Current state of plugins? in 2012?

[Cindir]

Hi,
Just wondering how plugins are working now after Update 6 and the other updates before. Are most of the common plugins working?

Palantir? Buffbars? Tonicbars? I am totally new to this and haven't used any yet. I spent a few hours here and on lotrointerface and am worried that most posts are pretty old. But I am assuming that most of the popular plugins are working? or have been updated so they work? Palantir sounds very cool, and of couse Tonic and Sutt plugins sound very useful.

Thanks.

[Nakiami]

Very, very well.

Just look for the ones updated recently.

[-Arien-]

I'm using a combat parser, Evendale's Combat Analysis. Works great!

[Cindir]

Thanks! ...

[Valamar]

Very, very well.

Just look for the ones updated recently.

Back in February Lunarwtr released a new plugin: LOTRO Plugin Compendium (Mac / Linux) which is a Java based version of his "LOTRO Plugin Compendium (LPC)"

LPC (either version) makes selecting, installing and updating your Plugins really simple.

LPC only "sees" those Plugins which "conform" to the evolving Plugin Standards -- which basically means those plugins which are current and have active development taking place.

It makes finding those plugins which have been recently updated a "visual" "point-and-click" operation. It tells you which of your installed plugins have been updated, you then tell it to go ahead and update it... and "seconds" later it's done.

As of 6.0.2 I have not seen any problems recently reported. (There are old issues which have not been fixed, but they are primarily "typical" programming bugs on the part of the author, not issues with the Lua API.)

[Kasich40]

How are the most common plugins working with the new Plugin Manager that is now built into the game?

I know when it first came out, there were many plugins that didn't get along with it too well...so I just resorted to not using it -- and have just been loading my plugins manually using the downloadable plugin manager.

If the built-in Plugin Manager works well with Tonic Bars, Buffbars, and Palantir then I will try using it again.

[Elderban]

It seems most LUA script programmers have stopped working on their scripts due to lack of support from Turbine. Sad, really, there is - or was - a lot of really nice scripts out there.

[moebius92]

How do you figure? Over the last year, we've gotten access to the all in-game channels, reading from equipment slots, fellowship/raid vitals, pet vitals, and the wallet. I've probably managed to generate several thousand lines of code updating scripts and writing new scripts to take advantage of the new features.

[Elderban]

It only took about a year for them to put that out.

And it's hard to find any scripts that can be used with the updates. I tried using several yesterday alone, but all of them weren't working correctly or not at all.

[moebius92]

It probably took them longer than that to put it out. And your point is? It's not like I wasn't busy scripting stuff before then either. There was a host of stuff that could've been done before RoI that never showed up on lotrointerface either, and now there's a host of stuff that got added with RoI that still hasn't really shown up on lotrointerface.

I've no doubt there's a number of scripts that aren't being maintained, but I'm not really seeing the lack of Turbine support.

[Garan]

While we have lost a few plugin developers and the pace of API expansion has been slower than many would want, I would not say that "most" lua developers have stopped working on their scripts. There are many authors who have simply taken a break from developing to actually play the game - people too often forget that plugin developers are not compensated for the works they create and all of that developement time comes out of the author's free time. I am not surprised at all to see that a number of plugins do not have published versions that work with the latest Turbine updates, but that doesn't mean that they have been abandoned, just that the authors may be busy actually playing the new content. And of those that were abandoned, several have been picked up by new authors who are working on not only learning Lua and the Turbine API but another author's code so those updates will take even longer to be published.

I would say that, even though the pace is still very slow, Lua plugin development continues to improve with new plugins being added and older plugins slowly but surely getting facelifts (and where needed, complete overhauls). I know that I have been busy enough updating plugins that I haven't even had a chance to finish the first multi-player release of the Cards plugin, something I started work on nearly a year ago.

[Valamar]

How are the most common plugins working with the new Plugin Manager that is now built into the game?

I know when it first came out, there were many plugins that didn't get along with it too well...so I just resorted to not using it -- and have just been loading my plugins manually using the downloadable plugin manager.

If the built-in Plugin Manager works well with Tonic Bars, Buffbars, and Palantir then I will try using it again.

I would venture to say that there is a significant difference between those plugins found at LotroInterface.com and those from other sources.

I would strongly recommend using LPC -- "Lua Plugin Compendium" to install and update your plugins. Those plugins all work well with the Turbine Plugin Manager and most are updated frequently. LPC makes finding and installing those updates quite easy. I happen to use the Java version as I run on a Mac under CrossOver (WINE), but there is also a windows .exe also. The two are virtually identical.

Both Tonic Bars and Buffbars work well with the Turbine manager, I use them both constantly. I don't use Palantir, so I can't comment on it from experience, but I have not heard anything adverse about it.

Sapience has just (Friday 24 April) "announced" to expect Update 7 to show up on Bullroarer next week. Will we see any changes in the Lua world? Won't have any idea until we see the Release notes, and maybe not even then.

As for Lua developer activity, there are several very active developers who are both maintaining and expanding their efforts on a regular basis. (LPC has had at least one update every week lately.) There are also a couple who are "committed" but who have Real Life issues which have kept them both out of LOTRO and Lua development in recent months.

[Dvarlin]

There are many authors who have simply taken a break from developing to actually play the game.

This covers it for me!

I know that I have been busy enough updating plugins that I haven't even had a chance to finish the first multi-player release of the Cards plugin, something I started work on nearly a year ago.

Really looking forward to that one Garan.

My view: The developers working on the LUA code at Turbine are doing it in their spare time too - it is not top priority. And fair enough! It will always be something that only a cross section of the players use. I do not want this turning into a game where you must have such and such a plugin to play.

Let it develop slowly, but well.

[moebius92]

Hmmm. From my own personal experience, the things that make me not want to develop plugins isn't the amount of support from Turbine, it's the fact that a publically released plugin is actual work.

The stuff that drags me down is:

1) Having to document everything. That's always a pain for me. I hate documenting my code (so I pretty much never do - I don't think I've broken 5k lines, so it's not like they're hard to understand), and I don't particularly enjoy documenting how to use it either.
2) Implementing features that I'm never going to use. Sometimes it's an interesting design problem, but most of the time it's a bit of pain - I know how to do it, I'm not going to learn anything by doing it, so why bother?
3) Making the plugin user friendly - sometimes can be worth interesting, but a lot of the times it's boring work that takes more time to implement as the part of the plugin that does the actual work.
4) Maintaining the above - again, keeping code that I actually use in a shape that runs smoothly, no problem. Keeping code and documentation that I never use up to date? Again, why bother? Doesn't benefit me.

Coding stuff's fun. Learning how to do new stuff with code is fun. Good UI design can be fun. Everything else? Kinda meh.

(Okay, this may not apply to anyone else - I'm fairly self centered, to say the least.)