Will Carbonite be updated for MOP?
 

Will carbonite be updated for mop i would love to donate if i know they were working on a mop version. kinda seems like a waste of money to donate 50 bucks and they dont update it. thanks




Edit: 7/25/12: really no answers. no one that develops this addon can answer me. i love this addon i want to support it there is nothing like it. i want to give you money just please let me know if you will support MOP i have friends who would like to donate as well to help get it underway if anyone has any info please post ty

I am also wondering. So if someone could please confirm whether or not this will be continued, it would be helpful to know. if not, i will start making other plans.

Thanks!

Add me to the heap, MoP = donation.

hello?...any devs out there...we really do like carbonite and would like to support it through MOP, but we need to hear from you!

as a MOP beta tester, i can already tell you, the current version of carbonite doesn't run well at all with MOP as of late July, and i always have to disable it if i want to run the beta. it was bad enough starting beta without any add-ons, but now that we can have them from those who developing/updating them, it really hurts not having this one!

can you guys at least let us know what's going on?

Donate for MoP
 

I also will donate again if we can just get word on if there will be an update.

Do they only respond to the folks that are currently donating?

Don't expect MoP Carbonite update.

Reply to donators only....
 

No, they don't reply to donators only.. At least not to me, I donated about a month ago and haven't heard anything. I haven't even been added to the "Donators Only" forum....

gene

Oh really now ?
 

Is this your opinion or is it a known fact ?
Does this mean the end to the Carbonite addon ?

I truely hope not.

Opinion. But considering lack any information from authors I think Carbonite is simply abandoned.

if its abbandoned , cant anyone else pick it up a Fan update for example ?

I would suggest two things: an addon is abandoned when the author says he's abandoning it, or when, after a major update, it breaks and is not fixed in a reasonable period of time, such period being considerably longer than the usual four seconds people wait before complaining, like say, a couple of weeks at least, and for someone to pick up this addon would be difficult, as convoluted as the code is.:cool:

Hard code to follow
 

Yes, the code of this addon is hard to follow. It looks like it's been run thru either a "code obfuscator" or a "code shortener". Used to see this oftem in old Apple II BASIC programs when trying to make hard to follow them or make them use less code space.

gene

it actually isn't that hard to follow, there is no spacing, and a lot of it is shortened like MM for minimap etc, but it does make sense once you figure out which is which.

Part of the problem is the code is so old, and has just been patched quickly to work... and this time around blizzard is removing things completly from the API calls... like ranged slot for example, carbonite still has calls/checks for ammo slot which hasn't existed in ages, but just silently failed since WoW allowed it, ranged slot... nope full on error if you try to touch it.. so all refrences to look at it need to be removed.... and that's just one small example.

If you fear Carbonite will not be updated for MoP perhaps now is the time to find out the replacement addons for specific features, and for those features that have no replacement see if the community is willing to come up with new addons that have those missing features. Eventually if there are enough addons that provide replacement features for Carbonite I am sure someone will package them up in an addon pack called Charcoalite or something similar.

I think basic features of quests and maps and PVP BG maps is the most needed/used function here , others are important though , but made the addon more complex and harder to maintain. As a player I would be happy with these basic features. else can be sub addons maintained seperatley , with ability to disable/enable

none of the current addons can replace carbonite in map zoom and quests functions, other features have other replacement addons

The Problem is getting permission to even be fixing it, sure I can modify the code and make it work for myself...
but since they included the copyright disclaimer even tho I have 75% of it fixed and working, I can't distribute it.

Sorry for the interruption -I deleted my original post because I just found a thread addressing my request for replacement addons.

I love Carbonite, and have for years. I also am a professional and have a life, family and social obligations - so I respect that the developers have higher priorities than writing code to enhance a video game. I'd love to see a fan update or something that provides the same functionality in one comprehensive addon (not a compilation).

you won't get a fan update that doesn't require additional addons, not without tearing apart the entire thing and redoing parts from scratch which would make it no longer just a fan update.

Unless someone is willing to put a crapload more work into it... I'll try to explain why for just one aspect of it,

Carb is from before blizz had it's own quest tracking / hints, so every quest that you can get the little arrow on screen telling you where to go, is registered and known by the addon... those not known, won't give you the arrow. The information for the quests is encoded in some way only they the creators know

"4Sharptalon's Claw%:6####",nil,"#$( 9^Õ@^Í",} is how one quest looks to us when we view it, and I dunno about any of you but to me it's mostly jibberish. Now, blizz has it's own tracking, and it works very well, and addons can access the information... so in theory carbonites tracking could be hooked into all that and use it instead of it's internal database which would mean instant working for pandaria, but at the loss of knowing what quests in each zone you have finished / not finished.

