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Category: Raiding & InstancesSmaug Plugin
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Name: Smaug Plugin   Popular!
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Date: 07-03-2013 01:59 PM
Size: 12.01 Kb
Version: 1.5
Rate File: 5 out of 5 with 1 votes  
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Smaug Plugin window.
 
Description
Smaug Plugin is designed to monitor all the aspects/mechanics of the Fire of Smaugs raid, including the timer of the fight, Belegnor's morale percentage, the amount of smoke in the caves, and the steps of the valves.

Features:
  • Monitors the remaining time in the fight. The background color for the "Smaug Timer:" label and the timer itself will change depending on certain factors within the fight:
    • "Smaug Timer:" label: Changes color depending on what Fire-tender you have beaten, paced to a normal Challenge attempt. It starts off as green and changes at the following times:
      • At 8:30 into the fight (16:50 left on the timer countdown), it will change to yellow. This means you should have just beaten the first Fire-tender, if you are attempting challenge mode. If you have not, you are behind.
      • At 14:45 into the fight (10:15 left on the timer countdown), it will change to orange. This means you should have just beaten the second Fire-tender, if you are attempting challenge mode. If you have not, you are behind.
      • At 20:30 into the fight (4:30 left on the timer countdown), it will change to red. This means you should have just beaten the third Fire-tender, if you are attempting challenge mode. If you have not, you are behind.
      • With one minute left in the fight, the label will start flashing red.
    • Fight timer: Starts off as green and changes color depending on if you are on schedule or behind, based on what the bosses morale percentage is and the time remaining in the fight:
      • If the fight timer is green it means you are on schedule; you have taken down the Fire-tenders within the time you should have.
      • If the fight timer is red, it means you are behind, and have not taken out the Fire-tenders fast enough.
      • For example, if you are at 80% morale on Belegnor, and the fight timer is at 8:45, the fight timer will be red, because at 8:45 you should be at least at 75%, and the Fire-tender at 75% should be dead.
      • This indicator is not an exact indication of whether you are ahead or behind.
  • Monitors the positions of the valves so that you know how open they are, and shows a timer that counts down to when the valve will open again.
    • The valves are color coded depending on how open they are:
      • Will be red if the valve is fully opened (5).
      • Will be orange if the valve is 3 or 4 steps open.
      • Will be yellow if the valve is 1 or 2 steps open.
      • Will be green if the valve is fully closed (0).
    • Will flash to a darker color and back when the valve has less than 10 seconds before it opens again.
    • In the event a valve gets off from what it really is in game (which can happen in some semi-rare cases), you can right click on a valve in the plugin and manually set it to what it should be.
    • The plugin has to make some assumptions to what the valves are, because the morale updater doesn't happen as fast as it does in the game. At times, the valves can pop open nearly 6 seconds before the morale updates to show that it passed the last 5% morale threshold. Because of this, the plugin monitors the previous two valve closings, and if one or both happened in the previous 7 seconds since the plugin "discovers" the boss passed a 5% morale threshold, it will retroactively apply those closings as if the valves had popped open before you closed them. BECAUSE OF THIS, if for some reason you are closing a valve right before they pop open, and don't wait at least 7 seconds before passing the next 5% morale threshold, the plugin may assume that closing happened after the valves had opened, instead of before. In most cases, this should not be happening, and will only slightly mess up the plugin in the long run (as long as two people are closing valves fast enough, the plugin will still show the valve to be fully closed, it might however, mess up how much smoke is in the tunnels).
    • Also, if no one closes the valves once the plugin "discovers" the 5% morale threshold being passed, the plugin assumes that it happened roughly 3 seconds prior to when it actually saw it. If the morale updates faster than that, the valves will actually open a second or two before they actually should on the plugin, which might throw it off. However, once someone closes a valve, the plugin will know when the next time it will open, regardless of when it thought it had been popped open from the boss.
    • Because of all of this, if you are using this plugin for challenge (which, to be honest, is the only real time it needs to be used, as in regular T2 attempts its not really needed), you should always have 1 person at each of the four valves, who should close those valves ASAP after they open, run to the other valve to close it ASAP, and then back, and then make sure you wait at least 7 seconds before you popped open the valves again after the valves have been closed. This should prevent the plugin from getting messed up when passing a 5% morale threshold.
    • During the Fire-tender morale thresholds (75%, 50%, 25%), the plugin is a little more exact because it uses the message "As the grim goes dark" to know when the valves have popped open.
  • Monitors Belegnor's morale percentage.
    • Shows the current morale threshold you are at, and shows the last 5% morale threshold that you have passed (so that you know the next morale threshold you need to stop at to make sure valves are ready). For example, if you have gotten to the 75% morale threshold, it'll say "BOSSES CURRENT MORALE% (75%)", so after the Fire-tender is dead, even though Belegnor might be at 82% morale, you know you need to get 71% before you have to worry about valves.
    • The background color for the morale percentage will flash whenever the plugin discovers you have passed a 5% morale threshold.
  • Estimates the amount of smoke in the tunnels.
    • This is an ESTIMATE ONLY. It is more accurate if you never have a problem with the valves in the plugin being off from the actual valves. But if you ever have to manually set a valve on the plugin, the estimated smoke is probably off. That said, it is still a pretty good approximation, and can usually be relied on within plus/minus 30 units.
    • The background color for the units of smoke will be yellow at the beginning, and will change to green if the plugin determines you can stop closing valves. In other words, once the plugin has determined you cannot fail the instance via smoke, and no longer need to close valves or pick up adds from either side, it will turn green. The formula it uses to determine this is: CURRENT_SMOKE + (20 * ((LAST_5%_THRESHOLD / 5) - 1)); Basically, there are 19 "puffs" that happen during the fight (there's none at 100% or at 0%, so 100/5 = 20 - 1 = 19). It divides the last 5% morale threshold you passed by 5 and subtracts one from that, then multiplies that number by 20 (the maximum amount of smoke you can let in at any given 5% threshold is 20), and then adds the result into whatever is estimated to be in the tunnels already. If that number is less than 200 (but not equal to, since if you hit 200 you fail), then it turns the background color to green. This should only be used as a estimation though. For those who are interested, if you start out on a challenge attempt, once you've done the 50% morale threshold (the "puff" has happened), if you have not failed the challenge (meaning less than 20 units of smoke are in the tunnels), then you don't have to close anymore valves, and you cannot fail via smoke.
  • You can move the window around by left clicking and dragging.
  • DOES NOT YET work with with European clients. Because it has to monitor effects to know when the valve has been closed, someone will have to release a patch that includes those languages. PM if you need assistance with that. Also, the Vindar patch will have to be included, which I plan to add myself in a future update.
  • No dependencies.

