Hermes - a new cooldown addon

[Alge]

Hermes (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/hermes.aspx)

This new addon has a lot of potential for solving the long-standing problem of tracking cooldowns on slaves. It is very easy to set up and use. The only issue with it from a multiboxing perspective currently is that it is raid-only. The author has stated he plans to add party support at a later date.

Oh, I am not the author. :)

Alge

[Ualaa]

Thanks for sharing.
It looks to have decent potential for us.

Rated battlegrounds, is a raid environment.
But it would be nice for using in a party, for questing or heroics.

[Altsoba]

Thanks Alge.

From the author (posted 1h ago):

"I had a good test run last night in an ICC + Ulduar clear. I'm much more confident about the stability. I'll be adding Party support and have it tested and uploaded before the weekend ends."

Great news :)

[remanz]

good find.

this indeed is a "long-standing problem of tracking cooldowns on slaves". the add-on will get a lot of usage.

[Alge]

The author has now added party support. There is also some discussion about proposed functionality over at the curse page linked above.

Alge

[Paperplate]

Hi, I'm the author. I ran into this forum via Google search. I was caught off guard by the dual-box community having a use for this.

Oddly enough, I used to dual box a bit (only two accounts) but never got into it anymore than alt tabbing between windows :) The good news though is that I do have an understanding of some of the complexities (I did experiment when various popular tools for sharing key strokes, arranging windows, etc.). Just enough to have a lot of respect for you folks.

I'll try to keep an eye on this thread,

[Paperplate]

Btw, I just realized you are the perfect people to seek some ideas from. I've been working on a way to "drag out" a spell so that you can see the cooldown info withou relying on the hover tooltip.

Here's a quick video I made so you can get the idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLGIM9EaG3I

What I still haven't figured out is a *compact* way to show the data when it's pulled out like that. I despise timer bars with a passion.

The best idea I had so far is a pretty simple one. Something like this (Where "Ready" might be a checkbox instead of text):



[S1][Player1 Ready]
[Player2 0:20]
[Player3 0:57]
No timer bars, just name and time, and probably limited to a small handful of players instead of all of them. As concerns raiding, we generally want to know who has the spell available. So if there were 5 people all with the spell on cooldown I'd show only the first 3 for example.

An alternative might be...


[S1][Player1 Ready][Player2 0:20][Player3 0:57]
Or perhaps even something more compact where names get truncated based on how wide you set the box...


[S1][Pl.. Ready][Pl.. 0:20][Pl.. 0:57]


[S1][Pl.. Ready]
[Pl.. 0:20]
[Pl.. 0:57]
I'd think these compact choices would be terrible for you though.

My main concern is to be "compact", "unobtrusive" and "without distraction".

[Ualaa]

If the display showed the first five names, or even a configurable number of names, that would be great for us.
Possibly a group mode and a raid mode.

Just throwing around ideas.

[Alge]

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c238/AClay/Hermes/HermesExample1.jpg

The above screenshot shows how I currently use Hermes. The bartender bars are set up in the same arrangement as my G13 and I monitor the cooldowns on my main (pally in this shot) using those. I too am not a fan of cooldown bars and have moved away from them in my UIs, preferring to use buttons.

Above the bartender bars is Hermes, tracking 6 cooldowns (although having Chain Lightning there is pretty pointless) on my 4 shaman slaves.

I see an immediate use for the drag and drop functionality in mirroring the key layout of my G13, but for my slaves. Of course this wouldn't work as simply for a mixed-class group.

Another use for the drag-and-drop might be to allow custom ordering of the spells being monitored.

I have some ideas for dragging-out spells. Will post again after I have played around with some mockups.

[Altsoba]

Hi, I'm the author. I ran into this forum via Google search. I was caught off guard by the dual-box community having a use for this.

Oddly enough, I used to dual box a bit (only two accounts) but never got into it anymore than alt tabbing between windows :) The good news though is that I do have an understanding of some of the complexities (I did experiment when various popular tools for sharing key strokes, arranging windows, etc.). Just enough to have a lot of respect for you folks.

I'll try to keep an eye on this thread,

Welcome Paperplate,

Thank you for your great addon. We've been needing it for quite some time.
Is a party proc warning something in your plans for this addon? This is also one of our most urgent needs and we've been looking forward to it.

Cheers,
A.

[Alge]

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c238/AClay/Hermes/HermesExample2.jpg

Above I have made a mockup of how I imagine a pulled out spell might look. You can use the same format as cooldown timers do with the text, appending "m" for minutes and a plain number indicating seconds, to save a little space. I would also abbreviate names but I do this already and am used to it. You would probably want to add some ability to select how the text was anchored to the button, particularly if you didn't limit the number of displayed cooldowns to some small number. Being able to make pulled-out buttons larger might also be useful.

I imagine this functionality would be most useful for a raid leader who needs to manage (or at least monitor) resources during a long, multi-phase boss fight. Most of my boss fights don't last long enough to warrant this.

[Paperplate]

I see an immediate use for the drag and drop functionality in mirroring the key layout of my G13, but for my slaves. Of course this wouldn't work as simply for a mixed-class group.

Another use for the drag-and-drop might be to allow custom ordering of the spells being monitored.

A few things.

