News: Moving On, Projects, Blog, etc.

Saturday, October 01, 2011

Moving on from recent events. Its time to talk some about what things I have been working on the past week or 2, and what I may be working on in the near future.

Well. First, as usual, I have made many blog tweaks here and there. Most minor like getting the pages looking more like "pages" and less like posts by removing the date of their creation from the top and some post footer residue from the bottom. Also adding status sections to the top of both pages. Yea. Pretty bland. I did at least figure out that posting comments probably wasn't working for anyone, and have since fixed that. Hopefully soon I'll be able to get enough traffic, and have enough content so people find something worth commenting about. Other then adding labels to posts so people can more easily search for posts referencing things they care about, that's it. Since this is partly a personal blog, soon I may make an about page. =/

Well. Lately I have been working on programs using the AutoIt scripting language. I know, I know c++ and can probably make any program I would make with AutoIt with c++, and more. But I find it fun and more familiar with its simplicity, to mIRC scripting which I really enjoyed and miss. Of course mIRC scripting is very limiting in what I can make, and it requires projects to be open source, so its rarely viable anymore for me to make anything with that. I forget if I have used AutoIt before recently doing so. I know I have used AutoHotKey to an extent. In fact I made a program with that that I may soon release. Though I may instead rewrite that with AutoIt. Their both similar programs and languages, though AutoIt is apparently better. In fact I think AutoHotKey scripts can be easily converted or just plain used with earlier versions of AutoIt.

What I have been working on lately with AutoIt is a personal use project for use with WoW. Something to help manage my rotations easier. Maybe its coming from EQ, maybe its having used MacroQuest2 on the PEQ server. Who knows. But I have always found managing rotations in WoW annoying. Some of the time I'm fine. Like when soloing and doing most grouping I guess. But other times like on raids I found I had to multitask and pay far more attention to multiple upon multiple things at a time, to the point where I started getting headaches doing 25m normal and heroics in ICC before the headaches and lack of fun forced me into retirement. My program takes enough of that burden away. So much I kind of wish I had it last year before I quit, cause if I did I probably wouldn't have. Obviously its a controversial program like MQ2, and something bli$$ would very much consider against their rules and terms. In my recently left community there would be a number of people that would hate the idea of my program. Considering all this, I will choose to keep the project for personal use for now. Though I do try to design it as if I were ever to release it. Who knows, I may share some copies with friends. Its a fairly safe program, and next to impossible for bli$$ to legally detect.

Parts of the program I have now begone separating out into its own program that's far less controversial. A new program I'm making with AutoIt is a launcher. Not like the recently deceased EQC Launchpad. This launcher is more generalized, and very basic. Its just a program that sits in the systray waiting to be right clicked. When done so, a menu pops up and lets you select a profile. Once selecting a profile, the program will copy around some files you have preselected, perhaps delete others, then run a exe you have preselected. Very simple, but very handy, at least for me. I do have a form of it done and in use now, and I find it very handy with multiple WoW accounts, and clients. It could easily be used with other games as well. In fact several can be setup and accessed at the same time from just this program, saving desktop space if you needed to. Just right click, and select the account of the game you want to play. I use WinEQ2 for my chars on PEQ, just for such a convenience, and will likely switch to this once its done. If anyone else would be interested in such a program, I'm open to suggestions placed in the comments of this post, since I'm still working on it.

Lets see. What else? ...

Well, as usual. My WoW emu guild is still open to anyone through my blog (Dark Empire link on the left side menu of my blog). Perhaps with my recent changes, I may make it less EQ player oriented then before. Haven't put much thought on it yet. Would probably make sense to do so at this point. We will see.

Oh. I recently helped set up a WoW guild website for a friend. I wish him the best of luck with that!

Think that's it for now. =)