Party Step Tracking

[jasonolive]

My wife and I quest all the time and we both use Zygor. I think a new party tracking window that could show the step of each person and maybe their progress on that step would be amazing. I often have to look over on her screen to see where she is.

I have written a tiny addon that simply puts in party chat the current step every 15 seconds by reading ZGV.CurrentStepNum. However, it isn't very pretty and can be spammy for those long steps.

[michaelsammels]

I think this is a great idea. Especially when two people want to level together and person B doesn't have Zygor. The only question is though, how would you be able to track the steps of everyone else?

[cabby]

To track everyone's progress they would all need to use the same addon and that addon would need to communicate with other instances of itself. For now using Carbonite will do basically the same thing if setup for it.

[michaelsammels]

So essentially, you would need to setup Zygor for multiboxing. But yeah, no if this was an addon I'd use it. However, if you were to do that, I think the guide would need to do things like automatically accepting and handing in quests for both players.

[jasonolive]

I was hoping for something when both party members have Zygor. My wife doesn't slow down, I like to read quest text so sometimes she is 3 or 4 steps ahead of me without me even noticing. Maybe even a little window like the loot selling window for grey stuff that shows what step the other party members are on.

[cabby]

Haha, wife doesn't slow down.

Just have her auto-follow you. When you run up to an NPC to accept a quest she can accept the quest to but while she's on auto-follow she won't move until you do.

[michaelsammels]

Unless, of course, she gets fed up of reading the quest text and moves of her own accord

[jasonolive]

Exactly, getting quests are boring... killing is fun in her mind!

I have built a little frame that shows her step number and it communicates via AceComm. Now, I need to figure out how to raise events when Zygor steps to the next one. Currently, I just have a timer AceTimer that fires every 15 seconds.

[Zygor Dev 1]

We currently have no plans on providing party functionality, but... well, food for thought.
However, if you're into DIY, you could have your little addon communicate with its copy on your wife's machine, through AceComm, do the step number check every second instead of every 15 seconds, and just raise an alert when the step number changes or just is different than the current one.

[AussieEevee]

Exactly, getting quests are boring... killing is fun in her mind!

I have built a little frame that shows her step number and it communicates via AceComm. Now, I need to figure out how to raise events when Zygor steps to the next one. Currently, I just have a timer AceTimer that fires every 15 seconds.

If you get it figured out, can you release that addon on this site? Such a thing would be useful for me too.

[jasonolive]

I've uploaded what I've got to Dropbox, https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4479488/ZygorPartyTracker.zip

Instead of using a timer, I just hooked the Zygor frame update function. This way, as soon as I change guides or steps, my party member knows too.

Here is a sneak peak.
Screen Shot 2012-10-04 at 12.07.02 AM.jpg

The only real limitation I can think of is you can only have 1 party member for it to work and both need to have this addon.

[cabby]

That does look like a nice and simple little window. Not too much info. Now you know you'll get requests for it to handle a full party.

[jasonolive]

But if you are using Zygor for a full party, why bother. That's a pretty big hit in XP per kill. I get in a party with my wife just so we can spend our quality time together, even if it is on Azeroth...

[llvllrllvllo]

I love this idea, my wife loves to make alts and I'm always asking what step or ect she's on, I'll download this and try it out if I have any suggestions or feedback ill be happy to post.

EDIT: Looking over the source of Jasonolive's nice lil addon, in the ZPT:OnCommReceived function on success another if statement could be added to check how many players are in current raid\party and setup an extra window for each player that reports data.

Example: Player A & B are in a party and currently sharing info as the current function is setup, if Player C is added to the party and then inputs data as well the function could see if the updated data is coming from a known player (Player A or B) or a new unknown player (Player C) then a new window is created for Player C with there guide status in a new window frame. If done correctly I could only see that you would need one additional if statement added and wouldn't require too much modifications.

Question to Zygor Dev's: Could you share information on how the Guides Links are formatted. In viewer 4 you now have links to recent guides that take you to that guide and step. I would like to if possible update this lil tracker plugin/addon with a link that would be clickable simular to the recent guides. Obviously this would only be with Jasonolive's permission.

[jasonolive]

Your question to the devs is exactly what I wanted to add. This way when I move to a different dailies guide, my wife can click the guide name in my tracker window and be put on that guide too. I have no problem with you improving on what I have. Besides, isn't that what I did in the first place? Just made some improvements to Zygor.

For your recommendation on adding more players, I didn't think more than 2 people would be questing together anyway, way too boring just mowing over the baddies. But to make it work, we'd have to change the way the frame is shown. Right now, it is built by the XML file that gets instantiated automatically when WoW loads. I guess, change the xml frame into a template, and then create a lua table with multiple instances of the frame for each different party member.