1) I'm an investigating the ability to create more "frames" that hold the buttons. You would drag and drop the buttons between frames. This would solve your desire to mimic the G13 key layout, you'd create a frame for each row and only throw the buttons in there you wanted.

2) Drag and drop to set custom button orders seems like a great idea to me. I'll think about what it might mean to accomplish. I suspect it could be considerable effort and would require an "auto sort vs. manual sort" option. This would solve your secondary desire. I acknowledge that I currently have no sorting options and it's just sorted by spell name and anchor point. I've knew I'd have to tackle this eventually. Since implementing drag and drop, it opens up some options to for setting a custom order without some nasty config dialog.

3) Hermes lacks precise layout control, I hope to avoid it. But I see the need, especially for the button containers and especially when looking at your screenshots.

Edit: Thanks for the additional mockup. Here are my thoughts at the moment. Keep in mind, I'm interesting in something useful to all users, not specifically dual boxing:

1) Multiple button containers.
2) Buttons can live in a container or be free floating.
3) Free floating buttons can (optionally) show additional data (like your mockup)
4) Non free floating buttons might also optionally show additional data (like your mockup), but still reside inside a frame with other buttons.
5) The optional data would be expanded/collapsed by clicking on the button.
6) I concur with the need for options to customize the behavior.
7) How's Shadow Labs treating you? :P

I am trying to look at the big picture and start where the most value is. I have not decided what of the above I will actually do. But I wanted to share my current thought process.

One more note, I have added ability to track item cooldowns now (but still testing and not released). So Soulstones should work and other things like trinkets, Saronite Bombs, you get the idea. Support was more complex than I thought so I'm concerned about bugs. And I'm not done.

[Paperplate]

Is a party proc warning something in your plans for this addon?

Could someone please explain what a party proc warning is? I'm not sure I have the right thing in mind. I was thinking you're asking about some proc that a player in the party has active, a.k.a, an aura.

If so, that is beyond the scope of Hermes current message protocol. Which would mean something in the future, if at all. As you know, requiring people to use addons is bad enough. A constantly changing protocol forcing upgrades needs to be avoided at all costs.

It's possible to be done though. I would start to get worried about the amount of messages sent between players at that point.

[Alge]

A few things.

1) I'm an investigating the ability to create more "frames" that hold the buttons. You would drag and drop the buttons between frames. This would solve your desire to mimic the G13 key layout, you'd create a frame for each row and only throw the buttons in there you wanted.

2) Drag and drop to set custom button orders seems like a great idea to me. I'll think about what it might mean to accomplish. I suspect it could be considerable effort and would require an "auto sort vs. manual sort" option. This would solve your secondary desire. I acknowledge that I currently have no sorting options and it's just sorted by spell name and anchor point. I've knew I'd have to tackle this eventually. Since implementing drag and drop, it opens up some options to for setting a custom order without some nasty config dialog.

3) Hermes lacks precise layout control, I hope to avoid it. But I see the need, especially for the button containers and especially when looking at your screenshots.


As it stands, Hermes is so much easier to use and nicer to look at than the other options we have for tracking cooldowns that I would continue to use it without any further changes. I'm also anal enough to manually align as many buttons as needed. :) Having said that, if you don't ask... Setting custom button order through drag-and-drop sounds like the way to go if you can manage to sort on some sort of button index.

It's also important to make your addon as easy to use as possible, so anything you can do to avoid complicated configuration dialogs will likely result in more users.


Edit: Thanks for the additional mockup. Here are my thoughts at the moment. Keep in mind, I'm interesting in something useful to all users, not specifically dual boxing:

1) Multiple button containers.
2) Buttons can live in a container or be free floating.
3) Free floating buttons can (optionally) show additional data (like your mockup)
4) Non free floating buttons might also optionally show additional data (like your mockup), but still reside inside a frame with other buttons.
5) The optional data would be expanded/collapsed by clicking on the button.
6) I concur with the need for options to customize the behavior.
7) How's Shadow Labs treating you? :P

I am trying to look at the big picture and start where the most value is. I have not decided what of the above I will actually do. But I wanted to share my current thought process.

One more note, I have added ability to track item cooldowns now (but still testing and not released). So Soulstones should work and other things like trinkets, Saronite Bombs, you get the idea. Support was more complex than I thought so I'm concerned about bugs. And I'm not done.

I completely understand your desire to make a widely-useful addon. All of the above sounds useful, particularly the item cooldowns. I'm already imagining where I'll put my trinket cooldown tracking bar. :)

However, I imagine the most useful to the widest audience would be to be able to pull out single spells and track their cooldowns with some sort of permanent tooltip-like info (which is the thinking behind the mockup). If I start mentioning particular spells though I'll just show my ignorance of WoW's raiding environment.

And since you asked, I'm enjoying going back and doing the BC content again. It's pretty easy with my current party and I love being able to AFK for 10 minutes in the middle of an instance if I need to without putting others out or to just stare at the dungeon dressing for a while.

[seastar]

I go through the code and found hermes is implemented by teammembers send the cooldown related information to you.

I found in the WOW, there is a event call: UNIT_SPELLCAST_SUCCEESSED, in the event, the unit and the spellname are all provided.

