Power Auras Classic 5.0

[Dalmasca1]

Originally Posted by Dulci Sorry if someone mentioned this already, but I couldn't get Debuff type increased magic damage to work. When someone had Curse of the Elements up (cast by me or someone else), it never recognized it.

How did you attempt to setup this aura? I just made one that recognizes CoE and Master Poisoner by setting those two different matches to the main trigger, and it works fine. What did you do specifically? It sounds like you may have tried to make an aura for the debuff type rather than making multiple spell matches. As far as I know, that doesn't work.

[Rudaman]

I couldn't find a way to show all my auras together so to position them at the best, which was possible in previous version.
Can somebody help me?

[yodawhip]

Originally Posted by Rudaman I couldn't find a way to show all my auras together so to position them at the best, which was possible in previous version. Can somebody help me?

Your best bet atm is to do the math and compensate for icon size and spacing, then use the adjusted co-ordinates. But yes I was unable to view all to line things up, but the numbers will never lie unless u made a mistake.

The real time saver would be to implement copy n paste imo. Also, in the additional triggers, I would grey out the options (and leave the page populated) instead of allowing them to only be viewable on enable. I think that will help ppl realize the navigation arrows for the customization. Also color the arrow or make them loud n proud.

Tip to save time on some basic positioning or timers is to utilize the parent feature in positioning.

Its coming along. The basics (and more) are there.

Thanks

[Meorawr]

Alright, since the feedback so far has been overwhelmingly "what the hell do I do" and "y u change it", I'm going to do the following things:

• Pull the downloads from Curse/WoWI. Clearly they aren't ready.
• Try and disable Curse comments, because I got another ~100 emails last night despite having notifications off (grr).
• Rework the UI some more. It'll be similar to what there is now, but I'm going to focus on the activation section since it's tripping too many people up.

And yes, I know people will complain about this regardless. I'm beyond the point of caring - people will bitch about a delayed release as much as they are now.

[Rudaman]

Originally Posted by Meorawr Alright, since the feedback so far has been overwhelmingly "what the hell do I do" and "y u change it", I'm going to do the following things: Pull the downloads from Curse/WoWI. Clearly they aren't ready. Try and disable Curse comments, because I got another ~100 emails last night despite having notifications off (grr). Rework the UI some more. It'll be similar to what there is now, but I'm going to focus on the activation section since it's tripping too many people up. And yes, I know people will complain about this regardless. I'm beyond the point of caring - people will bitch about a delayed release as much as they are now.

You're doing a great job, take your time and ignore the rest.

[Dalmasca1]

Originally Posted by Rudaman You're doing a great job, take your time and ignore the rest.

^ Completely agreed.

A good product takes time to develop. I hope some of these "how do I do this?" posts have been helpful to guiding your decisions and not just distracting. I've been trying to answer ones that are simple (would be answered by the tutorial) and not, "can the addon do this anymore?".

[Meorawr]

They have been useful, yes - that's why I'm planning these changes

I'm going to do some mockups today and post them here for some feedback/criticisms/ideas.

[dimstog]

Excellent work. I must say I was a bit put off by the new interface, but that I got used to it, I think I like it even more than the old one.

Until the import/export feature is implemented, does anyone know how I can copy my auras from one pc to another ? Would copying the powerauras.lua files from the saved variables folders do it ?

[Meorawr]

Yeah, copying the variables should work just fine.

[dimstog]

Originally Posted by Meorawr Yeah, copying the variables should work just fine.

Thanks for the prompt respone. Again, excellent work. I literally can't play my warlock without your addon !

[Meorawr]

Alright, an outline of the problems as I see them, and the things I want to do to work around them:

• Aura Browser is currently redundant and serves a small purpose (for accessing auras) - but in return costs up screen real-estate. Idea: Remove it, merge it into the editor window.
• Auras are terrible for grouping - they're not very intuitive and, personally, I don't think they need to exist. Idea: Rename displays to auras in the UI, rename auras to groups.
• Activation is a bit of a mess - This one is complicated, but there's a fundamental flaw with the way Support Triggers are handled in that they're not intuitive whatsoever. Idea: I'm going to take a page out of 4.x's book here and expose all the settings in a clear category-by-category manner but also try and implement a search/filter feature. The idea being you could search for 'combat' and it'd remove any widgets that didn't have "combat" in their name. I suppose another way to look at it would be similar to Chrome's option search.
• Anything with a dialog for configuration - It's terrible. I'm going to try a table approach instead without the need for a dialog to manage matches. Each row would be a separate match, and the table would likely be paginated beyond ~5-10 matches.
• Style/Animations/Sounds - I think these categories are fine, but they could do with some more intuitive navigational schemes (in fact, the entire UI could).

