Addon Rematch

[Jerebear]

I'll see if I can try the new version today and hunt around for bugs!

EDIT:

Only two things I have found so far:

1. This may be an existing feature, but I tried to load my rockbiter team which has a Pandaren Water Spirit and Rematch told me it was missing. I have one at level 25. I think it is confused because I used to have 2 and I sold one, so I am guessing it is remembering the one I sold. I don't know if this would have happened before 3.4 or not though as I accidentally found it out after loading 3.4

2. Since we cannot target the challenge post to save teams, is there a way we can edit the NPCID stored with a team. That way, someone can target Rockbiter, save the team, and then put in the challenge post NPCID manually. Alternately, allow saving on a on mouse over in addition to a target (via options).

So far so good. Haven't run into anything game break. I have a lot of teams, but so far all of the ones I checked seemed to be there.

EDIT2:
Also, did you make sure to test out the load teams from PBT option with your new team saving system? I don't have PBT anymore to try that out.

[Gello]

1. This may be an existing feature, but I tried to load my rockbiter team which has a Pandaren Water Spirit and Rematch told me it was missing. I have one at level 25. I think it is confused because I used to have 2 and I sold one, so I am guessing it is remembering the one I sold. I don't know if this would have happened before 3.4 or not though as I accidentally found it out after loading 3.4

I was going to say this is new intended behavior. It was specifically for those who share pets with friends and then relearn them back.

Before, if you caged/sell a pet that was in a team, it slotted in an alternative automatically if you had one. This had the undesirable effect of slotting in a different breed or level if you intended to learn the pet back again later.

Now: if you cage/sell a pet in a team, it will save that slot for if/when you get the pet back. It uses the same system that recovers petIDs in the event of a total server reassignment, and looks for a pet of the same stats to take it place.

That said, the Pandaren Water Spirit only comes in one breed and rarity. It should have substituted your second version automatically (unless you had both pets on the same team which doesn't sound like is the case). I'll look into this.

Perhaps that missing dialog can check if any alternates are available and offer you the chance to substitute them right there if so.

2. Since we cannot target the challenge post to save teams, is there a way we can edit the NPCID stored with a team. That way, someone can target Rockbiter, save the team, and then put in the challenge post NPCID manually. Alternately, allow saving on a on mouse over in addition to a target (via options).

I've resisted having a user outright enter an npcID, but perhaps it's time it was possible. The latest updates made it very easy to add attributes to a team, so it wouldn't be difficult.

The current plan for challenge posts is when you win a non-wild battle for which you have no saved team (no npcID to match who you just fought), it will prompt if you want to save the team for that npc and allow you to enter a name. Perhaps for power users, being able to enter an npcID directly would be just as good or even better. Then the prompt-to-save can be an option they can turn off.

If you want to do that in meantime it's possible by export a team and importing it back while editing the first number. Like if you export the team you have saved for Archimedes Jahan and Samm it would be something like:

Bird Day Team:0567:890:123:45678:901:234:567:89012:345:678:901:

That 0 is the npcID. If you change 0 to the npcID of the challenge post and import, it will save the team under that npcID. If you need help finding out what the npcID of a challenge post is, you can mouseover the post and paste this into chat:

Code: Select all

/dump Rematch:GetUnitNameandID("mouseover")

So far so good. Haven't run into anything game break. I have a lot of teams, but so far all of the ones I checked seemed to be there.

That's good to hear! With all the innards changed, I'm surprised nothing has broken.

EDIT2:
Also, did you make sure to test out the load teams from PBT option with your new team saving system? I don't have PBT anymore to try that out.

Sure did but thanks for checking!

[Jerebear]

That said, the Pandaren Water Spirit only comes in one breed and rarity. It should have substituted your second version automatically (unless you had both pets on the same team which doesn't sound like is the case). I'll look into this.

Perhaps that missing dialog can check if any alternates are available and offer you the chance to substitute them right there if so.