So is it possible to use this event to monitor the cooldown of your teammembers? Is there any bad performance with this solution, like impact the game performace, etc?

I write a small addon to do it and it look ok. But because of my poor programming, I only can write the simple addons for my specific char and also the specific spell i want to monitor.

[Noids]

Is there any way to apply this tool to work with procs and holy light/lightning shield charges?

[Alge]

To those asking about procs...

If the proc is aura-based then this information is already exposed by the WoW API (using UnitAura) without going to all the trouble of message passing that Hermes has to go to to provide cooldown information. Hermes has to pass messages because GetSpellCooldown does not accept a unitID as an argument. Non-aura based procs or similar information like Combo points, Holy Power or Soul Shards are also exposed by the API for anything with a unitID and so message passing is again overkill.

In the below screenshot of my party frames you can see that I am showing the Maelstrom Weapon aura (which is a proc) from my shaman slaves as well as the number of stacks. This is done using a custom LuaText in Pitbull but there are other ways of doing this for different unit frames I imagine. I will post the exact code I used when the servers are up in case anyone wants to replicate this functionality. It may also be worth keeping an eye on the addon unitDoodles (http://wow.curseforge.com/addons/unitdoodles/) which is currently in Alpha testing and may be easier to set up.

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c238/AClay/Hermes/PitBullLuaTextExample1.jpg

Alge

[Paperplate]

I go through the code and found hermes is implemented by teammembers send the cooldown related information to you.

I found in the WOW, there is a event call: UNIT_SPELLCAST_SUCCEESSED, in the event, the unit and the spellname are all provided.

So is it possible to use this event to monitor the cooldown of your teammembers? Is there any bad performance with this solution, like impact the game performace, etc?

I write a small addon to do it and it look ok. But because of my poor programming, I only can write the simple addons for my specific char and also the specific spell i want to monitor.

That is a perfectly acceptable approach, and will work. However, it has some technical issues (then again, so does the approach Hermes takes).

1. There are a LOT of items in the game where the cooldown changes based on spec, glyphs, other procs, etc. For example, Guardian Spirit used to act such that if it triggered the cooldown would be 3 minutes, otherwise 1. This causes any addon that monitors the spell to create custom code to handle specifically that spell. The approach Hermes takes requires no custom coding. Which means it's more resilient over time such as when new patches are released.
2. In order to know who a spell is cast on, you have to track the casters target and/or utilize the combat log.
3. The more complicated scenarios require monitoring what's known as the COMBAT_EVENT_LOG. This is the biggest performance sync in all of wow. Many addons utilize the combat log. If your computer is old, it's a noticeable impact on frame rate.

Not sure if you've ever looked at the CPU usage of Hermes, but it's extremely light compared to similar addons. And it's because I don't monitor combat log events, or UNIT_AURA events. In a raid environment, these events are sent hundreds to thousands of times per minute.

Again, the approach you're talking about will work, and it's easy for spells that are conisidered "static" in that their cooldowns are always the same no matter what. But when making a general addon for all classes and spells it can get complex quickly.

[Paperplate]

Is there any way to apply this tool to work with procs and holy light/lightning shield charges?

No, not today. And that's not within the scope of what I want Hermes to do. Hermes only looks at cooldowns of spells or items. It doesn't look at auras (buffs and debuffs) on players.

[Paperplate]

To those asking about procs...

If the proc is aura-based then this information is already exposed by the WoW API (using UnitAura) without going to all the trouble of message passing that Hermes has to go to to provide cooldown information. Hermes has to pass messages because GetSpellCooldown does not accept a unitID as an argument. Non-aura based procs or similar information like Combo points, Holy Power or Soul Shards are also exposed by the API for anything with a unitID and so message passing is again overkill.

In the below screenshot of my party frames you can see that I am showing the Maelstrom Weapon aura (which is a proc) from my shaman slaves as well as the number of stacks. This is done using a custom LuaText in Pitbull but there are other ways of doing this for different unit frames I imagine. I will post the exact code I used when the servers are up in case anyone wants to replicate this functionality. It may also be worth keeping an eye on the addon unitDoodles (http://wow.curseforge.com/addons/unitdoodles/) which is currently in Alpha testing and may be easier to set up.

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c238/AClay/Hermes/PitBullLuaTextExample1.jpg

Alge

Thanks, looks like I understood it correctly then. Please see my above two replies. Hermes focus is on knowing who has what spells available. I don't plan to support anything that monitors auras.

I also have an addon called FulllThrottle that monitors these things (but not in a way that's useful to you). So I'm familiar with the necessary events and API techniques.

[zenga]

Add castbars and you'll become the multiboxing communities wet dream (and hero).

[Paperplate]

Working prototypes to show my progress. Should give you a sense for how much things can be adjusted. And there really aren't that many options either so pretty straight forward. It's quite intentional that there are no time values.

The amount of player names shown is configurable. In these screenshots, it's set to 3. No doubt people will not want to see empty names but I left them there to help visualize (and debug)

The compact layout (current layout) and some examples of horizontal layouts (player names grow horizontally):

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/2351/exhorz.jpg

Some vertical layout examples:

http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/121/exvert.jpg

[Kalyse]

O my. This is insane.

Thank you very much.,

[Alge]

Those are looking great.

