Otherwise, regrettably, your only recourse is to delete the file and recreate your SequenceBars configuration from scratch. After you do so, I recommend that you make a backup copy of this file.

This isn't the first time I've heard of this happening. There could even be an issue in the game client where saving the data can cause a crash in a certain obscure scenario of planetary alignment. SequenceBars saves very often compared to other plugins (although it never does it in combat, and it tries to wait until you're not actively doing something). So it has more opportunities to catch the planets in perfect alignment.

If you have not manually edited your .plugindata file, then this is due to a bug in the game client. And SSG is not likely to pay attention to any bug reports relating to the plugin system, especially ones that only manifest occasionally, in ill-defined scenarios. But crashing sucks, and losing your SequenceBars configuration sucks even more, so I'm going to try to address the problem in the next version. I think this will involve eliminating the automatic background saving (saving only when the plugin is unloaded) and saving backups of the data for a few days.

[Thurallor]

Any thoughts on fostering a community approach to sharing various bars and sequences? Like bars for skill or buff rotations per class and trait line? I created some bars for my Warden depending on trait loadout and role that could be useful for others.

Yes, that was what I was thinking when I made the import/export feature. The data is in a text format that can be posted in a forum or e-mailed to someone. Posting endless pages of gobbledygook might be frowned upon in a forum such as this, but you can upload the data to Google Drive (or wherever) and post a link to it here.

I also wouldn't be opposed to including example configurations (contributed by users) in the plugin itself.

Did you have any particular method in mind to "foster a community approach"? I would like to hear your ideas.

[Kaladin_Stormblessed]

Yes, that was what I was thinking when I made the import/export feature. The data is in a text format that can be posted in a forum or e-mailed to someone. Posting endless pages of gobbledygook might be frowned upon in a forum such as this, but you can upload the data to Google Drive (or wherever) and post a link to it here.

I also wouldn't be opposed to including example configurations (contributed by users) in the plugin itself.

Did you have any particular method in mind to "foster a community approach"? I would like to hear your ideas.

I like what Louey7 is doing over at https://www.lotrobasics.com/ with the class guides. I was thinking it would be good to combine class guides, builds, and basic rotations with exports from SequenceBars that were constructed to be useful even at low levels when not all skills were available. However, Louey7's site is more of a blog-style that might make managing community-submitted SequenceBars exports difficult. Aside from trying to combine these relevant player guides/plugin settings in one place, we could just maintain a forum thread here where we post our exports with descriptions. I'm happy to do this with my Warden bars. I made multiple SequenceBars for red, yellow, and blue builds along with melee/ranged variants. Makes playing the Warden in particular much more enjoyable for me.

[auximenes]

I don't usually use any plugins but I wanted to thank you Thurallor for your work on this plugin. It appears to be a great project and very useful.

[Thurallor]

Version 3.49 of SequenceBars is now available at lotrointerface.

Version 3.49 release notes

New features:

• The plugin will now back up its settings file when it starts up. The backup files will be located at
  Documents/The Lord of the Rings Online/PluginData/account/server/character/SequenceBars_backupx.plugindata
  where x is a number representing the day of the week (1 = Sunday, 2 = Monday, ..., 7 = Saturday).

Other changes:

• Added some skill name aliases for hunter skills with fire/light oil. This should allow the "advance when skill is executed (use alternate detection method)" feature to work with these skills.
• The plugin will now only save its data when it is unloaded (e.g. when you logout). This is an attempt to mitigate a possible client bug that (if it exists) can cause crashes when plugins save their data.

[Thurallor]

I like what Louey7 is doing over at https://www.lotrobasics.com/ with the class guides. I was thinking it would be good to combine class guides, builds, and basic rotations with exports from SequenceBars that were constructed to be useful even at low levels when not all skills were available. However, Louey7's site is more of a blog-style that might make managing community-submitted SequenceBars exports difficult. Aside from trying to combine these relevant player guides/plugin settings in one place, we could just maintain a forum thread here where we post our exports with descriptions. I'm happy to do this with my Warden bars. I made multiple SequenceBars for red, yellow, and blue builds along with melee/ranged variants. Makes playing the Warden in particular much more enjoyable for me.

That all sounds good to me. I don't have time to contribute any effort to such a thing right now, but I do think it would be cool.

[Thurallor]

I received another question about advanced conditional expressions (with and / or / not), so I went ahead and organized the information previously posted in this thread about it into a complete explanation: https://www.lotrointerface.com/porta...d=64&pageid=36

[Thurallor]

Version 3.50 of SequenceBars is now available at lotrointerface.

Version 3.50 release notes

New features:

• Target effects tracking: The plugin will now allow you to tailor your sequences based on the effects (buffs, debuffs) on your target. This feature was disabled for a long time because of bugginess in the Lua API, but I think it works well enough now to re-enable it. Note: It still doesn't work right in many cases.
  

Bug fixes:

• In the previous version, the "Debuff: Wound (Curable)" condition was not distinguished from the "Debuff: Wound" condition. The curability was ignored. This problem is now fixed.

[Thurallor]

Version 3.51 of SequenceBars is now available at lotrointerface.

Version 3.51 release notes

Bug fix:

• In the previous version, if you had a "Select Target" slot with "Raid Leader" as the target, then you may have seen the following error message when not in a raid/fellowship:
  [string "local watcher = ...; return watcher.GetPart..."]:1: attempt to index a nil value
  This is now fixed, but in order to utilize the fix, you must delete and recreate your "Select Target" slot.

[Thurallor]

Version 3.52 of SequenceBars is now available at lotrointerface.

Version 3.52 release notes

New features:

• Added new triggers for event behaviors: "when you are incapacitated" and "when you are revived".
• Added a new condition for if/then slots: "Random (x% chance)"

Thanks to Arzakon for these feature ideas.