by Ludovicus_MaiorI’m working on a new feature, which I‘m calling the “Wow-Pro Guide Picker.”
Part of it will be behind the scenes: If you get a quest for a guide that is registered for the guide picker, it will automatically switch to that guide. So if you start doing the Tillers dailies and then go off to August Celestials, the guides will just switch. Pick up the fishing daily in Dalaran, and it will just work. So WoWPro will remember—for any guide you have used—what quests it has, and use that as the data to do a switch.
But what if you want to quickly pick another guide? Well, ALT-TAB might pop up a window that looks like this:
The guide picker will query each module and ask it to generate a list of candidate guides. The leveling module will exclude zones that are too advanced or have been completed. The World Events module can look at the calendar and see what holidays are active. The dailies modules can consider your level and what factions you don’t have good reps with. But each module sends back its list with a preference-ranking from 0 to 100. The guide picker then merges the lists and shows you the top N guides you can pick from. You can click on the icon to choose it, or hit ALT-TAB till the right one is highlighted. I’ll let you guess where I stole the UI concept from :-).
This is going to change the way we register guides. The number of arguments to the guide registration would go way up and be crazy to manipulate. So instead of a Registration function per guide class, with a fixed set of arguments, we are going to have a single registration function with guide annotators. I think it is easier to show with an example:
WoWPro.Dailies:RegisterGuide("LudoTimeless", "Timeless Isle", "Timeless Isle", "MoP", "Ludovicus", "Neutral", function()
WoWPro:Timeless() -- Set up NPC Scan to pick up the rares and elites!
return [[
changes to
g=WoWPro:RegisterGuide("LudoTimeless","Ludovicus","Neutral","Dailies")
WoWPro:GuideZone(g,"Timeless Isle")
WoWPro:GuideIcon(g,"Achievement",8715)
WoWPro:GuideLevels(g,90,nil)
WoWPro:GuideILevel(g,489)
WoWPro:GuidePicker(g,function() ... end)
WoWPro:GuideGenerator(g,function()
WoWPro:Timeless() -- Set up NPC Scan to pick up the rares and elites!
return [[
The only mandatory parameters for a guide are its name, the author, the type, and the faction.
Some guides might set a minimum gear level. Others may define a special function for the guide picker or reference a canned one for the guide type.
I will probably also add a control panel—to set things like “I *really* love profession dailies”, “I am an achievement wacko“, or “I do dirty things for rep”—which will help the guide picker know how to weigh the guides.
Anyhow, it will slowly come alive! Comments and suggestions appreciated.
Guide Picker StatusI’ve converted over most of the guides to the new format. Some guides are still missing icons or have incorrect level information.The guide listings in the control panel now display level information using colors and some have implemented tooltips that can give more information about a given guide.Next on the agenda:Finish the conversions, correct all the data.Write the code to prioritize each of the guides according to the user’s preferencesTie it into the guide selector.If a quest is accepted that is NOT in the current guide, but is in a guide that has been looked at before, offer to switch.
Re: Not sure how to use this thingThe old guide picker is still there. Just ignore this new experimental stuff.I just wanted feedback from folks on how it ought to work.
Not sure how to use this thingHey so, I’ve just read this post and a guide picker sounds cool I guess, but it sounds like it’s not done yet? I figured out how to keybind it to something, and when I open it I see this: http://1drv.ms/1jOPN3x where everything is blank and I don’t seem to be able to select anything.I can’t figure out how to close it (sounds like that’s already been covered), and I can’t figure out how to manually choose a guide at all now. I’d like to be able to choose the guide for my new leveling zone before I actually go there so that I can better figure out where to go.Looking forward to it when it’s finished, but it might be nice to have the old guide picker back in the options menu in the meantime.
RE: Alt-GI will add the traditional [X} close button and it will respond to ESC when I figure out again how to shift keyboard focus.Hitting RETURN should select the icon and if you hold the mouse over an icon, a tooltip describing the guide should show.The big task is going to each guide and adding the necessary meta-information.
Alt-Gok, Alt-G would work, but I know you are still working on it, but testing it… Alt-G opens it, (Chat – Opening WPGS)Hit Alt-G again, (Chat – Pick Next)and continuing to press Alt – G moves between the ‘buttons’, but there is no way to CLOSE it, or move it… 😉 Just my two cents
KeyBinding Woes (ALT-TAB to ALT-G)Sorry about that. I’ll leave the keybinding unbound until its finished up.I’ll drop an update with that today.I did not mean for that keybinding to escape, because I knew it was problematic.The keybinding does show up in the regular keybinds control in the “WoW-pro” section, so you should be able to reset it or unbind it. I think “ALT-G” will be the next default binding when I get it operational. Until it is working, it will unbind the key associated with WOWPRO_SELECTOR to undo the mess I caused.
Yeah I agree ALT-TAB isn’tYeah I agree ALT-TAB isn’t the best choice for a key combo, although I have 2 monitors and can just move my mouse to the other one sometimes I run 2 or more clients at once and need my ALT-TAB for that.
Agreeing that the keybinding is evilAgreeing that the keybinding needs to be changed. I had to Google this to find out why I couldn’t swap to my browser and what it was. It looks nice but until it’s changed I can’t use it (I will prod around to see if I can change it somewhere).
new featureI like it, that is one of the drawbacks of the guides (easy switching) However, um… what if you wanted to … say … alt tab to go to your desktop and look up something on wowhead. I think a differant default hot key would be wiser :). And whatever it is, should be changable on the key bindings page. (for people like me who like to be difficult and use “Z” for go down, and whatever other bizare key bindings that drive my family crazy)