[Stabilo]

All good ideas.
- The support trigger section is indeed not intuitive at all before you first find your way there, and a little clicky even after you understand how it works.
- Agree on calling Auras Groups and Displays Auras in the future, since.. Well, that's how they seem to be used.
- I don't really work with animations or sounds, use sound on one aura and it was super simple to set up
- Style is easy and good, but maybe a little disorganized. Despite quite few options, it just feels maybe a little messy? I don't see the need for distinguishing style and positioning if screen real estate allows to combine them.

For suggestions, and this is just my flow of thought and has nothing to do with ease of implementation.

Have you seen the new settings window of Tukui? It uses 2 panels on each side of the screen that are "fixed" to the sides. Now, that might sound excessive to start with. While it takes up a lot of space, something like powa would be possible to fit on just one of them. It looks sleek, gives a lot of room for different settings etc. especially vertically. Possibly add a simple button to throw the whole panel to the other side of the screen if one needs to work with auras that would otherwise be under the panel? I don't know, the first time I saw the tukui settings my first thought was "wow, something like this might be possible to adapt for power auras" :P

I have no idea what that would do for scalability, I guess it'd end up being scrollable on smaller screens, which I know you don't like.

[Dalmasca1]

Originally Posted by Meorawr Aura Browser is currently redundant and serves a small purpose (for accessing auras) - but in return costs up screen real-estate. Idea: Remove it, merge it into the editor window.

Ya, without the copy+paste buttons or enable/disable buttons on it, there's no reason to have it take up space while using the editor.

Auras are terrible for grouping - they're not very intuitive and, personally, I don't think they need to exist. Idea: Rename displays to auras in the UI, rename auras to groups.

That nomenclature makes a lot more sense and fits their current functionality better. More importantly I think it's more intuitive for new users.

Activation is a bit of a mess - This one is complicated, but there's a fundamental flaw with the way Support Triggers are handled in that they're not intuitive whatsoever. Idea: I'm going to take a page out of 4.x's book here and expose all the settings in a clear category-by-category manner but also try and implement a search/filter feature. The idea being you could search for 'combat' and it'd remove any widgets that didn't have "combat" in their name. I suppose another way to look at it would be similar to Chrome's option search.

Might need to see a mock-up of this before I can give good feedback. I haven't had trouble with them, but I see a lot of people who haven't been able to find the trigger they are looking for. I think the current arrow paging between the various menus isn't in the best location for users to pick it up visually. I still like the categories though.

Anything with a dialog for configuration - It's terrible. I'm going to try a table approach instead without the need for a dialog to manage matches. Each row would be a separate match, and the table would likely be paginated beyond ~5-10 matches.

Ya, if there's a way to avoid dialog boxes, I would go for that. Still curious to see how this would look though...

Style/Animations/Sounds - I think these categories are fine, but they could do with some more intuitive navigational schemes (in fact, the entire UI could).

I think my major hangup with these might be the continuation of the clickable-bar when you get to the On Show/Hide level of the menu. At that point, I'd rather just see them all open on the animation page, just like the sound one does. On a related note, is there a way to add more than one animation to On Show/Hide events? I was trying to do a translate, zoom, and alpha at the same time last night and had to use a weird Action workaround to pull it off. An "Add Animation" button would be useful and very powerful.

[Meorawr]

Originally Posted by Stabilo All good ideas. - The support trigger section is indeed not intuitive at all before you first find your way there, and a little clicky even after you understand how it works. - Agree on calling Auras Groups and Displays Auras in the future, since.. Well, that's how they seem to be used. - I don't really work with animations or sounds, use sound on one aura and it was super simple to set up - Style is easy and good, but maybe a little disorganized. Despite quite few options, it just feels maybe a little messy? I don't see the need for distinguishing style and positioning if screen real estate allows to combine them.

On the last point, if real estate allows me to then I'll combine them. The problem is when you look at the style UI for Timers...Well, you'll see how much room is left.

Originally Posted by Stabilo Have you seen the new settings window of Tukui? It uses 2 panels on each side of the screen that are "fixed" to the sides. Now, that might sound excessive to start with. While it takes up a lot of space, something like powa would be possible to fit on just one of them. It looks sleek, gives a lot of room for different settings etc. especially vertically. Possibly add a simple button to throw the whole panel to the other side of the screen if one needs to work with auras that would otherwise be under the panel? I don't know, the first time I saw the tukui settings my first thought was "wow, something like this might be possible to adapt for power auras" :P

I haven't no. And google is failing me in that regard. I'll download it and see what I can creatively 'borrow'.

Originally Posted by Stabilo I have no idea what that would do for scalability, I guess it'd end up being scrollable on smaller screens, which I know you don't like.

It's not that I hate scrollbars, it's that WoW's handing of them isn't what I'd call stellar. I could play around, they might have fixed some of the bugs with them.

The minimum supported resolution I'd really target (and that I've been testing in) is 1024x768 - personally I think that's smaller than most users resolutions, but I've got no data to back it up.

[Meorawr]

Right, here's a quick mockup of the editor/browser combination.