[Paperplate]

Beta5 released, check home page (http://wow.curseforge.com/addons/hermes/pages/main/)

I put a lot of time into this and tested as best as I could considering. I anticipate a few UI issues here and there with hopefully no more than a handful of serious issues. I'd like to say this release is "rock solid" but honestly, when you use it, you'll see how much Hermes has changed over the last week.

Again, I expect some issues. Hopefully nothing disastrous!

Changes:


Multiple button containers (create as many as you need)
Drag and drop buttons between containers (tip: middle mouse button will instantly move a button to it's prior container if it had one.)
Tic Tacs! a.k.a something that sounds more fun than "player name bars". Dive into the Tic Tacs tab in the Container config to play around with them. Tic Tacs are intended to be a way to immediately view who has something available. It prevents the need to rely on the tooltip. Note that each container has it's own Tic Tac settings.
Take advantage of the individual container settings and the middle mouse button to move buttons during combat!
Much better defaults for new profiles. In fact, if you don't mind losing your prior saved spells you may wish to consider resetting your profile to pick up the new defaults (or delete the "welcome" value in your lua config).
Much improved support for adding new item cooldowns. Hermes will allow you to add the item even if it doesn't know it's name yet (it's a Blizzard thing). Hermes will periodically check while your game is running to find the actual names. This allows you to use it right away. Note: still requires itemid if not something in your inventory.
Added basic slash commands /hermes



This screenshot says a lot of the story I hope. I just mashed three differently styled containers together and took a screenshot.
http://media.curse.com/Curse.Projects.ProjectImages/27669/28176/multiple.jpg

[Alge]

Seems to be working great through 3 instance runs and some questing. I'm using a combination of spell and item cooldowns.

I love the containers. I'm using 10 without any issues. Being able to scale the buttons is also a welcome addition.

I've tested the Tic Tacs but am unlikely to use them very often. The tooltip meets most of my needs.

I appreciate all the work that goes into this.

EDIT: Ob. purdy screenie

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c238/AClay/Hermes/HermesExample3.jpg

[Paperplate]

yeah I thought about the whole container thing being a "cheap hack" for allowing you to line stuff up. It's lame that Hermes doesn't support your needs but at least you found something to make it work.

I am still unsure how I want to handle button ordering so I'm holding off. We'll see what feedback comes in I suppose.

Thanks for the update. BTW, I'm going to look into the ability to "nudge" the containers with the keyboard. I used to use an addon called macaroon that let you do that. It'd probably help you a lot and it would avoid me having to add a bunch of edit boxed to the config.

Oh, and I very much appreciate your help. I can't think of anyone else running 5 clients at once who might actually notice odd issues better. For your reward, I offer you this screenshot where I was doing some stress testing....:)

http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/4931/stress0.jpg

[Bloodcloud]

hi,

First grats and thanks for the cool addon.
Definitively very useful.

Is there also an option to make the buttons click through (if thats not already the case) (and remove the mouseover) , so I can use them as onscreen buttons on alts ?

I had problems getting the following things to work:

- Mage - Mirror Image
- Belf Racials : Arcane Torrent
- Orc Racials: Blood Fury

suggestion:
- in the item view: Amount of items (e.g. Mage: Mana Gems 3/3) (Lock: soul shards (if possible))

[Paperplate]

Is there also an option to make the buttons click through (if thats not already the case) (and remove the mouseover) , so I can use them as onscreen buttons on alts ?

I had problems getting the following things to work:

- Mage - Mirror Image
- Belf Racials : Arcane Torrent
- Orc Racials: Blood Fury

suggestion:
- in the item view: Amount of items (e.g. Mage: Mana Gems 3/3) (Lock: soul shards (if possible))

No options for click through or not showing the tooltip. I'll think about that. I think it's not going to be a common request but feel free to suggest otherwise. I'm just speculating.

Can you do me a favor and post the spellid's that Hermes picked up for those three spells? You can find it by going to the spells tab, locating the spell, and hovering over the name. The tooltip will show you the ID. I'm not sure what's wrong off hand but that's the likely culprit.

For example, it looks like Blizz decided to give arcane torrent a different spellid per race:
http://www.wowhead.com/search?q=arcane+torrent#abilities

The item view request is the tricky part. It does actually show the amount of items, but it's not really how many items there are TOTAL. It's how many players have at least one of that item. Which is the point of Hermes. It *should* be showing you how many players have at least one of that item. If it's not please let me know. I think summing up the total amount of items across all players and displaying that (if that's what you're requesting) isn't the idea behind Hermes. Please correct me as I am guessing I'm misunderstanding.

[Paperplate]

I just created a Horde toon to check your spell issues. Definitely not much I can do about it but here is the solution.

When I added "Mirror Image" Hermes picked up spellid 36847 which is not the right one. It picked this (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=36847) up instead. To fix it, delete your current Mirror Image and add it again, but this time type this number instead of the name: 55342

For Arcane Torrent check the link I posted above and find the number matching your toon's class. Sorry but there's no other way to handle it :( Unfortunately this brought up a weakness in Hermes, which is that if you really want to track it you'd need one per class you want to track. That seems highly unoptimal :(

Looks like the same issue with Blood Fury: http://www.wowhead.com/search?q=Blood+Fury#abilities

Hermes can't do much about the fact that it finds the wrong spellid. There's no way around it except to perhaps give you a list of all the mtches and let you try to select one. But that's not as simple as it might sound, and in some cases that list is huge (more than 20).