The reason I used the real tomtom in my fixed version, was because it can't track any quests not in it's internal database.. it just gives you an error which i'm sure most of us have seen saying that quest or objective is unknown. So instead, carbonite displays my quests & objectives as it always has, but tomtom does the tracking for me since it uses the internal game information I mentioned above.

One of the authors has let me know that they have been VERY busiy with there actual jobs. They have not decided if they are going to update it or allow the community to do so. He said that they will post a reply on the forums once they have made a decision.

Just my opionion here but I think that they are going to turn it over to the community. Since the last update was just extend the Out of date message.

wow without carbonite seems bad... I sure hope that there can be some sort of fix or replacement.. I love how it all works, mainly the mapping and quest tracking.. without everything that carbonite brings to the table, I can estimate adding about 15 addons (some rather bulky) just to scrape the surface of getting "close".

Not to say that replacing it would be impossible, but omg... I would not want to be the person in charge of that task.

well.. as an update after first night sitting down and seriously working on it (i'm not leaving anything to chance.. if they update it great i'll be ecstatic .... if not, at least i'm already started)

managed to undo the internal quest tracking, rewriting it to work with blizzards quest POI tracking, and had carbonite's tracker arrow pop up and try to lead me to finishing "The King's Command" in stormwind... which was definitely not anywhere in the script for it to know, so I knew it was working.

moved to pandaria, and ... fail lol, the quests show up, the quests let me track them, but because carbonite's routing / maps had no idea what pandaria is, the tracking was wrong and kept trying to send me to kalimdor for the objective.

Started adding pandaria into the continent/zone/map arrays but hit a snag with one part of a variable not getting set and left it last night trying to debug where it gets set and why it isn't set for those 13 zones.

Just wish beta had /reloadui .. annoying to wait 20 seconds to test a code change if it fails somewhere and I don't have carbonites reloadui

It does, it's just /reload. If you have the Ace3 libraries installed as stand alone's, it becomes just /rl.

And worst case scenario there's always the old tried and true... /console reloadui

ahh... so it's /reload ... good to know and thanks :)

feel double foolish, since I finally got the pandaria mapID's added and discovered I didn't need to rewrite the quest stuff, undid it all and quest tracking in pandaria is working just from having the mapid's and zoneid's in the arrays...

on the plus side, at least I understand a little more how it works now and i'm that much closer to having a MoP version finished, the entire thing is working, except the outter map for panda zones

Here's a screen shot of how it stands right now... I'd say 90% working, both to wet appetites, and incase anyone thinks i'm just blowing smoke...

awesome man please keep up the hard work. Would be awesome to have a Fan Update. TY

It's a good job I went on here. Carbonite is a fantastic addon that I've always loved to death but looks like it's not getting much love lately and will likely be abandoned. This is very sad. Yes, Blizzard's in built quest tracker does the job well but I always preferred Carbonite's one anyway.

Looks like I'll be forced to abandon Carbonite for good. Turning it over to the community will keep the passion burning but will also change it forever. It will never be the same again. I am really sad to hear this but looks like I may be forced to move on.

Carbonite Kickstarter Project?
 

Just a sugestion but the devs need to create a Kickstarter project and set a goal that we can help them reach in order for the project to continue. Once the project went to a donation only model, the devs had to focus on things that brought money home. That's understandable, and I can see why the project sort of derailed.

A large number of Carbonite fan's out there would be more than willing to drop even a few hundred dollars if there was a promise of an update. Ive donated before, and apreciate the work that goes into programing the addon since I use to program myself. Please create a kickstarter project and ask for what you need to be compensated for your work and let the comunity put their money where their mouth is.

even if it's a fan update like the one i'm working on, it's still identical... as said earlier in the thread the code is obfuscated and a little confusing so it's taking time to figure it all out, but as it stands right now the MoP version does everything the same as the real one without any additional addons, all that's left is figuring out adding the new continent to the map. I know the graphics and file names (last night I had all 4 old continents showing up as Pandaria as a test lol) but what "should" be working to add the 6th continent to the map, isn't adding it..

-----
Hopeful were gunna see an announcement soon that an official update is coming tho, since both developers have been on the forums in the last week according to their profiles...

I'll miss Carbonite, but many of the most important features (quest tracking) are sorta in WoW without add ons (not as good, but still there) so I am confident someone will come out with something like carbonate that has a lot less code by relying on the built-in WoW features instead of coding as if this was still wow 3.0.

