Originally Posted by Delanna
I had assumed there were some annoying technical limitations behind this, or it would have been done earlier.
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yeah, Blizzard basically wants you to actually have a target before it is willing to tell you much about a hostile unit.
Aloft can always identify the player's current target nameplate (graphically, via nameplate alpha), so for hostile units (mana, detailed numerical threat data, etc), Aloft is often limited to the player's current target.
Blizzard doesn't provide any sort of "addon functionality" for nameplates. they are just graphical objects. there is no association of any kind with who-is-who. various bits of nameplate text/statusbar data can provide things like unit name, unit level, current/max health, and a few other things (like: raid target icon). but that is it.
Just for my own curiocity, you're saying that you'd need BOTH someone targeting the mob in question, and a target assigned to the mob in order to distinguish one nameplate from another within the code? Neither feature really breaks usefulness of the system, but the need to mar every mob is sorta annoying, but for the functionality it would probably be worth it, all things considered.
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yep. a friendly groupmember (at least a pet) targeting the mob, plus a raid target assignment (icon).
that raid target assignment was the only thing i could find associated with nameplates themselves (as graphical UI objects) that could provide any reliable linkage between the graphical nameplate and the general universe of unit information that is useful to players.
so, Aloft tracks groupmember targets continuously, and records the GUIDs of all targeted hostile units as those targets change. as well, when a raid target is assigned to a hostile unit, Aloft associates the assigned icon with the GUID of the hostile unit. then, when it sees a nameplate with an icon on it, it can connect the dots, use those tracked GUIDs to figure out which friendly groupmember unitid(s) (if any) have that unit targeted, and use one of those unitids to provide whatever information the player wants (target-of-target, detailed numeric AOE threat versus the player, and presumably at some point buffs/debuffs as well). intricate, but workable.