News: Where did the week go?

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

I feel like I just posted my last news a couple days ago. But it has been a whole week! Weird. I like to at least try to keep 1 post a week here, so I'm posting this with probably little news, said in my usual long winded way.

I have worked on Profile Manager more this past week, but not as much as I have in previous weeks. There isn't really much to write about. I started implementing the structural changes to better handle multi-boxing and maintaining the Last Run feature more properly. My idea to get it managing multi-boxing better is to have the program monitor the processes launched by it. Doing that it can just wait and wait until the program is closed, and once closed Profile Manager will know/think the files for the profile associated with that process were likely just saved, and are ready to be backed up. So basicly the changes are heading more towards backing up files when the target program is closed, rather then the next time any profile is run. With this setup, its far more likely to be backing up the correct files when it comes to things like settings and saves. Of course I can't say this will be the case for every program you could run with Profile Manager, so the profile locking option will still remain. Users are just going to have to figure out for themselves what options are best for the programs they run.

For the Last Run option, things get a little more complicated then I ever intended the option to require. It was just supposed to be a simple option to run the last used program, with the current files copied to the directory(s) when the profile was last run. Really just a glorified shortcut. But due to the way multi-boxing plays out, those files won't always be what they should be when it comes to saves and settings, so again the new process monitoring changes will come into play. When more then one process are being monitored by this program, then one closes, depending on if that process is truly the one that was last run or not, Profile Manager will act differently. If it was the last run, Profile Manager will will backup the files for that profile under temp names, to later be restored once the last process is closed. If it wasn't the last run process, its files will be ignored.

This process monitoring isn't invasive at all, so games with anti-cheat protection won't have issues with it. Its only downside, other then still not being 100% effective to eliminate multi-boxing issues, lies in that Profile Manager has to remain open for the entire time that the processes ran by it are open. This issue likely isn't to be huge either though, since Profile Manager isn't meant to be closed between uses. It's a small, lightweight program meant to stay running in the background/systray until the next time you need to launch something. Which is why the installer will install it as a startup program, with no option planned to disable that for whatever reason a user may have. It just only bothers me that the hole in the overall design exists that could allow for files managed by this to be incorrect compared to whats expected. I'll have to get over it though, lol.

Other then that, all I have done this past week was work on a custom wow addon. I likely won't release it here, as it's basically just custom to the emu server I'm playing on. Though possibly other emu servers. It's a anti-spam addon for hiding the auto broadcasts, BG que broadcasts, and server announce broadcasts. The emu sever I play on has all those, and seeing as I don't care about pvp 1 bit, and seen all the info in the autobroadcasts 1000 times as I'm no longer new to the server like the messages intended targets, I don't ever need to see those messages scrolling across my screen again. And due to the fact that the server has a few to many immature GM's with apparently zero codes of conduct for them to even try to follow, more often then I care for I see the GM's abusing the server announce broadcast inappropriately for things like saying hi to someone specific, redundantly telling people about a battleground that's about to start, just because their interested in it atm, happy birthday to someone I don't know or care about, something that is or should be in the autobroadcast, or just chatting through it. I know I'm likely being overly picky on that, but its supposed to be for important messages that effect everyone on the server, or everyone should care about. I don't need to constantly be reminded I'm playing on a emu sever, especially when its goal is to replicate real retail server as close as possible.

Also I've noticed, something that's a annoying enough problem on retail PvE servers, and is even worse on this emu server. People /duel'ing you everywhere you go, just because you happen to be inside 30 feet of them. Again, I have no interest in PvP what so ever, and have strong views against its existance in anything claiming to be an MMORPG, so I get easily sick of having to click decline, hear the duel sound, or even hold my forehead in my hand as I shake it cause I realize I've run into another PvP obsessed retard that's ruining the point of a PvE server. To help combat this, I've added to my addon some /duel blocking measures. With it, you will no longer see the pop up, hear the sound, or see /duel related messages. Sadly I can't get rid of the flag dropping down from the sky. Hopefully this all will be enough though. I might work more on this feature to allow some more options, but its likely fine for now.

All these are individually optional, as I figured I might polish it up and release it on the servers forums at some point. I may add guild recruitment spam blocking as well, as the GM's seem to do a poor job at handling that too.

Since I made the addon, and since I started keeping world chat in a tab/window to itself, things have become a lot less annoying and more peaceful. Though maybe a bit to boring and quiet. My Rogue is 70 now, and I still don't have any friends on the server, and have invited basically no one to my guild. I really need to iron out my guilds intentions and recruitment policy more, and get working on inviting some people, if I want to play there much longer and have much fun. Last time I solo played like this was around the start of BC. I leveled my Rogue up to 70 on a server I thought I had someone on who would care to talk to me/play with me, but even when I was caught up they didn't care, so I soon lost interest doing just level 70 non-heroic dungeons. This came after leveling up a rogue to 53 on another server with a similar situation. Learning from all that, I have long since realized my interest in staying playing WoW for any length of time heavily relies on playing with friends, and I can predict how things might go here if I don't attempt to make some friends soon, something that I have a really really hard time doing in WoW, but never in EQ. Though really it likely won't bother me very much. I just started playing there to scratch the itch of wanting to play WoW again, and I think I've accomplished that now. =/