A few things to note:

• The sidebar is a treeview as opposed to a list of links. This frees up the need to have a breadcrumb bar. Hopefully the depth of the treeview remains fairly small, otherwise it might run into issues. I may change the "base" level of the treeview based upon where the user is.
• The task list at the bottom left remains as is - I haven't had any negative feedback on it, and quite honestly I think it's a nice place to dump stuff.
• The search bar would filter groups - not auras. It'd only filter by name (so if I entered "1" then in that example, only group #1 should remain).
• The horizontal bar beneath the header at the top probably won't exist - it's just there as a rough separation guideline.
• The new aura/delete group/etc. links wouldn't be textual, they'd be icons. I've just made them textual in the example, otherwise you'd not know what the hell they were.
• The group page would either be paginated or scrollable. I've not decided. I'd prefer pagination - it's a lot simpler to implement, and it's a bit faster too.
• Those giant boxes are the aura previews, in case you're wondering.

The window size is similar to what it is now (640x480), sidebar is around 140px.

Edit: I looked at TukUI's config windows. They really don't work on low resolution screens.

[Stabilo]

Originally Posted by Meorawr [*]The sidebar is a treeview as opposed to a list of links. This frees up the need to have a breadcrumb bar. Hopefully the depth of the treeview remains fairly small, otherwise it might run into issues. I may change the "base" level of the treeview based upon where the user is.

Usability-wise, as long as you can select a group with one click, the treeview will be fine. One of the things I miss from old layout was being able to select the aura you're editing with one click (although i had several pages, so sometimes you had to change the page first, which is like groups are now, but still).

Originally Posted by Meorawr [*]The task list at the bottom left remains as is - I haven't had any negative feedback on it, and quite honestly I think it's a nice place to dump stuff.

Don't touch it, it's perfect right now :P

Originally Posted by Meorawr [*]The search bar would filter groups - not auras. It'd only filter by name (so if I entered "1" then in that example, only group #1 should remain).

Hopefully this will guide people to use the addon in the "right" way, to actually use the groups that is. I know this would suit my needs well, at least.

Originally Posted by Meorawr [*]The group page would either be paginated or scrollable. I've not decided. I'd prefer pagination - it's a lot simpler to implement, and it's a bit faster too.

Srollable is faster for the user in my opinion, but of course the dev point of view is important as well, even more so if WoW has problems handling scrollable windows in the first place. I'd prefer a working scrollable window over a working paged window, but a working paged window over a buggy scrollable window. (that came out very complicated).

Honestly, I still would have opted for polishing out the functionality and weeding out bugs over a UI 'overhaul', but I understand why the general mood of the feedback made you choose otherwise.

Originally Posted by Meorawr [*]Edit: I looked at TukUI's config windows. They really don't work on low resolution screens.

I get that, of course it's made for another purpose (You're not supposed to actually see anything on the screen when you're in the settings). I'm just having some issues putting my thoughts to words in regards to how that type could be usable for powa as well.

[Meorawr]

Technically it's only navigational tweaks. The editor UI is pretty modular - for instance I could actually put the style editor inside of the current Browser and it'd work to some degree

[JohnDMarshall]

I became a fan of Power Auras in WoTLK and when anyone has asked for something to track such and such i say get power auras.

I installed the latest one manually and lost all my previous 4x auras but creating new ones is a challenge and a learning curve - the only thing that I see causing people to get all upset is not knowing where x is when your trying to find it.

I was totally lost without Power Auras since the patch and i am glad it's back

As others have said about lining things up - i use Quartz and Bartender - unlocking bartender i can place an actionbar as a guide line on my screen and just pop the new auras on that line

[Shanyn]

I am trying to play with custom triggers over here, and I know just enough to be dangerous but not quite enough to get things working the way I'd like. The idea is to display an aura if the time left on my Corruption is less than 6 seconds.

I have a custom trigger set to listen to UNIT_AURA, and my trigger code is as follows:

-- Trigger constructor arguments.
-- @param class  The trigger class.
local class = ...;

-- Any pre-trigger setup here. Locals 
-- defined here are upvalues to the
-- generated function.
local _,_,_,_,_,timeleft = UnitDebuff("target","Corruption","PLAYER");

-- Generate trigger function.
return function(self, buffer, action, store)
    return (timeleft < 6);
end

However I'm getting a ton of "attempt to compare nil with number" errors as soon as I set any display to be bound to this custom trigger. I don't know enough about lua to diagnose what I did wrong. Could I get some help?

Thanks in advance.

[Stabilo]

Originally Posted by Shanyn I am trying to play with custom triggers over here, and I know just enough to be dangerous but not quite enough to get things working the way I'd like. The idea is to display an aura if the time left on my Corruption is less than 6 seconds. Thanks in advance.

You don't need a custom trigger for this. In a displays Activation, click Support Triggers at the bottom of the window, navigate to Timer with the arrows at the top right, enable it and match it with <= 6.