The Guard Cat

Watch in awe as our tabby cat valiantly defends the family home from intruders.

RangeBar addon?

I had another idea for an addon: a simple ‘range-to-target’ bar:

Not sure about the exact ranges – I’d need to check the RangeDisplay addon for that – but I think a small graphical indicator like this might be more useful to some people than a text-based one.

Edit

I looked at the Lua code for RangeDisplay. Good grief, that's an astonishing amount of work necessary just to display a simple range indicator.

FailScore

Yaggle’s comment in Gevlon’s recent post got me thinking about another addon I could make. Rather than something like GearScore, which gives you a larger arbitrary number the “better” your gear is, I propose an alternative: FailScore. This would start you at 0, then deduct points for things like wrong armour class (e.g. shaman wearing leather or cloth), wrong stats (e.g. hunter with intellect gear), missing/wrong enchants, glyphs and gems, and bad perhaps talents, although this last would have to be fairly specific in what it considers a fail (e.g. 41 points in one tree) as many non-optimal talents aren’t exactly bad, and often have a PVE utility function like being an interrupt.

The idea would be to have a FailScore as close to 0 as possible, and with more serious fails affecting the player’s score more than minor ones like a sub-optimal enchant. Different gear levels could also affect the score in different ways, too: unenchanted green-quality gear would be less of an issue than unenchanted epics, because it’s usually not worth enchanting gear that will be replaced so soon. Moreover, the cheaper enchants can sometimes be unavailable in the AH, or very overpriced.

Incidentally, I believe it should be a negative number simply to avoid any misunderstanding: if someone’s FailScore increased, they might (if they were a moron, which people with large FailScores probably are) mistake this to mean “higher = better”.

This would primarily be aimed at players below level 85, as obviously when levelling up it’s rarely worth enchanting or gemming quest gear, and even having the wrong armour class can be acceptable given the limited choices. However, some of the larger fails, e.g. wrong stats on armour, will still apply, possibly with some extra leniency in Outland due to the messed-up stat allocations (like strength and intellect on the same piece of gear); that said, hunters wearing cloth will still get large failscores.

One final thing I might include, although it may be a bad idea, is the ability to generate a FailScore Report, detailing the issues.

On and maybe I could make a Recount plugin, “DPS per FailScore”. Not sure what value that would provide, though.

Edit

I just thought of another idea: representing the fail as a percentage. For a given class/spec/gear setup/level, the maximum potential FailScore would be calculated, then the player’s actual score given as a percentage of it. This would in theory normalise all scores, as some classes probably have more potential for fail than others, and it also gets around the issue of lower-level players having lower scores but still being just as fail as an epic-geared 85.

Addon Reins

Alas, some research on WoWWiki and the #wowuidev IRC channel has revealed that this point—

• Clear differentiation between ‘historical’ nodes and ‘detected’ nodes.

—will be much harder to implement as I originally envisaged. For technical reasons, it’s not possible for an addon to get minimap tracking information, so I won’t be able to show current nodes without resorting to some SexyMap HudMap-style hackery.

That said, SexyMap HudMap-style hackery may not be such a bad thing. The issue in SexyMap is that when you enable the HudMap, the background of the map disappears, so you can’t see terrain features on it, which makes it difficult to assess where a node might be. To work around this, I still want to go with the ‘wireframe map’ idea, although obviously this requires a vast amount of work, to draw custom maps for every single zone.

Another downside to ‘faking’ it is that I have no control over the shape of the map; it’ll just be a circle, and it will have a fixed maximum range. This is in contrast to Gatherer’s HUD, for example, which allows it to show an angled ‘perspective’ view which can help when screen space is limited, and which some may find easier to read.

Another point—

• Custom node icons, following the theme of the radar style – simplified wireframe shape (or just text), possibly coloured to match the associated herb.

—I want to expand upon. In any given zone there are a limited number of different node types, so rather than just use the herb’s icon as a map/radar marker, I think using custom node textures would work better as they can be both small yet easier to differentiate. The size is important: when you have a very extensive node map, it can get very crowded, so you could reduce the icon size, but then you have tiny 8-pixel blobs that are hard to tell apart.

As an example, in Storm Peaks, the only two herbs you’ll find are Lichbloom and Icethorn, both of which have blue/white icons. For that reason, I could for example use a ▲ for Icethorn and o for Lichbloom. In a zone like Sholazar Basin, where there is more variety of herbs, it could be something like ▲ for Adder’s Tongue, █ for Tiger Lily and o for Goldclover.

