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11-04-10, 08:36 PM   #1
acapela
A Cobalt Mageweaver
AddOn Author - Click to view addons
Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 241
Weird Frame Border Issue

my users are experiencing what looks like a "graphic artifact", specifically malformed borders on their nameplates:



notice the apparent mis-application of border texture art all the way around the element.

different users see this on different components of the nameplate. the screen shot shows malformed health bar borders (exactly the same code, different reported experiences). for instance, i myself experience them on nameplate target cast bars, never on health bars. some users report problems only with NPC nameplates, but i observe my cast bar problems on all nameplates (PCs and NPCs alike).

users report that these sometimes seem to "self-correct" (acquire well-formed borders), spontaneously. they always auto-correct for me (but of course target cast bars update continuously, as the cast bar width changes to reflect time remaining). it seems they can "self-correct" without any action on my addon's part (after the nameplate is visible, for units that aren't doing anything), and i can't imagine any embedded libraries would be messing with nameplates.

the frequency of reports of these problems has picked up significantly since WoW 4.0.1 came out (from one every six months to about half a dozen since WoW 4.0.1 has come out). i have put a fair bit of time into workarounds, and can't reproduce any of these problems (as i said, they don't happen at all for me on nameplate health bars, under any circumstances). all of my workarounds/experimentation have involved verifying that the border texture files are valid (they are; standard Blizzard or SharedMedia textures), the pathing to them at runtime is valid (it is), using tile+tileSize/not, order of operation when i configure nameplates (in terms of when i initialize borders/backgrounds versus foregrounds, placement/SetPoint operations, and etc; order of operation doesn't seem to affect any of these problems either way, and as you can see in the screenshots it just seems to be borders/backgrounds that are affected; and i repeat: i cannot reproduce), and etc.

canonically, i am using code like the following:

Code:
local backdropTable =
{
	edgeSize = 16,
	insets = { left = 4, right = 4, top = 4, bottom = 4 },

	edgeFile = [[Interface\Addons\Aloft\Textures\krsnik]],
	bgFile = [[Interface\Addons\SharedMedia\statusbar\Minimalist]],
}

frame:SetBackdrop(backdropTable)
frame:SetBackdropBorderColor(R, G, B, A)
i am stumped. can anyone talk me through what they think might be happening here, and what else i might try?

update: if i CHANGE the backdrop color (not the border color, but the backdrop color), the problem clears. if i explicitly set the backdrop color to the color it already is, the problem does not clear. maybe i can use this as a workaround: set it to something bogus, wait a frame, then set it to what i actually want it? that would be cryptic, but if it works...

update: this "workaround" seems to affect the problem constructively. i really dislike timing-related problems, and i really dislike having to work around them in these strange little ways (it always seems to break down under heavy load). if anyone can think of a "better way", that is not timing dependent, please help .

thanks in advance.
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Retired author/maintainer of Aloft (the nameplate addon)
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...AloftBeta.html
-----
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Last edited by acapela : 11-04-10 at 11:09 PM.
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