Mouse Combat for Mists of Pandaria

[Folji]

Hey everyone. One of my all time favourite WoW addons is Mouse Combat, whose sole purpose is to add a toggleable "mouse combat" mode that locks the camera to the mouse and frees up the mouse keys to be used for abilities (or anything that can be macroed). I just love it, so much that I've built my interface around the playstyle.

Unfortunately, though, it's been years since last time it was updated and months since the addon author was around here last by the looks of it. Hopefully it'll be possible to keep it going into 5.0 simply by updating the interface version in the .toc, but maybe someone here could be interested in making a new addon in the same spirit for Mists of Pandaria? One with a proper in-game configuration and all? That would be really awesome. I've searched all kinds of places for anything similar, but it seems to be a pretty one of a kind thing.

[zohar101]

There are a few other ones on wowinterface but they're just as outdated but still working. Did you test it out in beta and found it isn't working?

[Folji]

Heh, I'd really wish, but I'm not in the beta. Likely gonna test once the PTR opens up just to be sure, but hopefully it won't be a problem to just edit the .toc since the core of it works right off of the game's own code. I've seen a few things that go for the same idea, locking the view without having to hold down the right mouse button, but it looks like they're either just that and nothing else or set to bind the mouse buttons to something really quirky. (Like forward and backward movement. What?)

Mostly I'm just trying to air the concept in hopes that someone would be interested in seeing how far it'd be possible to take it.

[Folji]

Sooo, guess there's no interest right now? That's a shame. If anyone were at least curious, though, here's how I'd picture an addon like this in all its glory.

At the heart of it there should be a configurable keybinding that activates the game's Mouselook function and temporarily overrides a set of configurable keys. That's the bread and butter of the addon, and the extent of the Mouse Combat addon. You hit the key, the camera locks to the mouse while the mouse buttons are free and a selected set of keys (on both the mouse and the keyboard) are temporarily bound to something else until the key is hit again. What bindings are overridden should be possible to change in-game, instead of manually in the Lua files like the few mods that work like this have it. Being able to bind keys to various macros would be a pretty good way to do it, but if it's possible to bind straight to an ActionSlot then that'd be awesome. Dual-spec support would be great. Either that or multiple profiles that can be swapped between manually or automatically.

Other things that don't have to be there but would still be great to have.

A temporary "free mouse" key that lets go of the camera for as long as the key is held down, so that you can quickly use the interface or just activate an ability not bound to a key without having to toggle the mouse lock entirely. Reticule targeting. Feel free to call me crazy, because this is a crazy idea I got just recently. When the Mouselook function fires, the cursor isn't going anywhere. Would it in theory be possible to let go of mouselook long enough for the mouse to register whatever it's mousing over right now, do an [@mouseover] target and engage mouselook again? If so, it shouldn't be much problem to combine that with a function that draws an on-screen reticule wherever the mouse is at when the camera is locked and in turn have a key to target whatever's in that reticule.

[Phanx]

Originally Posted by Folji Sooo, guess there's no interest right now?

Even if there is interest, it's likely that most addon authors are currently busy updating their existing addons for MoP, and don't have time to start a new project.

There's also the same issue here that exists with all requests to update old addons -- if someone who knew how to update it wanted to update it, they'd probably have already done it. Most authors are very reluctant to write and publish an addon they would never use themselves. It's annoying to try to maintain an addon when you don't use it, and the addon tends to exist in a constant state of half-brokenness because most users will never report anything, so by the time someone does speak up and say "hey, the blah option is broken" it's been broken for 6 months. It's really not fun for anyone on either end of the deal.

You could always try to update the addon yourself. Lua is a very easy language to learn, and there are many people on these forums who are happy to answer specific questions and help you find solutions to specific problems.

If you're not sure how to get started, a good starting point is usually to post the first error message the addon is giving you, and try to fix that.

[Folji]

Originally Posted by Phanx You could always try to update the addon yourself. Lua is a very easy language to learn, and there are many people on these forums who are happy to answer specific questions and help you find solutions to specific problems. If you're not sure how to get started, a good starting point is usually to post the first error message the addon is giving you, and try to fix that.

Yeah, guess giving it a shot myself would be the best option by the looks of it, then constantly pester the helpful forums around here whenever something goes wrong. Is there anything in particular that one should be aware of when learning general Lua and then using that knowledge for WoW? As for actually learning it, I already know my way around ActionScript 3.0 for what good that might or might not do me.

[Phanx]

Originally Posted by Folji Is there anything in particular that one should be aware of when learning general Lua and then using that knowledge for WoW? As for actually learning it, I already know my way around ActionScript 3.0 for what good that might or might not do me.

Well, I wouldn't recognize an ActionScript, erm, script if it came up and bit me, so I can't help much there, but if you're familiar with any programming language, you shouldn't have much trouble learning the basics of Lua.

Pick the simplest addon you use (if you're not sure what constitutes "simple", look for the one with the smallest file size) and think of one way you could change how it works. Then, start looking at its code and trying to figure out how to change that one thing.

Once you've done a few of those and feel like you have a good grasp on what Lua code looks like, and how to identify functions and such, pick something that annoys you about a bigger, more complicated addon you use, and try to change it.

There's a good list of resources in this thread:
http://www.wowinterface.com/forums/s...ad.php?t=43699