Future Plans:
  • Add Vindar patch for European clients.
  • Add a few more options, such as right click options to change/update the timer and such.

Known Issues:
  • The plugin uses the starting text "The battle has begun" to know that the fight has started. If you reset the fight and don't reset the instance, this text does not appear in the chat the second time, so the plugin will not know the fight has started. I advise everyone to reset this instance after a wipe/reset because the instance is a bit buggy (from my experience) and resetting the instance will prevent bugs and also allow the plugin to know when the fight has started. The monitoring of the valves does not happen unless the plugin thinks a fight is occurring (the timer will be counting down), so it is important to make sure the plugin knows the fight has started in order for the valves to work correctly.
  • The plugin has no way of knowing if the fight as been reset or a wipe has happened, so it will continue running even if you die/retreat/leave instance/leave raid. You can use "/plugins unload smaugplugin" if you wish to turn it off. Once the timer reaches 0 the plugin stops running.
  • The plugin needs someone on the target assist (TA) list to have Belegnor selected in order for the plugin to know where his morale is at. If no one on the TA list has him selected, the morale won't update and the plugin will not know if he has passed a 5% morale threshold. I normally keep the hunter who is main DPS on Belegnor up on the TA list just for this purpose.
  • If you are on the TA list, there's a chance you will end up dealing with some lag. I do not know why this occurs and I am looking into it. If you are a person that will be on the TA list, it might be a good idea to not run this plugin (you can give it a try and see if the lag affects you, and simply unload the plugin if it starts getting bad).

