CensusPlus Options changes

[bringoutyourdead]

None of this is cast in Stone

Code: Select all

 but here is what I'm thinking.

Usings Blizzards default Interface window for addons.. this as you see is for account wide CensusPlus addon options..

Some of the changes I'm thinking about/working on include:
Total stealth mode.. some people want CensusPlus to run in background with no messages to chat window or other indication addon exists on the UI.
CensusPlus Button animation (of sorts) to either spin the button image when a Census take is running.. or maybe to have the button change to a countdown number on the tens... 100,90,80....
Cleaning up the whole Auto-Census - Auto-start understanding.. note the tooltip.  May add a number field to the right of the slider with the whole number in minutes and an indicator when the timer setting trigger Auto-start on character login.
I'm also thinking about adding a radio button set to indicate the minimum character scanned.  Currently we scan MAX-Level to 1. While the addon uses the whole range the website hasn't displayed anything below 10 in a long time... so I'm thinking of allowing scans to stop at 1 or 10.
Some options will auto-select and be locked based upon other choices made by the user.
I may also add the ability to switch between multiple sound files for the end of census run. I use this feature currently to let me know when a run is finished in US or EU regions... I have run both at the same time on different WoW clients.

I will also be redoing the existing options window to:
A; redirect to the Blizzard for Account wide
B: allowing a per character overrides of {some of} the options

For example you may want Stealth mode with visible CensusPlus Button animated when a Census take is in progress.
But on some characters you want to have verbose or total stealth with only the chat window command lines to interact with CensusPlus.

[img]http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag4/Bringoutyourdead1s/WoWScrnShot_072314_185345_zpsb7ed0fba.jpg[/img]

[Balgair]

Looks good! I especially like the per-character override, think I'll have it set to Verbose by default and just switch it off for the characters I actually play, given I have rather more censusing alts than active characters!

Animated button is a neat idea, I like it - a more subtle version of letting you know it's running than having verbose on

[Padanfain]

Awesome!

I would like all the options available on some toons, somewhere in between for some and stealth sounds good for the regular play toons so the per user override and animated button sounds perfect.

To stop at 1 or 10. The majority of bank alts, auction alts, etc fall in the 1-10 range. I think CP should census all but.... Eliminating levels 1-10 would re-leave a bit of database size and processing time for the website. EDIT: Eliminate levels 1-9 and display 10-max. So, could you census and credit user accounts for those submissions but not burden WCR with having to remember all those abandoned or non leveled toons? WCR would only know levels 10-Max in a search but still credit everyone for seeing those level 1-9 toons?

[bringoutyourdead]

Nope this still isn't the options screen.. just another iteration.
I've decided that having two different options screens would just confuse people.. so I'm merging it into one screen.

The power of 3:
Opening options screen
1 - /census options
2 - right click census button and select options from menu
3 - click the options button from the CensusPlus window

But it does bring up issues to resolve..
Some options can be selected like above via command line, or button or option window.
Other options need to be handled via the option window only

Some options may need to be set account wide only,
others may need to be set only on the current logged in character,
and others may be dual settable.. so need to have visual tracking of which is the overriding option.

For example setting Verbose mode:
/censusverbose will toggle Verbose mode off and on but it will not change options settings.

Checking the 'Verbose' box while in AccountWide(AW) mode changes the account wide setting but may not change the actual mode.. if a CharacterOnly(CO) is set and overriding.
Which leads back to the power of 3:
Each CO setting will need three exclusive possibilities - On, Off, or {removed/disabled/ignored}
The first two will override the AW setting the last will remove any override.

so back to the graphics coding.. since the below isn't going to work.





and oh yeah.. I know I have a bug.. checking the Verbose check box triggers two messages while removing the check only triggered the correct one message.

[bringoutyourdead]

300+ lines of code (but I can shrink that down with more efficient coding style).. at this point I just want to get the layout correct and some linking of graphics to code processing. I've gotten down to Waldo.. but the rest of the graphics need to be coded.

1st buttons are radio buttons.. they are suppose to work by select one station and the other(s) deselect... unfortunately this isn't working as I hoped and the only people who know how the radio button code works is Blizzard.. they use them in very few places such as the GM Survey. The template isn't exposed to us mere mortals.

The AW side is one checkbutton type.. and the CO side is another. While they both are Checkbox buttons.. minor little things like tooltips have different key words. It took awhile to figure that out.

Note the existing character only side has the character's name. The three boxes are [enable] [disable] [remove]

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On another note: The problem with current CensusPlus (and a number of other addons) with the latest release of Battlenet launcher hasn't yet found a resolution. So please follow the instructions in the Announcements forum.

[bringoutyourdead]

And the selection functions for Verbose are all finished and tested,
Oh wait.. I have figured out more about Radio Buttons in WoW.. time to throw all the graphic and code away and start again... well not really.
Having done the selectors using check boxes I discovered a little issue-
I could either explicitly have the three conditions or I could just do the two and assume that everyone would realize the third condition existed.
Right Assume more defensive coding to protect against bad assumptions.