What's this... What's this! There's music in the air.....




Really wish I could talk to the dev's to make this easier.... so far the 3 things missing from me calling it complete

1) the area overlays that appear over a zone if you mouse over it on the map... i've been digging through the various mpq's for hours and can't figure out where they come from

2) the close up zoom of pandaria... I know how it's done, and as a test I replaced kalimdor with pandaria's, so when I zoomed in on an area, I saw the satellite view of panda areas, but on it's own in it's own array it never appears for me to place it under pandaria.

3) the zone scale is off a little, so the points of interest don't line up right on the map in panda zones.

#1 is what i'm focusing on most right now

NICE Rythal Good Job :):D:o:rolleyes::banana:. i hope you can get it going 100%

It looks pretty good though, and looks like you are on the right track. I suggest you not even look at Carbonite's code, it's not pretty.

You're amazing. Hundreds of people use carbonite and I know not many of them are willing to take the time to step forward and say thanks, but each and every download you get after you upload a working version is a thank you.

Shoot me a PM if you need test pilots, I've been using carbonite for years and while I never made full use of all it's features, I do pretty well know it inside and out. I know very little about code but I have a friend who might be interested in tackling the project with you.

thank you again for your help

oh I know... that was the first thing I did, took a day or so cleaning it up into a readable code state instead of an eye bleeding wall of text.

Am sure you will get there :) keep up the good work as said earlier millions will be happy with your updated working version

yeah it's getting there... i've figured out problem #1 and #3, slowly getting them added.. both get fixed at the same time, as I add the overlay and fix how it looks on the map, the points of interest also get fixed and scale properly.

Half the zones are done.

I'm half expecting to say it's finished, then discover a release by the real dev's making the days and days of work for nothing :P lol

I'd use yours because they were silent and that's rude, not to sound like an ingrate or anything. I love carbonite and have paid money for it in the past. ;)

lol... thanks, but I can appreciate why they have no wish to update it if they aren't... it seems like anytime headway is made, something else crops up pushing it back again... I was working fine adding zones then came to the panda starting zone (wandering isle) and realized... it's not on the map anywhere, nor is it included in the panda files, so now I get to do all the searching I just did for main panda zones again to track down where wandering isle is

tomorrow will be just patching old world so it works correctly once 5.0 comes live on tuesday, still a month to do the rest ... thankfully that's just figuring out the new filenames for some areas like wintergrasp so they aren't green blobs on the map, removing start areas from the current overlays and making them there own since blizz has made all start area's their own "zone" in the same location... no idea why they did that, probably something with the phasing stuff

I love you attention to detail :) soon on live it will be Darkmoon which been historically missing from Carbonite MAP btw add it it to the list of these standalone zones

Good work
 

Rythal

All your work is appreciated and looks exciting. Any news on when you might make this available? Based on what you have now, even the 'unfinished' version might be preferable to none :)

This mornings update on work done:

Green textures fixed except in one spot in the ocean beside twilight highlands, it only appears randomly and I can't for the life of me figure out which texture is suppose to be there but not showing since I went down a list of all twilight highlands files, and the internal array and everything matches up.

Got first of the 10 starter area's added (new tinkertown), started work on the next 4 for eastern kingdoms... hoping tonight to get all 9 finished so the addon is live ready.

Commented out the quest database internally, There is just to many problems with it cropping up... it doesn't know any panda quests which is what 99% of us will be tracking anyways, and starter areas have all been redone for every race so people trying to roll a new gnome monk for example, will be told to go the wrong locations with the tracking (noticed this when testing new tinkertown with a gnome monk). Commenting them out means I can restore it at any time, but with it gone it gets all the information from blizzard instead.

Changed the "request quests from server" to use the new method, blizz no longer sends what quests you've completed on command, it's already entirely client side as soon as you login.. so while it still asks if it should get them, it never sends the command just updates itself from what the client knows.

Wandering isle is working.... that was a tricky bugger since it's not known by the game unless your on it.. it does not show up in any continent or zone lists... it's entire id is continent -1, area 0, zone 808... so i'm treating it like a battleground for map placement / viewing and that seems to work.