Special Note:

Everyone calls the valves something a bit different. I prefer to use the north/south variety with top/bottom subset, because it's the easiest to remember off hand in case you get turned around. Left/right (which I used initially) is all relative, if you are facing Belegnor at the beginning of the fight, the north is left and the south is right, but once you get into Fire-tender position (which most groups should be doing), then it becomes reversed. Using the number of the valve (1,2,3,4) that you get when you close it can also be unhelpful in which valve it actually is and also gives no real information onto the location of the valve. For the reference of those who do use that system, Northbottom is 1, Northtop is 2, Southbottom is 3, and Southtop is 4. As for top/bottom, it basically indicates which valve is higher, or the one you have to run up a higher ramp to get to. I believe North/south - top/bottom is the clearest way to label the valves, which is why I used it in this plugin (and is the wording I always use when leading, and asking people to assist in closing valves).

Please contact me with any problems.

Credit goes to Cee for his MoraleDiff plugin, which I have used as a backend for monitoring Belegnor's morale, and for the window management. For those that have noticed the problem with MoraleDiff crashing your client when you add yourself (or anyone else that is running MoraleDiff) to the Target Assist list, this plugin does not seem to suffer from that problem. I have not figured out why, but I'm going to attribute it to Turbine's end.

This plugin uses a modified version of my own PartyDebuffTracker plugin, and though it includes the code right in itself and so there shouldn't be any conflicts, I would recommend not running this plugin and PDT at the same time.

Version History:

Version 1.5
  • Initial release. No more chat spam!

Version beta-1.3
  • Added color coding to the plugin, addressed some issues with monitoring the valves.

Version beta-1.1
  • Initial beta release.
Archive List (Old Versions)
File Name
Version
Size
Author
Date
beta-1.3
11.73 Kb
Stever1388
06-23-2013 02:13 PM
File Statistics
User Rating:
5 out of 5 with 1 votes
Downloads: 28947
Views: 56303
Favorites: 7
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Last Modified: N/A

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Unread 07-03-2013, 02:15 PM  
Stever1388
The Undying
Interface Author - Click to view interfaces

Forum posts: 33
File comments: 122
Uploads: 10
Initial non-beta release

v1.5 is now uploaded, it is the first non-beta release and does not include any of the chat spam that I have used before. I would say this plugin is roughly 90% accurate in monitoring the valves in most cases. It becomes much more reliable if the fight is going smoother (closing valves on time ASAP, boss is passing each 5% morale threshold roughly once every 50 seconds, etc), and becomes less reliable if things are out of alignment (closing valves at the wrong times, such as right before a 5% morale threshold is being passed, etc).

This will not work on non-English clients as it requires the monitoring of a few effects and chat events that are in English. If you wish to create a patch for different languages that translate this, let me know (or you can do it yourself). These lines will need to be translated and used in the plugin:

The valve debuffs when you close a valve. In English, they are "Northwest", "Northeast", "Southwest", and "Southeast", but they might be something different in other languages.

The plugin uses chat spam to know when someone joined/left/was made a target assist within the raid/fellowship. Those will all have to be translated. An incomplete list follows: "You have joined a Fellowship", " assist target", "has been dismissed from your", among others.

The boss's (Belegnor) name, if it is different.

The messages that appear at the beginning of the fight ("The battle has begun") and the message that appears when a Fire-tender appears ("As the grim goes dark").

I also need to add the Vindar patch and other fixes so that European clients can use it, but that will be in a future release, if there's any real interest in it.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions or problems!
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Unread 06-20-2013, 10:22 AM  
Stever1388
The Undying
Interface Author - Click to view interfaces

Forum posts: 33
File comments: 122
Uploads: 10
Update

Last night I managed to run what must have been 6 or so Smaug runs (a variety of regular T2 modes and a few challenges), and I was able to identify a few small problems that were easily fixed. A new update should be out in the near future, with less debugging stuff going on with it.

Then I hope to add more features such as the ability to right click on the valves to set them to a specific step, add colors and flashing to the valves, timer, and morale % to indicate when something is about to pop open, how open the valve is, how long the fight has left, how well you are doing in a challenge attempt, or if you have failed the challenge, etc.
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