The more I work on the options screen, the more I realize that I can do both account wide and current character only (CCO) on the one screen.

The radio buttons at the top don't need to be there.. only the column headers

The CCO area will be turned into radio buttons where the options for the character override is ENABLE, DISABLE, REMOVE any override.
With Default being REMOVE.

actions of setting these buttons are:
if CCO ENABLE then do action - account wide ignored
if CCO DISABLE then block action - account wide ignored.
if no CCO then the account wide actions are enable or block

things are going well... who knows, some day I might be able to do census runs or maybe even just play the game.

[bringoutyourdead]

What with missing levels, I got side tracked.
Here is the fun I had yesterday:
Our well known and beloved (ok 1 out of 2 isn't bad)
IS DEAD!
Long live the new.. which is just a little smaller and has the standard look of other mini-map style buttons. I will probably play with the Font a little. This is what you see when not active on a census.

And that allows us to have

Which shows an interesting confusion factor:
In the C+ window, Scan Progress is the number of queries still in the queue stack awaiting processing with the next one up.
While in the chat, Census+ Sending is the current request going to the server for processing
and Census+ Who query is the last data sent back by the server.

From the image you can see we are at 21-30, sending 31-40, and just got back 41-50 .. which the button shows as 41

I'm thinking about having the button follow sending query not data received.

[bringoutyourdead]

I've been playing with the related options .. playing "whack an option", the programmers version of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whac-A-Mole

the two interacting options are Verbose and Stealth
You can have Verbose OR Stealth but not both.. but you can have both turned off.
Then there is the Account wide vs. Current Character Override.

So if you have Verbose AW.. and then select Stealth for current characters..
the various buttons have to interact.
Since you have a CCO.. the AW options are left as is.. and the CO option for Verbose is turned off (not left at removed).

and then there is the command line override.. that works the CO override.

Oh and I'm thinking about getting ride of /censusverbose.. and just leaving /census verbose since Verbose isn't the unique action it use to be.

I've taken a break for the rest of the day.. since I also need to play whack a spammer .. and need to clear my head.

[bringoutyourdead]

Things are looking good.
I've added the ability to have and select from three different Census finished sound files.
The addon will go out with only the default CensusComplete1.ogg
Users who are interested can grab their favorite sound snippet and use free software to convert to the Ogg Vorbis format which is supported by Blizzard in game.
I've mentioned else where in the forums which sounds I'm using.

If you have been following along you will see a lot of customization possibilities.

I'm using the Blizzard Options Panel interface.
While I'm resetting the panel from our saved data files, both Account wide and Character specific.
I'm not yet using the OKAY(save) and CANCEL(revert back to settings existing before Options Panel is opened).
That will be last part of the Options testing as I currently have lots of debug tracking spewing into the chat window, and doing a mass update on OKAY can cause me to miss problems.

Almost all options are both Account Wide and Current Character override only.
For example
Playing end of Census sound
Option to enable or disable AW.. with override options to enable, disable or remove override.
Then you have the 3 files.. By default we keep the existing sound.
We can have any one of the three AW.. and override with any of the three.
I think you can get the idea.

The sound enable and sound file selections interact.
Census Button enable and animation interact.
Stealth, standard mode(no options enabled), Verbose all interact, you can have a very chatty addon, a lesser chatty that tracks your option changes, or a totally silent chat with no CensusPlus text.
I've thought about having census run verbose chat only, disabling all the other information lines.. but ratio of chat is such that in full verbose mode you probably wouldn't even notice the other notices unless you were specifically looking for them

The only option (currently) that is only Account wide is the use of Logarithmic bars vs. non-scaled bars. To be honest not using logarithmic doesn't make any sense to me, but I'll leave that option available.

[bringoutyourdead]

WoD beta has enabled full support for addons.

Besides almost all the I had hoped to include, I have also added:

The ablility to adjust the background transparency on the CensusPlus window..
using a slider in the options window you can adjust between 10 different levels (Blizzard limits)

Fixed the Guild display list such that on selecting the Guilds home realm...
if that is the only realm available (i.e. no connected realms) then the Guild name displays
if the realm is a member of a connected set then full guildID is displayed Guildname-GuildRealm.

[bringoutyourdead]

Here is how things are looking at this time.

Background adjusted to maximum transparency.
Note the Guild names
And yes these shots are from live so levels 91-100 are showing max bars (along with level 90)
Assuming Blizzard goes as they did with MoP.
The pre-expansion release will have a CensusPlus release with these non-existant levels blank until Blizzard turns on the Xpac and the levels go live.


And to much darker..(I don't remember if this shot was minimum transparency or not)



And here is Blizzards options window open to the addon tab and CensusPlus.
Note the CensusPlus button which I dragged to be near the top right corner of the window.


The chat window has lots of CensusPlus messages, these happen when you are in the options window to reinforce understanding of the changes made.
During normal running of CensusPlus they don't appear.
After the Beta testers and I have had some time banging on the new code, I may trim back those messages if we find they aren't really needed.

Oh and ignore everything from Waldo on down.. those are just space fillers in case I discover another option for users to adjust.