Cheers! and thanks for the feedback and suggestions.

[Bloodcloud]

No options for click through or not showing the tooltip. I'll think about that. I think it's not going to be a common request but feel free to suggest otherwise. I'm just speculating.


Since pressing the button doesn't do anything, no click-through necessary.
An option to switching off the mouse over would be nice (since I have a mixed team and only one of each every ability is only on one toon, so the mouseover info has there no added value. I agree that in a raid it is valuable info)


Spell-IDs ... all works fine now.

I just added ALL spell IDs for the racial abilities. The abilities are per CLASS. which actually gives my multiclass team one icon per toon, which is great :)

Same happened with Archangel. I just added all. will filter later on "someone is sending it" and ore make a container per toon.
Found the right Mirror Image and it is being sent - great :)




The item view request is the tricky part. It does actually show the amount of items, but it's not really how many items there are TOTAL. It's how many players have at least one of that item. Which is the point of Hermes. It *should* be showing you how many players have at least one of that item. If it's not please let me know. I think summing up the total amount of items across all players and displaying that (if that's what you're requesting) isn't the idea behind Hermes. Please correct me as I am guessing I'm misunderstanding.
I mean in detail the Mana gem (see second container) would be nice if I would see for that item how many my Mage still has.
(not all the Mages in my team :)

I doubt that it will work for the soul shards, since they are no item or spell. they are something like combo points for rogues ??

http://www.cute-one.com/misc/hermes.png

Is there any way of forcing an order in the icons, like first this spell, then this ability, then this item ...

GREAT stuff this Addon.

Cheers
BC

[Alge]

I (partly) avoid the issue of having to add multiple SpellIDs by using the addon SpellID (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/spellid.aspx) on all my characters. To find the SpellID I can then switch to that character and mouseover the spell in its spellbook. I believe there is an equivalent for ItemIDs.

Paperplate, would you think about incorporating this functionality into your addon? It might solve some of the frustrations of setting up Hermes for new users. They would still need to ask the other members of their raid to mouseover the spell or item but at least there wouldn't be an additional addon to install. Maybe make an option to show SpellID/ItemID in the tooltip.


I doubt that it will work for the soul shards, since they are no item or spell. they are something like combo points for rogues ??

Soul Shards (and Holy Power for Pallies and Eclipse for Druids) are actually a form of Power (like mana, energy and rage) I believe. They should be able to be monitored by a standard unit or raid frame addon (possibly with some tinkering). I could do using LuaTexts in Pitbull for instance.

Oooh, just saw the latest alpha release of Hermes has container positioning - will have to play with that this afternoon :)

[Paperplate]

Throwing spellid in the tooltip is a fantastic idea. I'll definitely do that.

In regard to positioning. There is a bit of a complexity in regard to the anchor point and that fact that you really don't have control over width/height. If your anchor point is always upper left, then no issues. But if it's something else then things might not line up as one expects. I might change the positioning behavior before the next beta. Long story short, the "free flowing layout" design causes more issues than I'd ever have anticipated!

[Paperplate]

I changed X, Y positioning behavior and I'm going to push an actual release. These things can stay in beta forever, what's the point?

[Mercurio]

This is fabulous Paperplate. From the perspective of a solo raid boxer, this may actually allow me to use some of the cool tricks that are available to all the classes. To this point I've just been using the basics because using all the extras has just seemed unmanagable.

Thanks for all the hard work!

[Paperplate]

I can't get over 10 man raids run by one person.........:P You guys impress the hell out of me.

Bloodcloud (http://www.dual-boxing.com/member.php?u=19836), glad things are working out ok for you. I opted not to add the hiding of the tooltip because it's such an integral feature for the intended use of Hermes that it seems self defeating. BUT, that doesn't mean I don't understand why you want the behavior changed.

If you're at all comfortable with Lua it's real easy to comment out some code yourself. Open up Display.lua and locate line 1385 (in Release 1.0):

Change this:


function OnButtonEnter(button, mousebutton)
if(not button:IsDragging()) then --don't show the tooltip if we're dragging
HermesDisplay:ShowTooltip(button, button)
end
endTo this (add two dashes):


function OnButtonEnter(button, mousebutton)
if(not button:IsDragging()) then --don't show the tooltip if we're dragging
--HermesDisplay:ShowTooltip(button, button)
end
end

[Alge]

Congrats on the release Paperplate. It has been an interesting process watching the development of Hermes in real-time.

I had one minor issue but was unable to reproduce it. I have one container with one spell cooldown and two item cooldowns in it. At some point the item cooldown buttons disappeared from the container (presumably because the addon thought there were no senders). I was able to make them re-appear by togging (twice) the check box for hiding cooldowns without senders - it was initially checked.

