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Games within Games

There are quite a few games you can run in Warcraft as Mod's. The ones I have seen are usually limited to either solo play or One vs. One. Where are the group games? Well, after reading a post from a little Gnome, I had a great Idea.... AFL, the Mod!

How would it work?


This could get a little complex, but here we go. We will use a Raid Group to get the configuration right. Firstly, you would need a playing field. This would need to either be based on a Set Location, using co-ordinates to workout everyone’s positions, or you would need ten volunteers to actually stand around the field to define it. Alternatively you could simply use six people and not worry about boundaries. Let’s go with the six people to make things easier. Place three people each into groups three and four. One person represents the Goal and the Other two people represent the Points. So the Points stand on either side of their Goal. We then have a 7th player, the Umpire (aka Raid Leader) sitting in group five.

The Teams.

The teams would consist of five players each, divided into Group One and Group Two in the Raid. We will use a simplified version of the Positions. The Three Positions will be Centre, Forward (two players) and Back (two players). The Centre's will be the Team Captains, and they would need Raid Assist. They will define which player holds which position using the Mod to do so. This is how it would look.

Roles?


The Centre's and Forward's are going for the Goal, while the Back's are Defending the Goal. The two goals should be a good distance away from each other to make for better games. The Mod would come with its own "Vehicle Bar" with various abilities based on if you have the ball and your position. This would be things like, Handball, Kick to Player, Kick for Goal, Mark and Tackle. You could also add something like Punch, with the Ref having a % chance of catching you and giving the other team a free kick.

The Mod


The Mod would work out what happens when you do a particular action. For example if you kick the ball to another player, who is being defended, there would be a % chance of the ball going to the other player. Go for a Goal and you have a % chance to score a goal based on the Distance and if there are defenders in the way. There would also be a % chance for it to miss the Goal and score a point or even for the defender to "touch it" and it goes through for a point. To start the game, the Umpire would "Bounce" the ball and it would go to a random team based on the timing that they use the "Mark" ability.

The Ball?


You could even use a actual football. The Mod would control who gets the ball thrown to them. Now I am sure to any non-Australians reading this, you are either very confused or asleep, but I am sure this Mod could be developed to suit Hockey, Soccer (aka football) or Rugby.

Class abilities?


To make things interesting you could use certain class abilities, Dash, Sprint, Intercept, Bubble etc to make things even more interesting and add the element of Team Composition to the whole equation.

Thoughts?


Even though I am not into AFL all that much, I think this would make a pretty cool Mod. So if you know any Developers out there, why not give them a nudge;)

Razorbax
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Turpster from Wow Insider has an informative article on Multiboxing, RAF Style.

Watch out in the comments for the Puppet Post....
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Action Bars Part Three

In Part One and Part Two, I spoke about using Macro's to add a Shift or CTRL Modifier onto the action bars to fit more functionality into the your Action Bars. Now I am going to look at Custom Paging and how we can use Bartender4's Custom State Headers.

What is a Custom State Header?


I'm glad you asked...
The Custom State Header in Bartender4 allows you to control the paging and the visibility of bars by using any macro conditions supported by WoW.
Basically what it allows you to do is control the paging and visibility of your Action Bars with simple conditions. It's just like writing a /cast macro but instead of using the Spell name, you use the Action Bar number.

The Code?


At first glance, this can look pretty complex, but here it is.
[Nostance]1;[Nostance,Mod:Shift]2;[Nostance,Mod:CTRL]3;[Stance:1]4;[Stance:1,Mod:Shift]5;[Stance:3]6;[Stance:3,Mod:Shift]7;[Stance:3,stealth]8;0
Let's start by breaking down each condition and explain what it's doing.

[Nostance]1;
This line isn’t really required but basically if you have no Stance, Caster Form, it will page to Bar 1.

[Nostance,Mod:Shift]2;
If you are in Caster Form with the Shift key down, page to Bar 2.

