Making the switch: QuestHelper → Carbonite

[DallasisaLeo]

OK, first off I'd like to apologize in advance if there's already a thread like this, but searching didn't yield anything that I found helpful. If such a thread exists, just link me and that'd be great :P

So anyway, I'm currently a QH user. I was following a leveling guide because I switched realms and wanted to get to 70 ASAP (I like to level on my own after 70 because Northrend is FUN!). But anyway, I switched to Carbonite because I've heard raves and raves about it, as soon as I logged on, however, I was just completely overwhelmed by all of the features and I couldn't really figure out how to customize it quickly and easily.

I was hoping to find a beginner's guide to Carbonite, preferably one tailored to a former QH user.

Finally, would I have any issues integrating Carbonite into my current layout? I prefer to have my minimap in the bottom-right and my buffbars in the upper-right. My xp bar is hidden (show-on-hover) along the top edge, and my game menu bar is also show-on-hover in the top-right.
(Picture below)

[septor]

You're better of not trying to quickly set up any addon you plan to use because you'll miss some important feature and end up coming on the forums asking a question that you'll kick yourself later for!

At any rate, I'm not going to give you a step by step tutorial on how to port from QH to Carbonite (for the above reason) but I will say that you can keep your existing layout (in-fact you can keep your current quest tracker and map addons too!) by switching to Carbonite.

My advice is to run through the options and play with things awhile. If you can't figure something out come back and ask for help then. Carbonite may seem overwhelming at first, but it's really a very easy addon to use once you know what's going on.

[DallasisaLeo]

Originally Posted by septor You're better of not trying to quickly set up any addon you plan to use because you'll miss some important feature and end up coming on the forums asking a question that you'll kick yourself later for! At any rate, I'm not going to give you a step by step tutorial on how to port from QH to Carbonite (for the above reason) but I will say that you can keep your existing layout (in-fact you can keep your current quest tracker and map addons too!) by switching to Carbonite. My advice is to run through the options and play with things awhile. If you can't figure something out come back and ask for help then. Carbonite may seem overwhelming at first, but it's really a very easy addon to use once you know what's going on.

Do you think I haven't tried this? I never asked for a tutorial, simply a guide (there is a difference). My problem, as mentioned above, is that I'm overwhelmed by everything Carbonite has to offer. I see 3,000 buttons and windows everywhere and I just don't know what everything does. I'm just looking for something that introduces you to the features one at a time so I don't have to spend hours going "What does this button do? This one? This one? This one? This one?..." And if I followed your advice of coming back to ask about a feature that I don't understand, I'd have 30 or so different questions.

Is a beginner's guide really that much to ask from an addon so complex and feature-rich? Hell, even the original official Carbonite website doesn't have working links to each of the features anymore.

I want to enjoy Carbonite, I really do, but I'm struggling to understand the features. I'm even further discouraged by responses like "do it yourself" when I ask for help.

[Vis]

Unofficial Carbonite Wiki: http://carbonite.wikidot.com/

That will give you a starting point. It is not complete. I would also recommend looking in the Carbonite addon folder and view the readme there.

And as a quick start to questing: in your quest tracker there are several radio buttons along the top. If you mouseover them, they will tell you what each does (I honestly cant remember what color does what, lol). One will be a toggle for Autotrack, one for toggling between what is shown on the map....All Quests, Dailies only, or none, another for party sharing and I think theres one more. Hard to say off the top of my head without seeing it in front of me, lol.


****EDIT: You can also read the readme in game from the options menu if I recall correctly.

[DallasisaLeo]

Originally Posted by Vis Unofficial Carbonite Wiki: http://carbonite.wikidot.com/ That will give you a starting point. It is not complete. I would also recommend looking in the Carbonite addon folder and view the readme there. And as a quick start to questing: in your quest tracker there are several radio buttons along the top. If you mouseover them, they will tell you what each does (I honestly cant remember what color does what, lol). One will be a toggle for Autotrack, one for toggling between what is shown on the map....All Quests, Dailies only, or none, another for party sharing and I think theres one more. Hard to say off the top of my head without seeing it in front of me, lol. ****EDIT: You can also read the readme in game from the options menu if I recall correctly.

THIS is exactly what I was looking for. I'm guilty of not looking through the entire readme (I thought it was just an installation guide...) but now that I see the rest of it along with the Wiki, I think I have everything I need. Thank you for providing an intelligent answer, and for pointing our my ignorance without being a douche about it.

EDIT: Now if only I could log in... It's stuck at "Authenticating" on both my computers.

[Vis]

Originally Posted by DallasisaLeo EDIT: Now if only I could log in... It's stuck at "Authenticating" on both my computers.

The Authenticator servers are down again, it's all over WoW's forums So far one Blue has posted that they are "aware and looking into it"

[DallasisaLeo]

Originally Posted by Vis The Authenticator servers are down again, it's all over WoW's forums So far one Blue has posted that they are "aware and looking into it"

Fixed by the time I got to read this :P

And can someone please tell me why there was an ice cream truck driving around my neighborhood playing its music at 9:45pm!!!?!?

[Mycroftxxx1]

Originally Posted by DallasisaLeo And can someone please tell me why there was an ice cream truck driving around my neighborhood playing its music at 9:45pm!!!?!?

Are you familiar with the Killer Klown movie?

[DallasisaLeo]

Originally Posted by Mycroftxxx1 Are you familiar with the Killer Klown movie?

LOL no, but I'm pretty sure he was just selling drugs, not killing anyone.