As for all the questions I keep getting asked about where i'm going to host it.. I will probably host it on my own website to start. I want to host it here at the addon sites, but I need to find out more information about what I can and can't do because of the disclaimer / terms of use / copyright... most other addons will allow a fan update / new addon release based on updated old code, but they also don't include any sort of disclaimers against it. Personally I'd love the devs to come forward and officially declare it abandoned so I can start my own project based on it with separate bug forums / requests of what people want added back from the base (like points of interest for pandaira, resource nodes, or built in gathermate support etc)

Edit: Just realized how that last part sounded... I don't want them to declare it abandoned for my sake, I'd love for them to come forward and say YES an updated version is coming! and give us all hope towards it...but if they have no intentions of doing so i'd also like them to say so, to legalize the fan versions... even if they were to say Fan updates are OK until we have a chance to do our own.... just something so were not left in the dark.

was just looking over the forums, reading old posts from around when cata launched... and it actually looks like it went the same way last time... no one heard from or saw any word about the addon and it's compatability, then once the pre-patch went live and the addon was broken, a head popped up saying they were working on it.

Can we hope for a repeat? :P

Awesome Job!
 

Great job on getting it squared away. And yes I agree, if they indeed want to abandon the project and let you take over I'd be all about that and I'd definitely donate. I think after what happened when Cata went live has left a lot of people wondering if the same will happen this time and thus not donating which is bad for the devs.

To the developers: This is probably the most useful and my personal favorite addon for the game. It's the first one I look for updates for (and am usually disappointed). If you guys want to ride off into the sunset and leave this poject to someone, Rythal has demonstrated that he both enjoys and wants to keep it updated.

Anyway, please keep us updated Rythal as to when and where this can be obtained. I can't play the game without mah Carbonite!

Rythal, I'd love to collaborate with you to keep this up to date, do you have plans on mantaining this on github or something like that? carb surely needs a full revamp as it has aged pretty badly. I'd love to redo the settings panel entirely from scratch using the standard addon settings panels for example.

I have donated to Carbonite in the past and am willing to donate again as well, be it to a fan update or the regular authors. My wife and I have loved Carbonite since it first came out and we have been playing since vanilla and know most of the quests by heart anyway... :)

Just remember to leave in the "punks" tracker system! I love how it picks up enemy rogues before you can even see them! And it pretty accurately detects within a few yards where enemies are hiding as well.

This mornings update!

Spent to much time last night on it, had to run out the door this morning for work before I could do any sort of packaging, but it should be live ready (can't say for 100% until it's actually tested against live lol)

All the new starting area's are done and tested along with testing quest tracking in and outside the zone .. getting a quest in northshire, then running to goldshire which on the new system is two totally different maps, still shows the quest objective in approximate world location.. until you zone into northshire and the map shifts then it updates itself to real location

Satellite zoom google map is added for pandaria and partially working, its gonna be painful fun since I'm still learning how it's all put together and I did things backwards, starting with blizzard continent map, then zone overlays scaled to fit, then overhead satellite map ... which means the scaling is all wrong between the two maps and the satellite map.. you can zoom in on it, and what your looking at will be a tiny bit to the south, or east from where you expected it to be.

Gonna take time to redo it starting with the satellite map, then scale and lineup continent map, then scale and lineup overlays... but it's just fiddling with numbers, and a month to get them down :)

The only major things still missing that I can see, are battlegrounds and instance maps for the pandarian zones.

As always I'm hopeful we will have word from the devs today saying a real update is coming making all this null and void.

----
Reddsonja: not to worry, nothing has been removed :)

My hero!
 

Rythal, I just wanted to post and tell you that you are my HERO! I've been pre-mourning carbonite for weeks, expecting MoP and today's 5.0.4 patch to be the final death of it. The possibility of a fan update that keeps me able to access the map I am so addicted to is an absolute joy.

I am one of many, many people who appreciate your efforts in the extreme!

I also hope the original devs will post their intentions to either continue themselves or just go ahead and greenlight fan updates.

Thank you again for your work and for keeping the community in the loop on your progress and intentions, Rythal!

Based on the work being done to update the mapping system to include the Pandaria data, I was wondering what effort would be involved at removing the mapping system to make it its own addon. I have seen that a lot of people really only use Carbonite for its mapping system, and if so, there may be great interest in having a lone mapping addon. Of course there are rights, etc. to deal with, but I was wondering about the technical challenges to the project first.

that's a good question... and probably why the code was unreadable... because really once you know how it all works, it would really not be that difficult to restart the whole thing from scratch, 99% of it is just numbers and lining up 3 maps overlayed on top of each other. A lot of addons already have the "fog of war removal" which is the top layer, second layer is just default continents, and third layer is the satelite view built from the same images the minimap uses, so anyone could redo it.

I'm actually more surprised that in all this time, no one besides carbonite & cartographer has done it, since once you figure it out it's not very difficult.

