Buff Bars.. Any tutorials out there?

[SuranthianH3]

I'm interested in making a buff bar addon just for the sake of learning how to, but I can't seem to find tutorials out there and it feels kind of cheap to take and modify other's work. All addons I see that do this seem to have the same basic setup, just like most nameplate addons, but I don't want to just take it and modify it to suit my needs (because I want to release it when I'm done, but I don't want to have to say "I took this addon an modified it")

tl;dr - Any tutorials out there for buff bars?

[Xrystal]

There's nothing wrong with looking at other addons to see how they made them

From my understanding so far of these things, I would hazard a guess that the following are needed to make a buff addon.

A list of buff functions and events you may need.
A container frame to hold the list of buffs
A frame for each of the possible 40 max buffs anyone can have ( hidden by default I would guess )
Some fontstrings and textures to handle the appropriate values you can glean from the spellinfo function.

The container frame at a guess could also double as the event catcher for the addon watching for login/logout/aura changes etc. Draw the frames and update them as needed.

The different addons probably all use the above but just deal with them in different ways. Learn the possible ways of doing it then see how you can make one that does what YOU want

wowprogramming.com and wowwiki.com are real good resources for looking up events and functions. I usually jump between the both of them as sometimes one will have info and the other won't and vice versa.

[SuranthianH3]

Originally Posted by Xrystal There's nothing wrong with looking at other addons to see how they made them From my understanding so far of these things, I would hazard a guess that the following are needed to make a buff addon. A list of buff functions and events you may need. A container frame to hold the list of buffs A frame for each of the possible 40 max buffs anyone can have ( hidden by default I would guess ) Some fontstrings and textures to handle the appropriate values you can glean from the spellinfo function. The container frame at a guess could also double as the event catcher for the addon watching for login/logout/aura changes etc. Draw the frames and update them as needed. The different addons probably all use the above but just deal with them in different ways. Learn the possible ways of doing it then see how you can make one that does what YOU want wowprogramming.com and wowwiki.com are real good resources for looking up events and functions. I usually jump between the both of them as sometimes one will have info and the other won't and vice versa.

Thanks for all the help. I appreciate it. Just wondering, though. Since almost all buff addons have the same basic setup of functions, would I be able to take it, take out all the stuff that makes that addon unique (basically making it a very generic buff addon), leaving only the stuff that EVERY buff addon has, then change it into my own to fit my needs? Because if you look up buff bar here all of them are VERY similar

[Xrystal]

If it's just the sake of learning how they work you can tear an addon apart and see how it works and then write your own one once you figure it out.

Once you get to the point of releasing your own version to the public that's when you need to watch how similarly coded your addons are with others. And of course give credit where it is due.