So problems:

I love the Carbonite minimap and I've put it over my original. I just have a few issues:
In battlegrounds, Cartographer runs circles around Carbonite. Carbonite's player icons are tacky and when they overlap the square border becomes really obvious and distracting. Also, the minimap looks like hell in bg's because I tend to keep it small and out of the way. I was wondering if there's a way to completely disable Carbonite when I'm in BGs and that way I can just stick with Cartographer and my Track Humanoids won't be obstructed by all of those ugly blue Party Member icons.

Outside of battlegrounds, however: Awesome. I love Carbonite for questing and exploring. Had to get rid of the POI clutter and I'm still not fond of the icon choice for party members, but I'm getting used to it.

And that Punks window... I unchecked the Show → Punks box but that only seemed to stop displaying punks in the window. The window itself is still there and I don't like it! :P


And randomly my map will stop following me... This happens a lot in Alterac Valley. I'll just be running along and I'll suddenly run right off the minimap. If I can disable carbonite in battlegrounds I don't think this will be a problem.

Thanks!

[Vis]

For the issue in BG's, I would recommend opening the full size Carbonite map and then hitting the X to close it completely in the upper right. Should at least Then you can hit Shift-M (been awhile, but I think that was the shortcut) to open the small default Blizz map for BG's also.

Punks window.. It should hide the little box when you uncheck the option to see it, something to be aware of though is I believe there were different options listed in a couple places. Make sure to take a close look when you go through the options. I know I've missed a bunch of stuff by skimming through quickly only to have a "Doh!" moment a couple hours later when I find it, lol.

I'm not sure about the following issue in BG's you are having though

[carboniteaddon]

Originally Posted by DallasisaLeo In battlegrounds, Cartographer runs circles around Carbonite. Carbonite's player icons are tacky and when they overlap the square border becomes really obvious and distracting. Also, the minimap looks like hell in bg's because I tend to keep it small and out of the way. I was wondering if there's a way to completely disable Carbonite when I'm in BGs and that way I can just stick with Cartographer and my Track Humanoids won't be obstructed by all of those ugly blue Party Member icons.

I don't know what you are seeing, but all player icons are circles. There is no square border. They overlap and look fine to me. I spend a good amount of my WoW time doing PVP and the map works great for me. I keep the map visible at all times and have each BG map sized and positioned so I can see the entire BG play area. Click the X button to close the map if you don't want to see it.

A screenshot might show what you are seeing.

Originally Posted by DallasisaLeo And that Punks window... I unchecked the Show → Punks box but that only seemed to stop displaying punks in the window. The window itself is still there and I don't like it! :P

Check "Hide punk target button window" on the Social & Punks options window page.

Originally Posted by DallasisaLeo And randomly my map will stop following me... This happens a lot in Alterac Valley. I'll just be running along and I'll suddenly run right off the minimap. If I can disable carbonite in battlegrounds I don't think this will be a problem.

Each map mode (normal and one per BG) has separate layout, view position/scale and Follow You settings. Follow You defaults to off for each BG, since I leave the entire zone visible and don't want it shifting around as I move.

[DallasisaLeo]

Originally Posted by carboniteaddon I don't know what you are seeing, but all player icons are circles. There is no square border. They overlap and look fine to me. I spend a good amount of my WoW time doing PVP and the map works great for me. I keep the map visible at all times and have each BG map sized and positioned so I can see the entire BG play area. Click the X button to close the map if you don't want to see it. A screenshot might show what you are seeing.

After looking at it a few times, it seems I'm probably wrong about it being an issue with the alpha channels on the images, but still, what are those white and green lines above and through the circles?


And again, I'm really feeling like Carbonite might just have too many features that I can't seem to disable or hide. I'm only really looking for quest tracking and node locations and I feel like Carbonite wants to do everything short of washing my dishes.

I know it sounds like I'm trying to dislike Carbonite, but it's relaly quite the opposite. I'm trying hard to enjoy it because I don't at all want to go back to QH. And I'm fully prepared for snide comments regarding this ("If you don't like it gtfo!"), but I'm being as genuine as possible here. Sorry.

[Haavok]

Originally Posted by DallasisaLeo After looking at it a few times, it seems I'm probably wrong about it being an issue with the alpha channels on the images, but still, what are those white and green lines above and through the circles?

The horizontal line above the icon is the player health.
The vertical line to the left of the icon is the target enemy health.
The horizontal line through the middle of the icon is the target friendly player health.

You can disable these by going into Options->Map
and set 'Icon health bar thickness' = 0

We should probably add some options for these:
1) On always
2) On only in battlegrounds
3) Off

Carbonite certainly is a complicated addon but you will find we have options to disable/change many of the features and are always open to add more options (further increasing its complexity )

[per.smitt]

Hi

Im sorry for threadjacking, on my first post never the less. I have been using carbonite for 6 months now and I love it. I have only been playing WoW for 8 months so I suppose I am still new to the game.

I have a question though. Can you make the team member icons smaller? I saw that you could take away the health bar which was extremely useful, but the icon is still kind of huge. I have replaced my minimap with the carbonite map and if my girlfriend is in reporting quests I cannot find the quest icons on the map due to a big yellow blob.

Thanks for your time, and for an excellent addon.

[Vis]

If I recall correcly, you should be able to right click on the Carb maps, and choose "Scale" from the menu. A slider should be there for player dot scale, I think

[per.smitt]

Originally Posted by Vis If I recall correcly, you should be able to right click on the Carb maps, and choose "Scale" from the menu. A slider should be there for player dot scale, I think

Thanks a lot, worked like a charm.

[CyborgCop]

Originally Posted by Mycroftxxx1 Are you familiar with the Killer Klown movie?

That the one where Ronald Mcdonald is running through the woods... he's quite scary.