The downside to it, and the reason why both probably fell to the wayside... they are a lot of work to maintain... unless they have a better way of doing it (would imagine so) it's a lot of datamining into the mpq files to find the information / numbers / settings etc to keep the maps displaying properly anytime something changes.. and even then it's not flawless, like my twilight highlands green square which is kinda really pissing me off since I can't figure it out... i've even now one by one removed every tile from the zone and it still remains. (green tiles are a new thing with MoP... before settexture would return null if the file didn't exist, now it works reguardless and displays a lime green box if it was invalid).

So where will this update be made available for download? And thanks again for your hard work on this, it is much appreciated! :)

Thanks for your efforts Rythal!

Hopefully the devs will turn it over to you so we can have regular updates. :)

good news
 

:)i hope they turn this over to you or have your help with it, sems like your most of the way there

Sorry to just add to the signal to noise ratio here, but *THANK YOU* Rythal!

I've come to depend on a number of features of Carbonite and love that you're taking the time to get this beast up and running for Mists!

Here's hoping that the dev team, if they even decide to keep the project going, look at having you come on board. Or take over ;)

Mop Forward
 

Id just like to say a massive thanks Rythal for the work your putting in, addon code is 1 thing i cannot get my bloody head around, would drive me mad.

I think i speak for all of us when i say i truely hope the developers make it know if they plan to carry on, an if not pass you permission to develop this addon.

If does come down to you takeing this over im sure you will find no lack of support to setting a siteup to host the add-on with form etc, hell i would even buy the domain and pay for the hosting for you given how simple it is to do these days.

With regard to addon functions, the days of addons that provides quest data is done with, the better option is just to tie-in with blizzards own quest helper, as long as the map shows the area were the quests items are etc, i think we can cope zooming out and finding this ourselfs i personaly can do without the little minimap arrows.

the main love for us all is the googlemaps, if we could have this with the other rubbish with node tracking etc removed (hell whats why we have gatherer) i think we would all support this.

PLEASE IF I COULD ASK 1 THING OF YOU CARBONITE DEVELOPERS, POST A MESSAGE GIVEING PERMISSION FOR THE COMMUNITY TO TAKE THIS ADDON OVER, IN SIMPLE TERMS IF YOU DONT WANT TO UPDATE THIS NONE IS GOING TO CONTINUE TO MAKE DONATIONS FOR A BROKEN ADDON.

YOU HAVE HAD A GOOD RUN AND BEEN SUPPORTED BY THE COMMUNITY, IF YOU TRUELY DO NOT WISH TO CONTINUE WITH THIS ADDON THE RIGHT THING TO DO IS TO GIVE SOMETHING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY, IN SIMPLE TERMS GIVE US THE ADDON SO WE CAN CONTINUE YOU WORK.

The two things I really use from Carbonite are the quest tracking (which I think is a bit better than blizzard's built-in solution) and the google-maps-style overworld map that lets you zoom in and out with the mouse wheel. I guess I could just learn to make do with blizzard's quest tracking, but I would really miss carbonite's map if a replacement isn't available.

Honestly, just having a lightweight addon that provides a carbonite-style map would be fantastic, most of the other features can be provided by other addons that already exist.

Carbonite is MY #1 addon
 

:D To see a light at the end of the 'WoW without Carbonite' tunnel is truely a blessing!
I do understand just how much RL can cut into Game time & even more so for the HEROs who create & maintain our beloved addons. I also know how easy it is for the reverse to occur, where we spend more time and energy on our virtual lives than our real ones. It is tough to find and maintain a balance.

I have talked with many Carbonite users on several servers... even while taking a brief break waiting for a BG to commence, or halfway thru a random Dungeon lol
I've even talked new users thru the setup either in Skype or Vent or in-game Mail ;)
A full third of the members of the two 25th lvl guilds I'm in use it, and are anxiously awaiting the MoP update.
For most of us it is ALL ABOUT THE MAP!!!!!
We could muddle thru with out the remainder but the map is a thing of beauty & with the accuracy of objective tracking it is better than medium... umm errr... nm :o

Thank you so much for all of your efforts :D

If you need a tester, I'm willing to break my game over and over again just to get yours just right. :D

I have no idea on coding though, but I can write up good reports :p

Edit to say, have you tried sending the devs a PM to see if they are working on one? Thought I read that you said they have been online within the last week or so.

I am also waiting for this...

If you have a place I would be willing to help chip in if possible and I will gladly donate what I can when its up if or not I help lol.