[Nostance,Mod:CTRL]3;
If you are in Caster Form with the CTRL key down, page to Bar 3.

[Stance:1]4;
If you are in Bear Form, page to Bar 4.

[Stance:1,Mod:Shift]5;
If you are in Bear Form with the Shift key down, page to Bar 5.

[Stance:3]6;
If you are in Cat Form, page to Bar 6.

[Stance:3,Mod:Shift]7;
If you are in Cat Form with the Shift key down, page to Bar 7.

[Stance:3,Stealth]8;
If you are in Cat Form and Prowling, page to Bar 8.

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If no other condition has been met, do not page the Action Bar.

Please Sir, I want some more!


There are a lot of options available when it comes to Custom State Headers. You can have your action bar change based on your Target being Hostile or Friendly, In a Party or Raid, In Combat, and even based on your current Spec(Dual Specs). Here is some more information on Custom State Headers, Macro Conditions and Stances.

Conclusion?


There are a few factors that will assist in choosing if you should use Conditional Macro's or Custom State Headers. Custom State Headers require more Action Bars. As you can see from my example, I am using the first eight Action Bars, only leaving me with 2 more bars for the rest of my UI. If I also wanted to introduce Action Bars based on my Dual Spec, I would use every Action Bar on just 10 buttons. The issue with Conditional Macro's is the can be somewhat limited. For example it can be difficult to get Autoattack and a Spell cast in the same macro when using Modifiers. You also need to initially write the Macro and then change it whenever you make a change.

I will leave the decision to you.

EDIT: Looks like a few things didn't work. Here is the new code and I will explain the differences.


[Stance:0,nomodifier]1;[Stance:0,Modifier:Shift]2;[Stance:0,Modifier:CTRL]3;[Stance:1,nomodifier]4;[Stance:1,Modifier:Shift]5;[Stance:3,nomodifier]6;[Stance:3,Modifier:Shift]7;[Stance:3,stealth]8;0


1. Mod didn't work, use Modifier.
2. Nostance didn’t work, used stance:0
3. The conditions are read from left to right and stop when a condition is met, therefore had to use "nomodifier".
4. If "Nomodifier" doesn't work, I will reverse the order and put the Shift/CTRL arguments first.
5. Fingers Crossed.

Razorbax
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Game Commander Pro is a new application on the Multi-Boxing scene. It has some great features like GUI Macro Creation. Check it out.
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My New Pet

As I mentioned in my minipost, I decided to pick up a Ghost Saber for Razorbang. Over the weekend I started the grind to get it. It turns out it was not quite as easy as I thought and I learnt a few things on the way.

Level 19.


I started the search when I was still level 19. I had read that the Ghost Sabers are either level 19 or 20, so I thought I would go for the odds. As it turned out, by the time I found my Saber, I was already level 20. That's a good thing as the Saber I found was level 20.

No Pet?


Since you cannot tame a new pet when you already have a pet, the first thing I did was dismiss my existing pet. This turned out to be a big issue. I am quite the Hunter Noob and killing the Naga's in the area became very time consuming.

Dismissing Pets.


I decided that I could have a pet on Passive and just dismiss it when the Saber spawned. I figured this would be a good solution. It turned out OK in the end.

The Grind.


My guess is I circled the camp around 50 times and looted about 10 or 15 figurines until the Saber finally spawned. When it did spawn, I was a little too slow in dismissing my pet and I was already down to 70% health by the time I started taming. As a result I died with about half a second to go.

Corpse Run.


I had no idea if the Saber would despawn or when, though I had read they did despawn at some time. I ran as fast as a corpse can, back to my body. As I resurrected, I saw the Saber fade from view. Thinking I had missed my chance, but not ready to give up, I quickly Ate and Drank up.

Tame Beast.


As I walked down the hill to where my corpse say, I really thought I had missed out. It appears my little Ghost Saber can stealth. This time I was ready for it and I got my little kitty.

Next Time?


Train level 20 skills and get Freezing Trap.

Razorbax
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