Another idea I had is based on the first picture in my first post on this matter:

You’ll notice that the ‘centre’ of the map is near the bottom, which might be another good idea for saving space yet still providing decent range. After all, I suspect people are more interested in nodes in front of them than behind.

Edit

Here's a mockup I made of what I imagine the radar thing to look like, obviously in this case without terrain features; I might do one later with those included later.

The small blue circle is the detection range, within which nodes should appear on the minimap assuming they're present. The vertical dotted line is current heading, and the small number pairs along it are distance and time.

It's far from perfect – there are too many dashed circles, for one thing, and it definitely needs some adjustable opacity; possibly it could lose the quite large border too.

I came back to build something

I have renewed my subscription to WoW, and got myself some Cataclysm. This was quite unexpected, and although I’m pretty much done with raiding still, and even moreso with guild dramas, I had an Idea, and that Idea nagged at me until I gave in.

Watching my girlfriend farm herbs, it seemed to me there was a gap in the addon market for such activities. Gatherer is nice, but it’s kinda primitive in the way it represents nodes, even using the HUD: there’s no indication of how far you can ‘see’ herbs, the only way you can know a herb is nearby is by constantly looking to the minimap. The HUD is helpful, but limited, and awkward to set up.

So, being the programmery type I am, I’ve got it in my head to make something better. The plan is to create ‘radar-style’ HUD showing a basic wireframe terrain map, something like these:

Later on I’ll create a better mockup that better matches what I have in mind.

I want it to have the following features:

• Node markers (obviously), with optional distance and time-to display.

• Integration with Gatherer node data (very important).

• Clear differentiation between ‘historical’ nodes and ‘detected’ nodes.

• Coastlines/riverbanks, caves and possibly major terrain features like waterfalls or cliffs.

• Optional display of enemy mobs and their aggro ranges.

• A ‘detection range’ circle, ideally using the current lag figure to improve accuracy.

• Custom node icons, following the theme of the radar style – simplified wireframe shape (or just text), possibly coloured to match the associated herb.

• Various readouts such as player altitude, speed, radar display range, view direction,

• Possibly a waypoints system.

• Military HUD style ‘targetting’, i.e. overlaying a highlight box on nodes in the world (may be frowned upon by Blizzard).

I have no idea how feasible any of this is, and I know for sure that the actual wireframe terrain map is going to be either a lot of work, or just not possible, but I am eager to give it a go. I’ll be happy if I can even have the display without the terrain outlines.

Less WoT, moar WoW (and some L4D2)

I spent ages grinding XP for a nice shiny new KV tank. It took the best part of a week, scooting around in my T-28 boat tank, until FINALLY I had both enough XP to research the KV, and enough credits to actually buy one. Hooray!

Then I started to play with it. Good grief it’s slow, taking about half an ice age to turn 180°, and getting overtaken by SPGs. Plus, since it’s the stock KV and is a Tier 5 Heavy tank, I often get matched up against Tier 8 and 9 tanks against which the best I can do is fire puny 75mm HE shells and hope I don’t attract any attention, which is unlikely because even if the enemy tanks don’t spot me, the artillery certainly do. I imagine them rubbing their hands with glee as their aiming reticules slowly gather around my turret.

Now the KV is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Henceforth I will meet equally well armed, and probably better armed tanks. It will be a long grind.

In the meantime, I also managed to get myself an A-20, which is like the opposite of a KV: it appears to have armour made of cardboard, and a gun that might as well not even be there. Despite these flaws, it does have one thing going for it: it’s really really fast. Like, 72 km/h fast. This is greatly entertaining, zooming about on the battlefield being eyes for the tanks and artillery that have guns that can do more than ping uselessly off the enemy. It’s fun enough that I decided to go for a second light tank, the Leopard (from the German tech tree). It’s slightly slower than the A-20, but it turns more like a Tron lightcycle. Excellent for confounding one’s foes.

And then… and then I stopped playing. I think the prospect of the gigantic grind required to make the KV competitive is putting me off.

Left for dead tank

Just as I was trying to come up with an alternative to shooting tanks, I get an invite to a game of Left 4 Dead 2. Golly gosh that game is exciting! I am distinctly average at it (actually more towards the ‘crap’ end of the scale), but it’s the kind of game you can still have fun in despite that. It’s also completely lacking in grind: you start, you get good weapons, and you shoot zombies. Lots and lots and lots of zombies (including one called a Tank!).