I've been playing around with my layout of Bartender and Hermes and came up with the arrangement shown below. The smaller blue-bordered buttons are Hermes, the larger black-bordered ones are Bartender. Being able to monitor both sets of cooldowns (master and slaves) like this has given me a significant increase in DPS. Thanks :)

http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c238/AClay/Hermes/HermesExample4.jpg

Alge

[Paperplate]

At some point the item cooldown buttons disappeared from the container (presumably because the addon thought there were no senders). I was able to make them re-appear by togging (twice) the check box for hiding cooldowns without senders - it was initially checked.

Sounds like a tough one. What were the itemid's for the items. The least I can do is document them in case other reports come in. Also, was it a party or raid environment? I'm assuming party. Did anyone die around that time frame, get disconnected, or anything else that Hermes might have picked up on?

I think your assumption is correct about Hermes hiding it. You didn't happen to have the second option checked did you? There are two:
1. Hide Buttons without Senders
2. Hide Buttons without available Senders.

Also, as a shortcut if this happens again, especially while in combat, you can shift + left click a button to resync it.

[Paperplate]

On a completely off topic note here, I'm very curious how you dual box with your paladins. I think you are using 4 in your screenshot. I see a 4 next to Righteous Defense so I assume you have 4. For something like Crusader Strike, do you just wait until Hermes shows "4" and then hit one button that's mapped to all 4 paladins using the ability? Or do you more or less mash buttons and use the cooldown indicator to know when you can mash it again (and you don't really know who has it available you just know the toom that does will use it). I'm just curious of your general approach and how Hermes helps.

Thank you.

[Paperplate]

Also, I'm guessing that being able to have a Sender filter out spell requests would be useful to you. For example, if one one of your paladins is healing you wouldn't want to broadcast DPS or Tank related cooldowns.

I've wondered when someone would ask for some sort of blacklist/filering options on the senders end but no one has brought it up yet :)

[Alge]

Sounds like a tough one. What were the itemid's for the items. The least I can do is document them in case other reports come in. Also, was it a party or raid environment? I'm assuming party. Did anyone die around that time frame, get disconnected, or anything else that Hermes might have picked up on?

I think your assumption is correct about Hermes hiding it. You didn't happen to have the second option checked did you? There are two:
1. Hide Buttons without Senders
2. Hide Buttons without available Senders.

Also, as a shortcut if this happens again, especially while in combat, you can shift + left click a button to resync it.

I have both options checked. I couldn't shift+left click the button because they were not in the container. I was running in a party. It is entirely possible I may have reloaded the UI on one of my slaves around that time. The ItemIDs were:

37556 - Talisman of the Tundra
28042 - Regal Protectorate

I have sending and receiving enabled on my master and sending only enabled on my slaves. It's not a big issue, has only ever happened once and was easy to fix. I just thought I'd mention it in case it was was a symptom of something else. I'll play around with it later again if you'd like me to try and reproduce it.

Alge

[Alge]

Also, I'm guessing that being able to have a Sender filter out spell requests would be useful to you. For example, if one one of your paladins is healing you wouldn't want to broadcast DPS or Tank related cooldowns.

I've wondered when someone would ask for some sort of blacklist/filering options on the senders end but no one has brought it up yet :)

The ability to filter out spell requests is not an issue for me at all. I would just use the count on the Hermes button to know I still had one of those cooldowns available, which is exactly how Hermes is designed and a sensible behaviour. Also, I invariably DPS on my healers as well and just use stopcasting in macros if I need to ensure healing comes quickly when needed.

I am having trouble coming up with a scenario in which I would need sender filtering. Stupid faulty imagination!

Alge

[Alge]

On a completely off topic note here, I'm very curious how you dual box with your paladins. I think you are using 4 in your screenshot. I see a 4 next to Righteous Defense so I assume you have 4. For something like Crusader Strike, do you just wait until Hermes shows "4" and then hit one button that's mapped to all 4 paladins using the ability? Or do you more or less mash buttons and use the cooldown indicator to know when you can mash it again (and you don't really know who has it available you just know the toom that does will use it). I'm just curious of your general approach and how Hermes helps.


DISCLAIMER: There are different approaches to multi-boxing from my method. Some people (like me) prefer/use individual buttons for all abilities and manage the process of selecting abilities manually while others prefer/use /castsequence macros (and /click macros previously) which allows them to press a smaller number of keys/buttons to perform a rotation. From my reading, the latter approach becomes more useful/required for mixed/caster teams and the former is easier to manage for teams with a low number of classes/specs or melee teams. There are other threads on these forums discussing the merits of the various approaches.

The team I currently run is 1 Protection Paladin and 4 Enhancement Shamans. I drive the tank and the shamans are slaves, with windows visible on my other monitor. I have previously run DK tank + Holy Pally + 3 Ret Pallies but haven't gone back to them since the introduction of Holy Power. I prefer all-melee teams for some reason.

I bought a G13 about two weeks ago (and a G700 mouse for the extra buttons) . I am still training myself to use them effectively but they have been excellent purchases so far. I steer and DPS with my left hand on the G13 and heal/target with the mouse making a lot of use of Clique and repeater regions (for mouse broadcasting).

When I press a G13 key ISBoxer generally (with a couple of exceptions) justs broadcasts the same keypress to all clients. I have my action bars (with keybinds) set up in the same layout as the G13 keys. I try to match up similar abilities (especially cooldown length and range) as much as possible and the aim is to press 1 or 2 keys each GCD. Before Hermes I either just pressed 1 key per GCD and missed a lot of cooldowns on slaves or just mashed multiple buttons in the hope of hitting something not on cooldown.

