The future of Jamba

[Katestrasza]

First, I wanted to thank you for all your hard work over the years with this add-on. I'm sorry you won't be able to maintain it going forward but your reasons are more than understandable.

Let me try and answer your questions:

Do you want me to make the simplifying changes above? Yes. The primary reason I use Jamba is for the strobe and follow features. The communication feature is very nice because it forwards any messages to my primary character. I don't really use the Questing features.

Should I just abandon Jamba as is? I hate to see it abandoned so I would prefer that you hand it over to someone. I'd like you to please revert the recent changes. Personally I've been using version 6.0.2.3 because the recent changes have partially broken the strobe feature for me. Sometimes it will just stop working for me. I would prefer you simplify it and see if another developer can take it on.

Do you have a better solution to the current state of the Jamba code base and the usability of Jamba? I love Jamba. Simplifying it will make it easier for another developer to take it on.

Should I try and revert all the cross realm changes and not have cross realm support at all? I've been having issues since the last few updates so for me yes. I'd prefer you revert it.

I will probably open-source the Jamba code (MIT License, not a fan of GPL).
Ideally one or more developers would step forward and be willing to take over the Jamba development including the Curseforge and Curse sites. Anyone know any multi-boxing WoW developers? As a previous post said Jamba and ISBoxer go very well together. I'd love to see them take it on if that's possible. Maybe contact them and see if they can take it or if they know someone who can. I'd hate to see it just abandoned after all your hard work. I'd prefer a smooth handoff.

Other thoughts? Thanks again for all your hard work over the years. Your time and effort has been appreciated. Good luck to you and your family!

[Masochisto]

Thank you for six years of hard work Jafula. I haven’t been as active on the forums. But I’ve been a member and wow multi-boxer for a very long time, and a user of Jamba since your initial release. I use many more features than everyone else, but probably nowhere near all of the features you have implemented in Jamba. You have had a huge impact on our community and created something that cannot be uncreated. Once you step away, others will step forward out of necessity, and their work will stand on the shoulders of your work.
There is a lot of software expertise in the multi boxing user base. I expect many of us have a programming background or work in a related field. As a software developer and manager of developers, I am impressed at the work you have done and am skeptical any single person can fill your shoes as well as you have.

Do you want me to make the simplifying changes above?
Should I just abandon Jamba as is?


Major code refactors, even when refactoring for simplicity tend to take longer than you think they will and require some support time after the dev team thinks it is complete to shake out all the subtle bugs that creep in. My recommendation would be to take some time to update the code with comments and minor bug fixes but no major refactoring. This is your shortest way out, and allows a more stable state for the developers that will be trying to come behind you. My background is in languages with stronger typing than lua, so *I* think lua would be more susceptible to this than java or c#, but I could be mistaken as I don’t know lua.
TLDR: Open the source as soon as possible; spend your remaining development time on comments and bug fixes.

Do you have a better solution to the current state of the Jamba code base and the usability of Jamba?


Jamba is pretty complex, and has many features that not everyone is using. If I were the architect I probably would simplify it by breaking it into smaller add-ons that interact, but don’t require one another. This isn’t a criticism, as the work you have done is spectacular. I would not suggest trying to refactor for this now, but as individual boxers hotfix Jamba, or prune it of features they don’t care about and release simpler versions I'd suspect it to evolve in this direction.

Should I try and revert all the cross realm changes and not have cross realm support at all?


Just document the parts you think work and the parts you think don’t work. Let users who need to get it working pickup from where you left off, and users that don’t prune it away themselves.

I will probably open-source the Jamba code (MIT License, not a fan of GPL).
Ideally one or more developers would step forward and be willing to take over the Jamba development including the Curseforge and Curse sites. Anyone know any multi-boxing WoW developers?


I can’t imagine a Jamba without your direct involvement Jafula. Whichever License you use (I’m not familiar with their particulars) please allow for the use of your code in new add ons with similar feature sets. If *I* were going to pick up where you left off I’d want to do so by starting a new project and copying in the code for the features I cared about so I didn’t muck up the source material. I would not want to feel responsible to maintain all the features you have implemented, but would feel that way if I had to stay within the “Jamba” product.

Other thoughts?


Thank you for engaging the community rather than just disappearing. I personally wish you the best of luck to you in all of your future endeavors, but have confidence you will not rely on luck.

[Jafula]

Thank you to everyone for your replies so far. I have rolled back the cross realm support for Jamba and re-released that what essentially is 6.0.2.3 with a few quest watcher and item bar fixes as version 6.0.3.4.

I have changed the license to the MIT License which is a very liberal non-viral open source license, so developers feel free to use parts (or all) of Jamba as you see fit.

ebony, do you want to take over the curse and curseforge sites for Jamba? The only condition I have is that you leave the MIT license in place.

