Anchoring Player Frame to Blizzard's player Nameplate (Moving one)

[Lysiander]

Hello all,

I have recently returned to the game. I have an old oUF Layout that I wrote back in MoP and have kept somewhat updated. Im rather fond of it, but the code is old and I have to admit that at this point I have trouble understanding parts of it.

I've fallen in love with the concept of the player bar directly under the character (the one that moves based on the camera angle). I was wondering if it is possible to anchor an oUF Player Frame to that.

I've tried anchoring to the various things that framestack gave me but the only one that works is "NamePlatePlayerResourceFrame" which hides everything but the healthbar from my layout.

I've looked at Blizzards code and as far as I can gather they treat this frame as another nameplate, but I couldn't find anything to hook that would mirror its position.

Is it even possible to achieve?

[SDPhantom]

The problem I came across doing this is when the game decides it no longer wants to display the player nameplate. It stops moving it in accordance to the camera zoom and pitch. It also isn't created until the first time it decides to be shown, which would be when you enter combat or perform some abilities.

If you insist in still doing this, you could listen for the first time NAME_PLATE_UNIT_ADDED fires for the player by using UnitIsUnit() on the provided NamePlate UnitID. Once the nameplate for the player gets created, it seems to reserve that specific nameplate for the player for the entire session.

[Lysiander]

I see. Thanks for your input.

I guess I could go with a default position and an OnUpdate event that looks for the nameplate and attaches the frame once it's found it and then moves it back when it vanishes. Not too sure if this is a good idea though.

I couldn't find any reference to the actual positioning, so I assume that the movement part is handled on Blizzards non lua end and is not easily emulated?`

[SDPhantom]

Originally Posted by Lysiander I couldn't find any reference to the actual positioning, so I assume that the movement part is handled on Blizzards non lua end and is not easily emulated?

Correct. The NamePlate positioning is based off sensitive unit and camera position data Blizzard doesn't want us to have access to. It's done by C code, which is the game engine directly manipulating the Lua environment itself.

Originally Posted by Lysiander I guess I could go with a default position and an OnUpdate event that looks for the nameplate and attaches the frame once it's found it and then moves it back when it vanishes. Not too sure if this is a good idea though.

Using an OnUpdate script is actually a worse approach than I mentioned previously. It's a little more complicated now that they're properly recycling the player NamePlate. I have working prototype code, but it's running into some taint issues.

local PlayerPlate,PlayerUF,CloneUF;
hooksecurefunc(NamePlateBaseMixin,"OnAdded",function(self,unit,driver)
    if UnitIsUnit(unit,"player") then
--      Save these to restore later
        PlayerPlate,PlayerUF=self,self.UnitFrame;
 
--      Create our clone if we didn't already
        if not CloneUF then
            CloneUF=CreateFrame("Button","PlayerNamePlateUnitFrame",self,"NamePlateUnitFrameTemplate");
            CloneUF:SetParent(WorldFrame);--    The template writes itself to Parent.UnitFrame, so we're setting the real parent here
            CompactUnitFrame_SetUpFrame(CloneUF,driver.namePlateSetupFunctions.player);
            CloneUF.RaidTargetFrame.RaidTargetIcon:Hide();-- Unused texture on player NamePlate
            CloneUF:EnableMouse(false);--   No mouse interaction
        end
 
--      Now for the deception
        self.UnitFrame=CloneUF;--   Set ourselves as the "official" UnitFrame
        CloneUF:SetAllPoints(self);--   Anchor to the NamePlate
        CompactUnitFrame_SetUnit(PlayerUF,nil);--   Hide old UnitFrame
        CompactUnitFrame_SetUnit(CloneUF,unit);--   Show our clone
    end
end);
 
hooksecurefunc(NamePlateBaseMixin,"OnRemoved",function(self)
    if self==PlayerPlate then
--      Restore the old UnitFrame
        self.UnitFrame=PlayerUF;
 
--      Update unit and freeze positioning
        CompactUnitFrame_SetUnit(CloneUF,"player");
        CloneUF:ClearAllPoints();
 
--      Clear our vars
        PlayerPlate,PlayerUF=nil,nil;
    end
end);
 
hooksecurefunc(NamePlateDriverFrame,"SetupClassNameplateBar",function(self,ontarget,bar)
--  Return if disabled (or not applicable)
    if GetCVar("nameplateShowSelf")=="0" or ontarget or not (CloneUF and NamePlatePlayerResourceFrame and bar) then return; end
 
--  Claim NamePlatePlayerResourceFrame (Similar code to original function with changed parent)
    NamePlatePlayerResourceFrame:SetParent(CloneUF);
    NamePlatePlayerResourceFrame:ClearAllPoints();
    NamePlatePlayerResourceFrame:SetPoint("TOP",CloneUF.healthBar,"BOTTOM",0,-1);
    bar:SetParent(NamePlatePlayerResourceFrame); bar:Show();
    NamePlatePlayerResourceFrame:Layout();
    NamePlatePlayerResourceFrame:Show();
end);

[Lysiander]

Thanks for your help, the code and sorry for the late reply. I'll think about how to best solve this.