[Addon] MultiTool

[Simulacra]

lol 2nd guy to market

twoboxtoolkit
Automaton
multiboxer
multiboxerv2
jamba
<insert new whatever here>

Yes, but I thought it would be tacky to rub it in more.

Also 14th guy to market doesn't sound as good.

lol - you also sound like my Dad, if everyone was like you we'd all still be driving Model T fords

[algol]

lol - you also sound like my Dad, if everyone was like you we'd all still be driving Model T fords

I like Model T Fords.

But what does that have to do with replacing one well-tested program with another that does the same thing, but less? Anyway, enough about your daddy issues. I'm interested in seeing where this is going now that he's aware of Jamba. He presumably won't try to duplicate effort too much, leading to different implementations and such at the least.

[Ken]

Jamba[/url], why bother making the same thing? What differentiates this addon?

>.< you sound like my Dad[/quote]
For asking valid questions/concerns?
Don't get me wrong, I don't mind answers like "because it's a good WoW API learning experience". I was just wondering ...
Maybe I sound like your dad, I found the above criticism on my post quite childish.

[Ken]

Jamba[/url], why bother making the same thing? What differentiates this addon?

Truthfully, I never saw Jamba until after I had already started on MultiTool... (I actually started it because I liked where MultiBoxer v2 was going, but found it to be a bit more broken than I'd like, and after looking at the source, I decided taht an addon so dependant upon a possibly abandoned framework (LibRock) was not something I wanted to try and dig into. (thatst not a dig on smurfy or LibRock, just personal preferences.. I figured if I was going to teach myself to write addons for wow, I was going to use a well-supported, continually-updated framework or none at all)

Jamba does indeed seem really nice, but now that I've started, I'm going to continue along the path I've taken. As far as I'm concerned, if nobody else ever uses MultiTool, it's still EXACTLY the addon I want... with the features I find most useful. In fact, I'm tempted never to download or use Jamba so that I don't just end up duplicating it... rather let the features flow from my personal preference and direction.
BettySue was correct as well: The big thing that sets MultiTool apart is the idea of being as unobtrusive as possible... that I do not have to set up my toons to recognize and follow a particular master when doing quest dialogs and flight masters and whatnot. I use a master/slave relationship with my playing like all other multiboxers (prot pally master runs in and grabs aggro, holy priest and mage slaves pew pew (and priest occasionally heal heal), but I very often find myself having my hand over on the mouse/kbd of one of my "offhand" toons, when its time to do something traditionally done with the master. I find it saves me a lot of time and clicks now that I have MultiTool doing what I want.

Also Also, I'm a software engineer... I spend a lot of time supporting existing code written by someone else. This is "hobby mode" where I get to code something the way I want and learn how to do things with LUA. It's a very nice change of pace.[/quote]
Thanks for the explanation. That's a perfectly good reason :) That's mostly why we start coding anyway: because it does exactly what *we* want it to do. And learning LUA is a good reason too.

[DgtlSorcrs]

Ken,

I took your original comment in exactly the way it was intended


BettySue and Jafula,

Thanks for the words of encouragement. I may have never started MultiTool if I had found Jamba first. I've always wanted to write an addon, but I'm the type of coder that doesn't normally try to reinvent the wheel. I guess my mistake was not really researching what was available outside of Curse and Ace and not searching hard enough.

Still, I'm glad that it happened that way because it inspired me to actually sit down and teach myself LUA. As you know, the learning curve is kind of a very nice gentle slope once you get over the sheer cliff of starting up. I had many false starts where I'd get an idea only to give up when I found something that did exactly what I wanted.


...and specifically to Jafula,

I'm going to continue to refine the masterless approach. It will differentiate MultiTool from Jamba, and I'll see about making it more modular so that if someone really likes my taxi sharing, they can just load MultiTool for that module and use Jamba for the rest of their multi boxing needs, etc...

As I said before, even if I am the only person to use MultiTool, I'm happy because it works with how I roll.


(side-note)... DgtlSorcrs is short for Digital Sorceress: not a he. Does my avatar look that boy-ish?

[DgtlSorcrs]

Okay, I decided to take a look at the sources of Jamba after all.

When I was first scaling that cliff (the steep initial learning curve of WOW LUA), I reviewed the sources of a lot of addons looking for "best practices" examples of various aspects of WOW LUA and specifically of using Ace3. What delicious irony that after I scale that cliff the hard way, I find the very example of "best practices" in an addon that does much the same as I wrote.

If I were a "hat person", my hat would be off to you Jafula. Clean code, well modularized, well commented. I'd like to think that's how I'd have done it if I were to do things over.

[algol]

I'm going to continue to refine the masterless approach. It will differentiate MultiTool from Jamba, and I'll see about making it more modular so that if someone really likes my taxi sharing, they can just load MultiTool for that module and use Jamba for the rest of their multi boxing needs, etc...

Sounds like an interesting plan, especially given the current popularity of the FTL + Keyclone PiP swap layout. You can do a certain amount of that now by adding Jamba's "make me master" command into your follow macro (or whatever's convenient), but I bet there's room to improve it specifically for that model.

Still, I'm glad that it happened that way because it inspired me to actually sit down and teach myself LUA.

Were there any guides/resources that you found particularly helpful?

[Majestic_Clown]

DgtlSorcrs
You keep going mate, if you wishing to learn how to script then go for it.
Variety is the best thing, if you can do something bigger and better than go for it, if you can maintain and add features for the next few years who am I to say not.

If you can duplicate what already exisits by make it light weight than the rest then you will win people to use your addon.

I would say this, just dooo it!

[DgtlSorcrs]

Were there any guides/resources that you found particularly helpful?

"World of Warcraft Programming" isbn: 978-0-470-22981-1
it had some good primers and the API Reference is GREAT

www.wowace.com - the forums for Ace3 framework.. OrionShock and Allara were most helpful

old.wowace.com/wiki/ - until they port the wiki for Ace3 API docs to the new server, this is great

www.lua.org - really good for that initial "what does raw LUA do" stuff


Also, just looking at the source code of other addons. There is an incredible range of horrible-to-wonderful in terms of the coding quality. When you're just learning a new language, it's usually easy to tell horrible from wonderful, but a little tougher to tell best practices from "yeah, it'll work". Each language has its "idioms" and eccentricities. As I mentioned in an earlier post, ironically, one of the best written addons I've seen (in terms of clarity of code and modularization and good use of Ace3) is Jamba - an addon that if I had known it was out there, I wouldn't have made my own.

[Bettysue]

Sorry ken i didn't mean to come across as harsh as I was I just wanted to jump in before the mindless got ahold of the "just use jamba don't make your own" idea and beat this poor person off the forums in shame. I've seen quite a few good coders quit before they could really shine because their early work was similar to already existent works. Enough thread hijacking for me I'll go back to quietly stalking about in the macros threads