World of Warcraft has always had two main ways of navigation. A small, short range, top-down Minimap, and a large, long range, top-down World Map. The trouble with both of these, is they force you to either look away from, or mostly block your view of the game world. Other games have sought to address this by putting important destinations on a "tape" compass. This not only allows you the ease of simply pointing your character towards the destination, but takes up significantly less space on the UI.
This is what I've sought to accomplish with this addon. While there are some unavoidable, and (eventually) avoidable limitations to this, overall, I feel I've succeeded. Below is a breakdown of the good (what it does well), the bad (things that can't be fixed), and the ugly (things that will).
The Good
- Displays the arrow towards the currently selected quest (i.e. the big yellow arrow on your minimap)
- Displays the red arrow of doom, that points towards your corpse
- Displays all "landmark" items that appear on the world map (flight paths, pet trainers, conquest/valor vendors, PvP Objectives, etc)
- Icons will both scale in size, and increase in opacity, as you get closer to them
The Bad- Things that aren't on the World Map cannot be tracked
- Certain locations - especially flight paths, will not be completely accurate, as their placement on the World Map isn't accurate.
- With the exception of the Quest Arrow, you cannot track items that do not appear in the //current// zone map
The Ugly- Let's face it - 16x16 pixel icons look like crap when scaled to 76x76. Making higher resolution equivalents of these icons is on the to-do list, but you'll have to suffer through these for now.
Final Notes
Right now, SkyCompass is little more than a proof of concept. There are no options, no minimap icons, and no slash commands. What is there should work well, and I will be squashing bugs, as well as refining and adjusting its appearance, features, and options, so it will fit my needs and desires. Anything beyond that, especially at this stage, is completely in your hands. So requests, suggestions, and feedback not only are appreciated and welcome; but they're also going to be the difference between a little personal project, and something the entire community can enjoy.