I will try and finalize up a few more things in a week or so.

[Deimonics the mulitboxer]

How about accept a bg or dungeon with the master or auto accept them. or that isnt allowed?

And thnx for the great work, Jamba has been a main addon for my multibox. And it will always be as long as it works ill enjoy this every day.
But reallife has priority.

[toomanytoons]

Jafula,
I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors! Thank you so much for all the years of hard work and support you have provided to the boxing community. As far as your questions.....


I would like to remove the following features;

1) The communications channel.
This means your team list must consist of characters that are online. You can use profiles, macros or ISBoxer to manage adding and removing characters from a team.
Does this mean that I will no longer be able to invite my team using Jamba? That would suck since I don't use ISBoxer being a mac user (hate windows, refuse to use Bootcamp), but I'm sure I would manage.


2) Support for characters not in a party, raid or battleground.
Jamba tries to accommodate your characters not in a party, raid or battleground. This added complexity makes it hard to make sure a message has been sent to all the characters and is causing issues.

Wasn't really aware that this option was in there since I use two different profiles, team and single and switch to single when I run toons alone.

And update the following feature;

3) Cross realm support.
Characters will be stored with separate name and realm fields. A check box will be added to the team management interface for cross realm support. If you have a cross realm team, you will need to check this box and make sure all the realm names are correct. If you have a same realm team, realms will be ignored. Internally Jamba is going to rely on a characters global unique identifier rather than a name-realm pair.

Not an issue for me since I don't run cross-realm teams.

The following features need to be fixed but I probably won't do them;

4) Quest support is broken due to WoD changes and I have not had a chance to investigate properly.
5) I know that there is a lot more that needs to be fixed.

I want to solicit your opinions on how to proceed from here;

Do you want me to make the simplifying changes above? Up to you really.

Should I just abandon Jamba as is? I hope you don't, but the choice is ultimately yours. Hopefully you pass the torch to those in the community willing and able to take over where you leave off.

Do you have a better solution to the current state of the Jamba code base and the usability of Jamba? Wish I could help, but I'm not a programmer of any kind, sadly.

Should I try and revert all the cross realm changes and not have cross realm support at all? Would it be easier to leave it as is? I haven't had any trouble, but then I don't run cross-realm teams.

I will probably open-source the Jamba code (MIT License, not a fan of GPL).
Ideally one or more developers would step forward and be willing to take over the Jamba development including the Curseforge and Curse sites. Anyone know any multi-boxing WoW developers?
Other thoughts?

[Maxion]

I have rolled back the cross realm support for Jamba

Thank you for all the work you have put in over the years!

Though the update today seems to have broken the team list, as I apparently have a bunch of name-realm versions of the team in the list, which I can no longer remove (my team is same-realm), and the real ones then get listed in addition to those, making the team display look very off. :/ Trying to set one of them as master gives the error: could not find area: <name of character>.
Maybe I can find how to fix it in the save data...

[laguy442]

My team list was messed up also. I edited the Jamba.lua file but as soon as the game reopened it set it back to the broken method. Going to see if I can roll back. Otherwise my team is toast for now.

Update: Rolled back to previous version and manual editing my Jamba.lua config file and it worked fine. Not sure I needed to change the config since it might have automagically corrected itself but bottom line is am running again with previous version.

[Bloodcloud]

last jamba release before real stuff was "fixed" is here : http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/jamba/832885

[Jafula]

The last release reverted cross realm support, which means the name-realm pair in your team list will no longer work. You will need to add only the character name back in. As for removing the name-realm pair from your team list, you can edit the following config file.

WoW\WTF\<account>\SavedVariables\Jamba.lua

Find the team list section that looks like (there may be more than one);

["teamList"] = {
["Caaile-Realm"] = 3,
["Caaila-Realm"] = 2,
["Caaily-Realm"] = 6,
["Bootia-Realm"] = 1,
["Caailo-Realm"] = 5,
["Caaili-Realm"] = 4,
},

Remove the -Realm parts from the teamlist and you should be good to go.

Make sure you edit the file when WoW is not running. You will probably need to do it for each account as well.

Edit: You will need to disable ISBoxer management of the Jamba team (sorry Lax) or else it will try and add name-realm characters to the team list.

Edit 2: Try resetting the profiles. That should remove the old name-realm pairs.

[ebony]

ebony, do you want to take over the curse and curseforge sites for Jamba? The only condition I have is that you leave the MIT license in place.

I can try and keep it working when stuff changes (patch's/bugs) thanks for removing the cross realm stuff i need to get my head round the basic stuff before trying to go into deep into that stuff. None else seems to want to do it so i will do my best and try and keep the jamba name going for a few more years.
i have no plans to change license or change names or remove you from the code. You will always be loved!

My name on curse is ebonyfaye