I discovered I rather like the auto shotgun, even though the combat shotgun is ostensibly better (it definitely has a better sound, and looks more badass). Swinging a fire axe about is also tremendously fun.

Mine!

Just as I am starting to enjoy L4D2, I’m also reading people discussing Minecraft, and now I want to play that again! Man, so many games. I played Minecraft a while back, when it was v1.3, but not since. Now I am feeling the urge to dig and build in 1m³ blocks.

Overall effect

AND! I bought Mass Effect, after reading a blog post on FemSheps and then remembering that the game sounded interesting. It was only £10 on Steam, too, which was nice. I haven’t actually played it yet, though, because by the time it had downloaded it was about 1 in the morning.

Wow, seriously

Yes, srsly, I am playing WoW a bit more now too, still on Zoe’s account. I daren’t install the game on my own PC. Still, what limited time I play, I’m back to shamaning it up. The shaman originally had an Elemental spec, and a Restoration offspec that neither of us ever used. Then I read an blog post by someone talking about Enhancement and wanted to try it out, so we dumped the Resto spec and changed it to Enh, and hoo, it’s fun! Fists of flame!

So anyway, I then wrote/adapted/ripped off a Resto Shaman Guide and since I’d done a fair bit of Restoring in WotLK, I got curious, and 57 gold later the shaman re-acquired a Resto spec to replace the Elemental. I’m such a goblin.

I’ve not tried it in actual real instances yet, as I did the spec and associated paraphernalia (glyphs, UI setup, gear) on my lunch break. I’m gonna dive in tonight though, and since the shaman just hit 80 I’ll be trying to fill green bars in Cataclysm instances, of which I have somewhat limited experience. Fun times ahead. Still, at least shaman healing is fairly unchanged from Lich King, so at least I won’t be totally clueless as when I tried to heal Zul’Aman on Zoe’s Discipline-spec priest. That wasn’t fun.

A Week of WoT

I’ve been playing World of Tanks for a week now, more or less. It’s really good! It reminds me in some ways of the tank bits of Wargasm, only with a WW2 flavour rather than modern/sci-fi.

Not really knowing what I was doing, I went initially for a Soviet MS-1 tank, because, well, it was Russian. I then progressed on to the T-26, T-46 up to my current T-28, which is a stupid-looking tank. It looks like a cross between a boat and a tank, seriously. Also, I’m not sure what this monster is but it’s definitely not the same thing I’m talking about. It does look somewhat impractical.

Grind My Gears

Once I acquired my lovely T-28, I encountered the grind, whereupon progress through the tiers slows dramatically due to the much larger experience point requirements: going from Tier III to Tier IV means saving up around 3,500 XP; from Tier IV to Tier V it’s more like 13,000. Given that even if you do exceptionally well in a battle and have a premium account you can earn at best about 1,000 XP, and that more realistically you will lost around half your battles, thus earning something more in the region of 100 XP, you can see how long it can take to make that climb to the next tier. Even the radio in one of them costs 5,600 XP to research!

It was at this point that I discovered there is no penalty for leaving a battle once your tank has been destroyed. Thus enlightened, I strove to populate my garage with a variety of other vehicles to join the grind, resulting in an almost non-stop succession of tankshoots. Doing this in similar tanks would quite likely make the grind seem even more interminable than with just the one, akin to repeatedly being thrown into a meatgrinder, so to spice things up a little I have chosen a more diverse range:

• SU-26 SPG (USSR): a lovely little artillery gun with an 360° rotating turret, making it easy to stay hidden. Apparently has 5 crew members, though I’m not sure where they’re all supposed to go.

• Hetzer tank destroyer (German): possibly the most ridiculous distinctive-looking tank in the game. Godawful slow until you get the good engine for it.

• M5 Stuart (USA): speedy little monster, although not terribly good on the acceleration front, and apparently not that good compared to the Soviet scout tanks like the A-20. Still, fun to drive. I fitted mine with the 75mm derp gun, to surprise and delight my foes.

Bar the M5, all of my tanks are interim until I can get enough XP to buy better ones. In the meantime, they all provide some fun battles, so while the grind is long, it is rarely dull.

The M5 is one I might actually consider replacing, thinking about it: sure it’s great zooming about at 56km/h but it takes so long to get there, and it’s hardly nimble. I look upon those little zippy German tanks (PzIII? Pz38NA? Some of the names for the German tanks are confusing to the outsider) and feel envy.