Player arrow tweaker (battlemap, minimap, worldmap)

[jbashara]

Anyone know of an addon that gives unique control over the player arrow "blip" icon? My need for this addon specifically comes from losing track of my player arrow on the battlefield map, but it sometimes happens on the world map as well (although I recently found MapRuler, which as a secondary benefit helps this problem on the world map...I wish that addon would work with the battle map as well).

I've tried addons like Embiggen, Mapster, Capping, etc...but none of them really accomplish what I'm looking for. Embiggen only seems to work on the world map, and Capping and Mapster really don't add a ton of visibility to your own player arrow on the Battlefield minimap.

At the very least, I'd love a simple addon that would allow me to resize the Battlefield player arrow up to 300 percent, or something like that. At the most, it'd be great to have some sort of player arrow-specific addon that works across all the maps, allowing even more "tweaking" to the player arrow, like adding an animated "pulse" effect, or the ability to at least "skin" it with your own .tga's, or something.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Josh

[Recluse]

For the minimap, you can get this functionality in the addon Chinchilla (probably a Curse upload).

I'm sure the process to do what you're wanting is a rather simple thing, but I do not know of any addons which do this exclusively, or for the battlefield/world map.

[jbashara]

Thanks, I'll try Chinchilla and see if I can get away with it.

Yeah, I imagine it's a simple enough concept for an addon, I just can't believe no one has made one yet. Even if it wasn't part of a bigger map addon, just a small "player arrow" tweaking addon would be nice. Kind of a cross between _Cursor and Embiggen (or maybe Blipstick)... I dunno, I'd just like to have my player arrow "pulse" on the battle map, or have some sort of animated effect. Or a skin, at least.

Thanks for the suggestion though. I'll try it out.

Thanks,

Josh

[jbashara]

I might have spoken too soon. I checked out Chinchilla's info and it doesn't look like it lets you alter the player arrow blip in the battle map; just the minimap. I'll still download it and give it a try, but it looks like just a minimap addon.

What I'm really looking for is something that does this for the battlefield map (the mini zone-map via Shift-M). Capping and Mapster enhance it, but still don't offer the feature I'm looking for.

Thanks though,

Josh

[jbashara]

Bump, since it's been more than a year and I still haven't found a solution to this.

Anyone know if this is even possible with today's API? Except for a few PvP and map addons that modify player blips, I haven't seen a single one that can modify the player arrow in the battle map to make it larger, a different color or even add a "ruler" graphic that points in the direction you're facing (a la the "MapRuler" addon)...

My main motivation for finding this functionality is just to improve the visibility of my player arrow in PvP, without having to enlarge the battle map so that it takes up 1/8 of my screen.

Cheers!

[harl]

For the battlemap, you could do something like this:

PlayerMiniArrowFrame:SetScale(2)
PlayerMiniArrowEffectFrame:SetScale(2)
BattlefieldMinimap:SetWidth(BattlefieldMinimap:GetWidth() / 2)
BattlefieldMinimap:SetHeight(BattlefieldMinimap:GetHeight() / 2)
BattlefieldMinimapCloseButton:SetPoint("TOPRIGHT",BattlefieldMinimap,"TOPRIGHT",114,7)

Actually, because the BattlefieldMinimap is load-on-demand, you'd have to wait for it to show up before any of that would work, so it may be more convenient to put it in a macro, like this:

/run local s,x,B=2,114,BattlefieldMinimap PlayerMiniArrowFrame:SetScale(s) PlayerMiniArrowEffectFrame:SetScale(s) B:SetWidth(225 / s) B:SetHeight(150 / s) BattlefieldMinimapCloseButton:SetPoint("TOPRIGHT",B,"TOPRIGHT",x,7)

and then maybe use bindpad/spellbinder to bind a key or button to it. That's just an example to double the scale of your player arrow.
Just be aware this will very likely result in undesired effects - especially the other player/vehicle icons added by the game itself (as well as things added by add-ons like Routes) will be cramped in the top-left corner of the bg minimap. Change s to 1 and x to 2 to revert the changes (maybe with a second macro). (You'll probably also have to open the WorldMap once each time to force it to redraw everything on the map.) Those changes won't persist between login sessions, so just relog if it gets messed up.

If you intend to find a way around those issues or to modify more of it, you may want to take a look at these three pages (no java/flash required):
wowprogramming.com/./xmlbrowser/test/./Blizzard_BattlefieldMinimap/ Blizzard_BattlefieldMinimap.xml, .lua, .toc

[jbashara]

Thanks for the info; this is definitely a start! Actually, in two years now, this is the most information I've ever been able to get regarding the player arrow in the battlefield minimap. Thanks!