[DueKarma3]

Hey im at the very begining when it comes to lua and addons overall. However I did quite enjoy my recent attempts to create my own addons in Classic, but some questions popped in my head and I cant find answers on my own. I would be very happy if someone could help answer any (or all ) of these


My first addon attempt was to show HP&mana text on target and party frames. Its working fine more or less besides this part of code (which I had to replace for manualy written partyframes 1-4).

	_G["HealthFrame_party"..i] = CreateFrame("Frame", "HBar_party"..i, UIParent)
	local HP_something = _G["Health_TEXT_" .. i];
	
	_G["HealthFrameText_party"..i] = HP_something:CreateFontString("Health_TEXT_party"..i, "OVERLAY", "TextStatusBarText")

	_G["Health_TEXT_party"..i]:SetFont("Fonts\\FRIZQT__.TTF", 10, "OUTLINE")
	_G["HealthFrameText_party"..i]:ClearAllPoints()
	_G["HealthFrameText_party"..i]:SetPoint("CENTER", "PartyMemberFrame"..i , "CENTER", 20, 10);

I always get error saying that HP_fontstring is nil value. I tried to test it and print out the HP_fontstring values before line 3 and it says that its nil aswell. Which is very strange to me because I used exactly this (just different variable names) in other part of code and it worked fine?

local HP_fontstring = _G["Health_TEXT_" .. unitToken];
   HP_fontstring:SetFormattedText("%0.f%%", HealthPercent * 100)

these two lines (which were adviced to me by some helpful folk on addon discord) worked fine, but when I tried to re-use it it just didnt work The code is attached below.

Next question is regarding to the _G["string"]. After I used it about 100x times, I gained understanding that it changes string to global variable. Is that correct? In general, should I avoid using too many global variables when making an addon? Would adding local before declaring them help?

Next question is about CreateFontString() and SetFont(). Is there a function that would combine these two lines together? i wanted to use font FRIZQT__.TTF", 10, "OUTLINE" So I checked all the game fonts that looks the same and from which my CreateFontString() could inherit from, but I couldnt find one. It either was wrong size, outline or different colour than I wanted.



My second (current) addon attemp is to permanently show buffs on party member frames. While I got the main part somewhat working (time will show). I havent figured out any other way to do this than making 4*16 frames for each buff slot on each party member, which is probably wasteful approach to do it?

for m = 1, 4 do
	for i = 1, 16 do
		
		_G["f"..i..m] = CreateFrame("Frame", nil ,UIParent)
		_G["f"..i..m]:SetFrameStrata("BACKGROUND")
		_G["f"..i..m]:SetSize(16, 16) 

		_G["t"..i..m] = _G["f"..i]:CreateTexture(nil,"ARTWORK")
		
		_G["t"..i..m]:SetAllPoints(_G["f"..i])
		_G["t"..i..m].texture = _G["t"..i]

		_G["f"..i..m]:SetPoint("BOTTOMRIGHT", "PartyMemberFrame" .. m, "BOTTOMRIGHT", (i*16), 0);
		
	end	
end

So my question is, what would be the suitable way to handle this thing, and also is it possible to "uncreate" frames? Is using too many CreateFrame() unefficient/bad?

Im very thankful for any advice!