| Updated: | 09-29-09 06:15 PM |
| Created: | 08-05-09 05:45 PM |
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Etiquette
(The below description is probably riddled with language mistakes − sorry for my English)
ETIQUETTE, the zone-based title changer
Overview
So you're a rabid Achievement-completer with a handful of titles, and you want to use all of them alternatively ? So am I.
Most of the addons you find able to do this will randomly choose a new title for you every X minutes. As a gamer with some RP sensitivity, I wasn't too satisfied with that way to do, based on "mechanical" randomness and regularity − I felt it wasted the goal of character development, heroic fame and social spotlight such titles are meant to. So I worked for a suitable alternative that made sense − and the result is Etiquette.
The addon Etiquette allows you to associate titles with zones of Azeroth, so that your character's current title is automatically changed according to his/her location. You can let it name him/her "Crusader" in the Icecrown, "Guardian of Cenarius" in Moonglade, "of the Shattered Sun" in the Isle of Quel'Danas, you name it. If you are a roleplayer, consider how it could help your RP to bear a certain title in some specific places !
The addon is currently localized in English and French. Any help to translate it in other languages will be appreciated !
Instructions for use
Once installed, the add-on runs as a "background" task, changing your character's in real-time title as he/she moves across the seemingly unlimited lands of Azeroth. All you have to do is configure which changes will be made.
You open the settings frame either by typing one of the slash commands "/etiquette" or "/etiq", or by clicking the red "E" button created by the add-on on your Character frame, on the left-hand side of your Title dropdown menu.
You activate the real-time title-changing task by checking the checkbox on the top of the settings frame. Of course, if the checkbox is unchecked, you have to change your title the old way, manually through the standard dropdown menu.
Your "default title" is the title Etiquette will put above your character by default, i.e. unless he or she enters one of the specific zones affected by further settings (see below).
You set it by clicking the "Default title" button and choosing - on the dropdown menu that appears - one of the titles earned by your character. Besides, the "<none>" option allows you not to set any title by default.
NEW ! A new option has appeared in the "Default title" menu : "<free>". Unlike the other default title options that are actually forced above the character's head in any place outside the Etiquette-saved zones (see further), the "<free>" option allows you to set the character's title freely through the UI standard title menu, and Etiquette will not override your choice, as long as he or she doesn't enter an Etiquette-saved zone, in which case the zone-base settings (see further) will apply to him or her.
The zone-based title settings work as a key/value hash-map. The keys are the zones of the game (The Barrens, Stranglethorn Vale, Dragonblight, you name it - but dungeons, raids, battlegrounds and arenas are included !), which can be extended with their subzones - e.g. Taurajo Camp, Booty Bay, Agmar's Hammer... The values are the titles. Every time the character enters a place - a zone and possibly one of its subzones - which is a key of the hash-map, Etiquette will set his or her title to the associated value.
To set a zone/title association, you just have to choose a zone - optionally one of its subzones - and one of your character's titles, by clicking the "Continent/zone", "Subzone" and "Title" buttons and browsing the appearing dropdown menus. Then click "Submit" to save the chosen associated. Please note :- The "Subzone" and "Title" buttons are disabled until you choose a zone.
- The "Title" menu includes the "<default>" and "<none>" options, resp. to set the title to the default one and to clear the title off the character when he or she enters the key zone(+ subzone).
- Of course, you can link a title to a specific zone and other titles to some subzones of that zone. When the character is in a key zone without being in one of its key subzones, Etiquette uses the title linked to the entire zone.
- IMPORTANT CAVEAT ! When you open the settings frame for the first time after installing the add-on, you will not be able to choose any subzone "out of the box" ! The first cause of this annoyance is the impossibility to instantly retrieve the subzones of a specific zone through the WoW API. So right now, Etiquette uses a workaround familiar to other addons - gradually filling the missing info. That is : every subzone visited by any of the characters in your account after the add-on is installed will appear in the settings dropdown menus. That means that if you want to link a title to some place not present in the settings, then all you need is - just go there ! - which you intended to do, anyway
- NEW ! There is now a fast way to select a zone and subzone you want to link a title to. By clicking the "Current place" button, you can set the values of the selected zone and subzone to the place where your character is at the moment.
