Preview: New tab: Cast Stack
Posted: 05 Dec 2013, 07:07
Thought I would share what I've been working on lately. It's a little too early for it to go into my revision history, even as 'in development'.
For obviously reasons, things may change, this is VERY early development, but progressing is moving along very quickly.
New tab: Cast Stack
I have combined the following tabs into one, new, major, massive tab.
Priority
CA
NamedCA
PowerHeal
Buffs
Non-Combat Buffs
Single Target Buffs
Yes, this new tab is going to be quite... large on some classes. It's designed to give you a LOT more freedom of how to play each class. For example, you may want to cast a group ward, then a debuff, then a single target ward, then a buff (incase you die?), then a nuke, then a heal, then... etc.
You can literally put things in any order you want.
Because you now are adding any ability you want, into a single list, it was going to be very error prone, because you could easily mistakenly add a nuke as a heal. Previously it was a little more clear, because you were on the Priority tab instead of the CA tab. To help reduce user errors here, I completely rewrote the SpellExport (named AbilityExport now), and completely rewrote the logic to determine what an ability actually is.
What that means is, Ogrebot now knows a res is a res, and not a heal, or CA etc.
Ogrebot also knows when an ability has a duration, and will give you the option to [ID] or [M] it. If it doesn't have a duration, there are no need for these options to be displayed.
* Admittly, I did laugh pretty hard at seeing abilities on the CA tab with: Kick [M] [ID] [IE] [IAE]
When you click on an ability, it will only display to you, any options that logically make sense to Ogrebot.
For example: If you click on a single target heal, you will have the option of having it act like a: Heal, PowerHeal, Combat
Only these two options, because the rest ( Res, Buff, CA, NamedCA, Cure ) - just don't make sense.
Some abilities will only have 1 option. Such as: Res, Cures. They really can't be used in any other fashion.
I have added to the UI, quite a few options to enhance this even more.
Worth noting before I continue, only the UI has been coded, it has absolutely zero functionality. It's possible some of these may not end up existing.
You can select "# of people" for any group ability.
You can select "HP%" for any "Heal" "PowerHeal".
You can combine these together. For example, say - I want to cast a group heal when 3 or more people are under 75% health each.
Unfortunately, with the combination of all these tabs, I need to change some functionality that people have come to know, and basically call it something else. This is going to end up confusing, but it had to be done. Let me explain.
CURRENTLY (this is NOT how Cast Stack will work)
CA: If you select [M] - It only ever casts that spell on 1 target at a time.
CA: If you select [ID] - It ignores the duration and recasts the spell as soon as it's available.
CA: If you don't select either, it casts the spell once per target, and doesn't refresh until it's gone.
Priority-Combat: [M] - Only ever casts that spell if it's not on the target (This was equal to CA's no options selected).
Priority-Combat: If you didn't select M, it would recast the spell as soon as it's available. (This was equal to CA's ID option).
As you can see, these options did drastically different things, depending on which tab you were on. To fix this and make it uniform, something had to change.
Here is the new plan (again, not coded yet). This will work for ANYTHING that has [M] or [ID] or no option on the Cast Stack tab.
[M] - Hmm... not sure yet... May remove it.
[ID] - Will recast as soon as it's available.
* Example1: Ward [ID] - As soon as it's off cooldown, will cast it again.
* Example2: DoT [ID] - As soon as it's off cooldown, will cast it again.
No options selected:
* Example1: Ward - Will only recast once it is not on that target.
* Example2: DoT - Will only recast once it is not on that target.
The big difference here, is if you want your wards to "spam" cast, you will need to ID them now. And if you want to not spam them, you leave them with no options.
As noted, I'm not sure Maintained is useful anymore.
Here are some random screen shots to give an example of how it may look/feel. Again, this is VERY early development, however I'm showing pictures of it now, and explaining how it works, so if anyone sees any major flaws/issues, hopefully I can find out about them now, rather than when it's done, and end up needing a major rewrite..
Short list of things that aren't immediately available/I have to look at:
Items (I'll make sure these get added in, they are too important).
Fighter avoidance buffs (Where it shows up as on you, but you cast it on someone else, "Single Target buff that appears on you" on the buff tab right now)
Chain tabs (I don't see an issue, since it's just a call to another function, but that's as development continues)
Group heals (Designating the # of people low)
BL savagery
Channeler dissonance
Max Increments
Feel free to leave feedback/suggestions/requests directly related to this.
