Windower 4 - Discussion and Support

[Himay]

In your chatmon xml, is tell set to true?

Also, what about when you get examined and so forth, does it work then?

Tell is set to true. It gives no notification when I'm examined either.

[Buffy]

Tell is set to true. It gives no notification when I'm examined either.

Have you attempted to delete it, turn it off from the windower 4 config, then restart windower and re-download it?

[Byrthnoth]

I'd try logging in without windower first, and see if your tell chime comes back.

[chichicha]

ScoreBoard unloading works now. Thanks!

[grevenilvec75]

Windower deleted my send.lua addon and wont redownload it when i click the addons tab. PLZ FIX!

[Byrthnoth]

The next version of battlemod is going to go straight from packets to chat log, and as a result I have to re-implement all of FFXI's battle filters. In the interest of time and not making the settings file really really long, which filters do people actually use?

At the moment I have:
Type:
* Filter all melee "white" damage (non-WS)
* Filter all ranged "white" damage (non-WS)

By "actor":
* Filter damage/misses from Me
* Filter damage/misses from Party
* Filter damage/misses from Alliance
* Filter damage/misses from Others
* Filter damage/misses from Monsters
* Filter damage/misses from My pet
* Filter damage/misses from Other pets
Each of these is actually only one setting. Do people want to be able to screen damage done and misses separately? Also, do we need more control over whose "damage taken" shows?

[Jem]

The only time I filter misses but not hits is if I'm parsing but I don't care about other peoples accuracy. In future that isn't going to matter though if the parser is changed to go off the packet so I personally wouldn't care about them being split.

When on a DD job, I only have it display damage I take and not others if that's what you mean. I suppose it may be beneficial for some mages if they could filter it to show only specific people/parties taking damage / hit by debuffs but I wouldn't say that's critical. I imagine most mages go off the HP bars rather than react to damage displayed in the log (least that's what I do)

Other than that I pretty much use the filters you outlined.


EDIT: Sidenote but I remember you mentioning that it would display quicker than the standard chatlog if we go off the packet. Does that mean things like mobs readying moves will be displayed sooner? I.e. for stunning/avoiding/gear swap purposes.

[Sechs]

Allow me to better understand the full extent of this.
Does this mean addons like Battlemod (and parsers) will be able to get data directly from the packets exchanged between server and client, hence getting all the data in spite of the filters you activated locally on your client?

Does this also mean I'll be able, for Battlemod, to leave all filters off in my game client and then filter stuff (in a smarter way!) within Battlemod with its own filters?

[Byrthnoth]

Yes to all questions, but I need information on what smarter filters you want Battlemod to have so that I can make them. The problem with it is that it bypasses the normal client filters, so it'll leave your chat log totally unfiltered if people don't tell me what they want. This will also probably be the first time that people actually have to use the Settings file, because people use very different filters and I'm going to default all of the filters to off in the default settings file (because it's generally worse to miss messages you were expecting than to see messages you weren't expecting).

Battlemod v2 seems to speed things up by about 0-10 seconds depending on the message. Skillchains display immediately after weapon skills instead of waiting for the end of their animation, for instance. Readying Monster TP moves don't wait for the rays to come out of the monster.

If anyone is interested in beta testing it as it stands: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l7t0cw9zjcot3v3/bm2.zip
Do not re-name it. Just expand it in your add-on folder as bm2. Don't run it at the same time as battlemod or you may get weird chat messages, although I doubt it.

It has these issues, I think:
1) Items are still a little messed up (not sure how)
2) Abilities can't register a status at the moment (working on it, mostly relevant for things like Healing Waltz)
3) You're probably going to see white messages (say color) that I haven't seen because I do my testing mostly on Dancer. I'd definitely like to know what these are and what color they should be (identifying using another message with the same color works).
4) There's a chance that you won't see certain messages. I re-create all battle messages and then block messages with the chat color of battle messages that lack my invisible character in the front, so if I fail to generate battle messages (and then block the real one) then you just won't see it. So let me know if you're not seeing a message that you expect.

[Sechs]

I'm so excited about this Byth

but I need information on what smarter filters you want Battlemod to have so that I can make them

The ones you posted already seem more than enough for me, but I'll try to think a bit more about it.
One thing, as already mentioned, would be to split hit/miss, altough that's probably not a big issue in the end.
With FFXI normal filters I used to keep Hit/miss on for me, Hit On/Miss off for PT, and everything off for Alliance. I did this to reduce the spam.
But if I were able to filter Party/Alliance white damage but keep WS/JA/Spell damage on, then I wouldn't really be interested in further splitting this between hits and miss, I'd keep both on.

One thing that annoyed me about default FFXI filters is that for instance if you filtered "Foe actions started on alliance/others" and he started using an AoE (hence hitting everybody) move on someone not in your party, you wouldn't have been able to see the "Monsters start using xxx" message.

Also if possible I would add an option for your "repeated actions" filter. If I recall, at least on earlier builds, Battlemod filtered all sorts of identical actions occurring one after another, were they "equipment changed" lines or anything else.
I'd love a settings that allows you to turn this filter on exclusively for equipment.

[Byrthnoth]

Yeah, the multiple message canceling thing does not have that problem anymore. I also display blocks/Guards and show monster level on check if it is EP to IT. I will look in to adding those filter options. Maybe I will be changing the setting file format to xml.

[Khary]

I just wanted to let the Windower4 creators know they've done a great job creating this program. Thank you guys!

[ccl]

Battlemod:
Would using packet allow to see skillchain dmg if w/o bmn ?

Also it's prolly a know "issue" but on warrior, Retaliation doesn't show.

[Jem]

Battlemod:
Would using packet allow to see skillchain dmg if w/o bmn ?