The scrollable list on the bottom of the settings frame gives a complete overview of the saved zone-based settings - as well as the possibility to remove each zone(/subzone)/title association by clicking one of the "x" buttons at the right-hand side of the list.
To-dos & Wishlist
Let's face it - even before you users start sending me your bug reports, wishlists, ideas, rants and trolls (the first three of these things - please feel free to send ), a few things in Etiquette blatantly apply for improvement :
- Although the Etiquette UI is localized in English and French (and if you want to see it in other languages, please feel free to volunteer for translation !), there's something the add-on doesn't support very well - language-changing through the WoW UI settings. So far, Etiquette zone-based settings saved in French are not usable in English, and vice versa. To fix this, I'm thinking to improve the way the settings are saved.
Changelog
- Once the previous item is fixed, I think I could start improving the workaround for the "empty subzone list" problem, by hardcoding extensive if not complete lists of such in the add-on, so that they're available right after the installation.
- Overwriting (through the "Submit" button) or removing (through an "x" button) a zone/title association should be confirmed or canceled through a modal dialog box.
- I know, this fast-made scrollable settings list is pretty ugly
Maybe I could find better textures for the background and borders - why not a parchment-like style ?
- Thinking about the possibility to make the settings frame drag-and-droppable, as well as closable by pressing the [Esc] key.
- If by chance you play WoW with a 800x600 resolution, you could experience some annoyance with zone and title menus extending off-screen. Thinking about rearranging them a more compact way.
- Any suggestions (or counter-suggestions) you can bring to make this add-on better are greatly appreciated, thank you !
(09/30/2009) 1.1
Hmm, finally an update... Er, wait !
- NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING USERS, BEWARE !
Etiquette v1.1 and later versions use a reworked, less messy way to save settings, notably with a better (if not perfect) support of UI language change. That's the good news. The bad news is, that improvement does break compatibility with the settings saved from older versions of the addon.
If by chance you use a previous version of Etiquette with a non-English language UI, then you must backup your settings before installing the new version and be prepared to reload them through the updated Etiquette UI. Actually, I strongly advise you to delete every file with path <WOW_directory>/WTF/Account/<ACCOUNT_NAME>/<realm_name>/<character_name>/SavedVariables/Etiquette.lua
All my apologies for this inconvenience. In the future, I should work on some kind of configuration-patching system in order not to let this happen again.
And now, the changes :
- Etiquette (therefore its source code) is now published under the MIT License.
- The dungeon, raid and BG lists are now hardcoded in the addon. Now every instance and battleground in the game is available in the UI from the first use − they no longer suffer the same problem as the subzones in Etiquette (see the IMPORTANT CAVEAT and "To-do's & Wishlists" above).
- The scrollable title-by-zone area has been revamped for easier reading − it now divides the rendered list into sub-lists which are available by clicking tabs ("Kalimdor", "Eastern Kingdoms", "Outland", "Northrend", "Battlegrounds" and "Arenas").
- Opening and closing the settings frame now plays sounds.
(08/12/2009) 1.0.2
- Finally a significative "Description" section !
- A new option has appeared in the "Default title" menu : "<free>". Unlike the other default title options that are actually forced above the character's head in any place outside the Etiquette-saved zones, the "<free>" option allows you to set the character's title freely through the UI standard title menu, and Etiquette will not override your choice, as long as he or she doesn't enter an Etiquette-saved zone, in which case the zone-base settings will apply to him or her.
- A new button has appeared near the "Submit" and "Clear" buttons in the "Titles by zone" section of the frame : "Current place". By clicking it, you can set the values of the selected zone and subzone to the place where your character is at the moment.
(08/07/2009) 1.0.1
So stupid − the initial release didn't include Battlegrounds or Arenas. This one does.
(08/06/2009) 1.0
Initial release.
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08-11-09, 06:45 PM
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A Wyrmkin Dreamwalker
 Forum posts: 55
File comments: 199
Uploads: 1
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Bravo!
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