These days a typical 3-4 mob instance pull would look like:
Avenger's Shield + 4 x Chain Lightning (I can now see the AS cooldown)
Consecration + 4 x Call of Elements (I can now see the Cons cooldown)
Judgements + 4 x various shocks (I can now see both the judgement and shock cooldowns, and they differ by 2 secs I think) Note: as shocks all share a cooldown I can do this with one Hermes button.
Mobs are now in range
Crusader Strike + 4 x Stormstrike (which often doesn't hit because the shamans aren't in melee range at that point but Hermes tells me if they have or not)
Shield of the Righteous + 4 x Lava Lash (I can now see the Lava Lash cooldowns)
Crusader Strike + 4 x Stormstrike again (this time Stormstrike will go on to cooldown)
Avenger's Shield + 4 x Chain Lightning (if Grand Crusader hasn't procced and AS is still on cooldown I will press another ability before the GCD is up which will only affect the pally)

From there it is mostly about pressing abilities as their cooldowns expire, sometimes pressing two keys per GCD if either the master or slaves has one key on cooldown. Eventually in long fights the shorter cooldowns on slaves will get out of sync (but using Hermes I know if this is the case! ) but movement and heavy healing tend to correct that a bit. Hermes is also great for knowing that one of my Earth Elemental totems failed to trigger, etc.

With the way I have Hermes and Bartender set up it is easy to monitor cooldowns for master and slaves together. I have no objective numbers but since containers were introduced to Hermes it feels like my DPS has increased significanly because I can monitor cooldowns on my slaves much more effectively with the result that I spend less time just doing white damage. My slaves now regularly out-DPS my tank. This was rarely the case before Hermes because I was wasting cooldowns on the slaves. I may even dual-spec my shamans into elemental. Being able to monitor cooldowns on Hermes will mean less time that my caster slaves stand around not casting because the key I pressed was on cooldown for them.

I would need to rethink my UI for a mixed team. I would still use Hermes but a bit differently. In such a case I would probably move more towards a macro-based approach and so the macro would handle cooldowns to some extent but I would still want to know what was happening.

Alge

[Paperplate]

It is entirely possible I may have reloaded the UI on one of my slaves around that time.

If you did reloadui, this would definitely have caused it. Briefly explained:

1. Your slave logs back in. It broadcasts a message "Hey! New Sender here!"
2. Receivers get that message and reset their data for that sender (this is why the buttons disappear).
3. The receivers then whisper a message to the sender "Hey, track these spells would ya?"
4. To which the sender would get that message and eventually send out an update for those spells if it has them.

In anything, something about step 4 may have gone awry in your case. It should have updated eventually.

I might consider eliminating step 2, not that it would help you. Just thinking out loud.

I just read your second post, that was a very entertaining read!! Thanks for taking the time to indulge me there. You're actually kind og lucky as it's pure luck that the strata level for the buttons on Hermes are higher than Bartender. That was the first thing I thought of when I saw your most recent screenshot :) Anyway, very information for me not just in how Hermes is helpful but in understanding just what it is that you are doing.

[Alge]

You're actually kind og lucky as it's pure luck that the strata level for the buttons on Hermes are higher than Bartender.

Actually they start off behind the Bartender buttons but clicking on them brings them to the front and then they seem to stay there, which I believe is due to this line in Display.lua:


button:SetToplevel(true)

I played around a bit trying to set the strata higher (button:SetFrameStrata("TOOLTIP") in HermesDisplay:CreateButton()) but I'm just starting to teach myself lua and the WoW API so I was lost when that didn't work. I suspect the strata is inherited from somewhere else and gets reset at some point. Anyway, it's no big deal and there is a simple workaround.

[Bloodcloud]

I can't get over 10 man raids run by one person.........:P You guys impress the hell out of me.

Bloodcloud (http://www.dual-boxing.com/member.php?u=19836), glad things are working out ok for you. I opted not to add the hiding of the tooltip because it's such an integral feature for the intended use of Hermes that it seems self defeating. BUT, that doesn't mean I don't understand why you want the behavior changed.



here is a screeny of my current setup

http://www.cute-one.com/misc/hermes1.png

as you can see I have overlay-ed the hermes panels over my buttons (which is actually just a background i made and display in kgpanels, one row of 8 buttons for Priest, shammy, mage, lock. Same for the 6Heal background next to the character name)

I have specified the areas as mouse-over areas, for which if I press a right mouse on that area sends a specific key to the other toon windows.
This works as if I have their action bars on my main. Hermes makes it possible to also see the cool-down for those abilities.

Also to have the cool-down displays directly close to my I-WIN button (the eye) is very handy.

(you said you don't understand) Since I have in my team exactly one Priest, shammy, lock, mage, I know which char has a cooldown and so I don't require the mouseover to see which one is on cooldown. (or even use tic tacs.) BUT this is a very specific case.
I currently didn't remove the mouseover, since It was not really impairing anything and everything works as intended.

I am very happy with the hermes addon. It has so much added value for my setup!! Thanks again Paperplate.