For obviously reasons, things may change, this is VERY early development, but progressing is moving along very quickly.
New tab: Cast Stack
I have combined the following tabs into one, new, major, massive tab.
Priority
CA
NamedCA
PowerHeal
Buffs
Non-Combat Buffs
Single Target Buffs
Yes, this new tab is going to be quite... large on some classes. It's designed to give you a LOT more freedom of how to play each class. For example, you may want to cast a group ward, then a debuff, then a single target ward, then a buff (incase you die?), then a nuke, then a heal, then... etc.
You can literally put things in any order you want.
Because you now are adding any ability you want, into a single list, it was going to be very error prone, because you could easily mistakenly add a nuke as a heal. Previously it was a little more clear, because you were on the Priority tab instead of the CA tab. To help reduce user errors here, I completely rewrote the SpellExport (named AbilityExport now), and completely rewrote the logic to determine what an ability actually is.
What that means is, Ogrebot now knows a res is a res, and not a heal, or CA etc.
Ogrebot also knows when an ability has a duration, and will give you the option to [ID] or [M] it. If it doesn't have a duration, there are no need for these options to be displayed.
* Admittly, I did laugh pretty hard at seeing abilities on the CA tab with: Kick [M] [ID] [IE] [IAE]
When you click on an ability, it will only display to you, any options that logically make sense to Ogrebot.
For example: If you click on a single target heal, you will have the option of having it act like a: Heal, PowerHeal, Combat
Only these two options, because the rest ( Res, Buff, CA, NamedCA, Cure ) - just don't make sense.
Some abilities will only have 1 option. Such as: Res, Cures. They really can't be used in any other fashion.
I have added to the UI, quite a few options to enhance this even more.
Worth noting before I continue, only the UI has been coded, it has absolutely zero functionality. It's possible some of these may not end up existing.
You can select "# of people" for any group ability.
You can select "HP%" for any "Heal" "PowerHeal".
You can combine these together. For example, say - I want to cast a group heal when 3 or more people are under 75% health each.
Unfortunately, with the combination of all these tabs, I need to change some functionality that people have come to know, and basically call it something else. This is going to end up confusing, but it had to be done. Let me explain.
CURRENTLY (this is NOT how Cast Stack will work)
CA: If you select [M] - It only ever casts that spell on 1 target at a time.
CA: If you select [ID] - It ignores the duration and recasts the spell as soon as it's available.
CA: If you don't select either, it casts the spell once per target, and doesn't refresh until it's gone.
Priority-Combat: [M] - Only ever casts that spell if it's not on the target (This was equal to CA's no options selected).
Priority-Combat: If you didn't select M, it would recast the spell as soon as it's available. (This was equal to CA's ID option).
As you can see, these options did drastically different things, depending on which tab you were on. To fix this and make it uniform, something had to change.
Here is the new plan (again, not coded yet). This will work for ANYTHING that has [M] or [ID] or no option on the Cast Stack tab.
[M] - Hmm... not sure yet... May remove it.
[ID] - Will recast as soon as it's available.
* Example1: Ward [ID] - As soon as it's off cooldown, will cast it again.
* Example2: DoT [ID] - As soon as it's off cooldown, will cast it again.
No options selected:
* Example1: Ward - Will only recast once it is not on that target.
* Example2: DoT - Will only recast once it is not on that target.
The big difference here, is if you want your wards to "spam" cast, you will need to ID them now. And if you want to not spam them, you leave them with no options.
As noted, I'm not sure Maintained is useful anymore.
Here are some random screen shots to give an example of how it may look/feel. Again, this is VERY early development, however I'm showing pictures of it now, and explaining how it works, so if anyone sees any major flaws/issues, hopefully I can find out about them now, rather than when it's done, and end up needing a major rewrite..
Short list of things that aren't immediately available/I have to look at:
Items (I'll make sure these get added in, they are too important).
Fighter avoidance buffs (Where it shows up as on you, but you cast it on someone else, "Single Target buff that appears on you" on the buff tab right now)
Chain tabs (I don't see an issue, since it's just a call to another function, but that's as development continues)
Group heals (Designating the # of people low)
BL savagery
Channeler dissonance
Max Increments
Feel free to leave feedback/suggestions/requests directly related to this.