Also it's prolly a know "issue" but on warrior, Retaliation doesn't show.

Should do since it doesn't grab the information from the log.

[grevenilvec75]

If that's so, then the obvious question becomes "Why the fuck doesnt it do that already?!?" Are SE's programmers ultra-retarded or something?

[Suteru]

If that's so, then the obvious question becomes "Why the fuck doesnt it do that already?!?" Are SE's programmers ultra-retarded or something?

Do you really have to ask?

[Radec]

As far as filters go, I'd like to be able to see readies/starts casting messages, but I don't need the damage to show up later.

Ie:

RandomSAM readies Tachi: Shoha
Does 2000dmg
RandomBLM starts casting Thunder 5
Does 1500dmg

would only be
RandomSAM readies Tachi: Shoha
RandomBLM starts casting Thunder 5

[Byrthnoth]

Okay! And yes, it does let you see skillchains regardless of BMN. It also gives a message for shield blocks and displays some other junk that SE sends the client but chooses not to display.

[Stromgarde]

I'd prefer to see the actions compressed into a single line, where possible.
Readying weaponskills isn't very useful, as they come out nearly instantly and fail to activate once in a blue moon, so it could go from:
Samurai readies Tachi: Shoha.
Samurai uses Tachi: Shoha.
The Greater Lolibri takes 2500 damage.
to:
Samurai: Tachi: Shoha -> Greater Lolibri: 2500 damage.

Spells would be a bit trickier since there's the gap between initiating casting and execution, but you could still compress the latter two messages as long as there's only a single target. For multi-target weaponskills or spells I'm not sure how I would like it handled. Maybe total damage listed first and number of targets hit followed by number of misses/resists?

[Byrthnoth]

I'm thinking of a filter settings file like this:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!-- Filters are customizable based on the action user. So if you filter other pets, you're going
     to eliminate all messages initiated by everyone's pet but your own.
     True means "filter this"
     False means "don't filter this"
     
     The outer tag is the actor and the inner tag is the action.
     If the monster is the actor, then the inner tag is the target and the tag beyond that is the action.-->
<settings>
    <global>
        <me>
            <melee>false</melee>
            <ranged>false</ranged>
            <damage>false</damage>
            <healing>false</healing>
            <misses>false</misses>
            <readies>false</readies>
            <casting>false</casting>
        </me>
        <party>
            <melee>false</melee>
            <ranged>false</ranged>
            <damage>false</damage>
            <healing>false</healing>
            <misses>false</misses>
            <readies>false</readies>
            <casting>false</casting>
        </party>
        <alliance>
            <melee>false</melee>
            <ranged>false</ranged>
            <damage>false</damage>
            <healing>false</healing>
            <misses>true</misses>
            <readies>false</readies>
            <casting>false</casting>
        </alliance>
        <others>
            <melee>false</melee>
            <ranged>false</ranged>
            <damage>true</damage>
            <healing>true</healing>
            <misses>true</misses>
            <readies>false</readies>
            <casting>false</casting>
        </others>
        <my_pet>
            <melee>false</melee>
            <ranged>false</ranged>
            <damage>false</damage>
            <healing>false</healing>
            <misses>false</misses>
            <readies>false</readies>
            <casting>false</casting>
        </my_pet>
        <other_pets>
            <melee>true</melee>
            <ranged>true</ranged>
            <damage>true</damage>
            <healing>true</healing>
            <misses>true</misses>
            <readies>false</readies>
            <casting>false</casting>
        </other_pets>
        
        
        <monsters> <!-- Monster is doing something targeting someone -->
            <me>
                <melee>false</melee>
                <ranged>false</ranged>
                <damage>false</damage>
                <healing>false</healing>
                <misses>false</misses>
                <readies>false</readies>
                <casting>false</casting>
            </me>
            <party>
                <melee>false</melee>
                <ranged>false</ranged>
                <damage>false</damage>
                <healing>false</healing>
                <misses>false</misses>
                <readies>false</readies>
                <casting>false</casting>
            </party>
            <alliance>
                <melee>false</melee>
                <ranged>false</ranged>
                <damage>false</damage>
                <healing>false</healing>
                <misses>false</misses>
                <readies>false</readies>
                <casting>false</casting>
            </alliance>
            <others>
                <melee>true</melee>
                <ranged>true</ranged>
                <damage>true</damage>
                <healing>true</healing>
                <misses>true</misses>
                <readies>false</readies>
                <casting>false</casting>
            </others>
            <my_pet>
                <melee>false</melee>
                <ranged>false</ranged>
                <damage>false</damage>
                <healing>false</healing>
                <misses>false</misses>
                <readies>false</readies>
                <casting>false</casting>
            </my_pet>
            <other_pets>
                <melee>false</melee>
                <ranged>false</ranged>
                <damage>false</damage>
                <healing>false</healing>
                <misses>false</misses>
                <readies>false</readies>
                <casting>false</casting>
            </other_pets>
            
            <monsters> <!-- This represents self-actions-->
                <damage>false</damage>
                <healing>false</healing>
                <readies>false</readies>
                <casting>false</casting>
            </monsters>
        </monsters>
    </global>
</settings>

Global would have no meaning in this case. It's just something I use so I can use the library's xml parser. The rest is as you can see. I think this would satisfy all the requests presented so far.

I am considering reducing or abolishing the "monster" filter field, because many of the fields are redundant with other fields in the xml.

Edit: ^^^ Definitely doing that. It really doesn't make sense to have redundant filters and this is one of the reasons that SE's filter system was always so confusing to me.

Edit2: Now I've bounced back to the other way.

Edit3: I settled on the above code in the end. It might be huge, but it's unambiguous and not redundant.