Cheers and keep up the good work :)
Bloodcloud

[Paperplate]

That's great! If there are small tweaks here and there that would make a big impact for you please don't hesitate to continue suggesting them. I may not agree with them all but I'm happy to consider them.

Mostly thing I'm trying to avoid are complex changes, fundamental changes, or changes that put more options in the users face that they won't care about. But I could easily allow it to be set manually in a profile for example.

Hey, btw, I ran some tests with Hermes in a 9 man raid over 1 hour and 45 minutes. Here is what the bandwidth looked like:

http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/7688/capturetg.jpg

[Paperplate]

I recently made a few changes and one feature was added which *might* be useful to the community here. Hermes now integrates with combat text addons including Parrot, SCT, and MikScrollingBattleText.

All this really means is that when a sender has a spell become available or go on cooldown then it'll show up in the notification area of any of those addons (if enabled). This is enabled on the general config page. Probably not too useful considering it's setup globally and not at the container or spell level. But thought I'd mention it anyway.

Also, if you're running tight on CPU with your multiboxing machines this build will perform even better (not that it ever performed badly)

I was forced to change the tooltip a bit due to some LibQTip bugs but I don't know if it'll negatively impact you. The spell name header just looks different and doesn't span columns now. I hope to change it back if LibQTip gets things figured out.

Home page link (http://wow.curseforge.com/addons/hermes/)

[Paperplate]

It's been ages since I've posted here, but thought I'd point out that I've added user specified ordering to containers now. You drag and drop the buttons to change the order. This was requested here a long time ago.

Also, I'm not sure how relevent it is to the community here, but Hermes now includes a Plugin and Event API which can potentially be used to extend what Hermes does. I think that could be a great opportunity for those of you looking to change how it works or perhaps even integrate it with other addons used for dual-boxing.

Release 1.1a
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/hermes.aspx

Do note however that you will lose your saved variables (there were simply too many changes to try and support keeping the old settings)

I'll let you decide whether it's worth upgrading to, but probably a good idea to backup your old saved variables in case there's something about the new Hermes that you don't like.

Cheers!

[Jafula]

Also, I'm not sure how relevent it is to the community here, but Hermes now includes a Plugin and Event API which can potentially be used to extend what Hermes does. I think that could be a great opportunity for those of you looking to change how it works or perhaps even integrate it with other addons used for dual-boxing.

Sweet, I'm keen to have a look at this and see if I can integrate it into Jamba by using your API; it will save me having to write similar functionality!

/aside
I tried the same thing as you regarding parrot / MSBT notification areas in Jamba, but it never seemed to get any momentum.

[Paperplate]

Sweet, I'm keen to have a look at this and see if I can integrate it into Jamba by using your API; it will save me having to write similar functionality!

/aside
I tried the same thing as you regarding parrot / MSBT notification areas in Jamba, but it never seemed to get any momentum.

Yes, if you can get people to actually use Hermes (which you can!!!) then the API should work perfectly for you.

I have not documented the Event API, and it's a first draft so likely a bit rough around the edges. But you can take a look at EventAPI.lua and the very top function Hermes:InitializeHermesEvents(). It lists all of the current events. I'll have to describe them soon and the parameters they pass. Still working on a few more features which includes another plugin. I'll do it a few weeks from now.

The new UI does it's thing using only the events listed. Well, I cheated here and there but I'm 99% truthful.

Send me a PM if you're serious about it, I'd be happy to work with you in meeting your goals.

[ebony]

Yes, if you can get people to actually use Hermes (which you can!!!) then the API should work perfectly for you.

I have not documented the Event API, and it's a first draft so likely a bit rough around the edges. But you can take a look at EventAPI.lua and the very top function Hermes:InitializeHermesEvents(). It lists all of the current events. I'll have to describe them soon and the parameters they pass. Still working on a few more features which includes another plugin. I'll do it a few weeks from now.

The new UI does it's thing using only the events listed. Well, I cheated here and there but I'm 99% truthful.

Send me a PM if you're serious about it, I'd be happy to work with you in meeting your goals.

Wow it woudl be great if you two could link up it make jamba so cool :D

btw Paperplate i might try this atm am useing Spellcooldown on a big bar button barmod useing "video feeeds" (isboxer tool) to do my cooldowns so i will have a look into this and see if it can be more fun :) thanks for join in on our fun.

This is my setup atm with bars
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_qtt3RZdN04g/Tb9aG6iZL3I/AAAAAAAAAxw/wkBgWP6iBh4/s1280/Setup1.jpg

[Paperplate]

btw Paperplate i might try this atm am useing Spellcooldown on a big bar button barmod useing "video feeeds" (isboxer tool) to do my cooldowns so i will have a look into this and see if it can be more fun :) thanks for join in on our fun.

I'm amazed at the creativity found in this community. That video feed things is cool :)

[Machoclown]

Thanks for this awesome add-on, I am using the light version of Hermes (party).
Darn, I have searched so long for something like this and now I have it :)

[Akoko]

How could I not have heard of this addon for so long!!

Going to install it first thing when I get home. Looks excellent.

Does it have a feature to track Eclipse bars? I am running 5x boomkins at the moment and I'm considering optimizing my setup so I don't have to wait for all of them to be in the same eclipse before switching between wrath and starfire or vice versa.