Just the one water spirit on that team (none of my teams have 2 water spirits). The 2nd water spirit was once a carry pet and the team has a carry slot (I don't have any clue if I actually carried the water spirit on this team in particular though). I don't know if that makes a difference or not.

The current plan for challenge posts is when you win a non-wild battle for which you have no saved team (no npcID to match who you just fought), it will prompt if you want to save the team for that npc and allow you to enter a name.

That would be fine. How would you make updates to the team later? whenever you make manual updates to a team, Rematch forgets the current team goes to a generic Current Battle Pets, and when you click save it only prompts you for a name.

[Gello]

The current plan for challenge posts is when you win a non-wild battle for which you have no saved team (no npcID to match who you just fought), it will prompt if you want to save the team for that npc and allow you to enter a name.

That would be fine. How would you make updates to the team later? whenever you make manual updates to a team, Rematch forgets the current team goes to a generic Current Battle Pets, and when you click save it only prompts you for a name.

You must have 'Discard loaded team on changes' enabled. When it's disabled you can swap pets and abilities and re-save the team over the original, keeping npcID/notes/preferences intact. When it's disabled you also get a reload button on the main window to reload the last loaded team (swapping out any changes you made since the team was loaded).

I think I can get the basic behavior of the option (always prompt/load for targets) and keep the last-loaded team bit. But if you've had it enabled since before the reload button was added, you might want to try the addon with it disabled too.

[Jerebear]

Good to know. I can't say that I consciously checked the option (it's not one that sticks in my mind) but maybe accidentally. I'll give it a try.

[Moppet]

Hey sorry if this is a really dumb question but how do you import/export a team to a friend?

I remember there used to be an import button to paste the string but I can't find it anymore? Did something change with the update?

[Gello]

Hey sorry if this is a really dumb question but how do you import/export a team to a friend?

I remember there used to be an import button to paste the string but I can't find it anymore? Did something change with the update?

It's to the left of the team search box when you open the team tab.
(Or it's in the place of the Reload button in the bottom right if 'Discard loaded team on changes' is enabled.)

[Moppet]

oh thank you! I had to check the 'Discard loaded team on changes' option to get the Import button back. It was replaced by the Reload button

[Gello]

That 'Discard loaded team on changes' option is really awful. I don't know how many times I've wanted to tear it out of the addon.

imho keep it unchecked, the import button is here:


I'll add Import to the right-click menu of teams also. Maybe move the import button to the blank space to the right of the bar. I'll slather it all over the place to prevent anyone using that option! I can't stress how strongly I dislike it. With the ability to unload teams (right-click titlebar) and reload teams (button in lower right) the purpose it served is long gone.

On the topic of that option, is there anyone that uses it that would be upset if it disappeared?

[Jerebear]

I don't have any need for it with the reload button available. I'm not sure that I ever knowingly checked it unless it used to do something slightly different in the old days.

[FuxieDK]

@ Gello
One small design bug and one small request:

Bug:
Engage a trainer with a saved team, where you have stored notes.
Next, engage a wild pet, without changing team. Notes from the previous trainer is displayed.
Not a gamebreaking bug, but a bit annoying anyway.

Request:
Kura and Erris have different NPCIDs, yet, they are for all intents and purposes identical. However, we cannot save 2x NPCID on one team.
Can we get an option, if we have White teams saved for either, the team is used for the other too?
I.e. I have a team for Kura's Aqua team, that same team will be used, if I once in a blue moon is online on an Alliance toon, batteling Erris's Aqua team

Horde / Ally
91026 = 90675
91361 = 91014
91362 = 91015
91363 = 91016
91364 = 91017

[Gello]

Bug:
Engage a trainer with a saved team, where you have stored notes.
Next, engage a wild pet, without changing team. Notes from the previous trainer is displayed.
Not a gamebreaking bug, but a bit annoying anyway.

The notes are attached to the team, not to the target. So anytime you start a battle and 'Show notes in battle' is checked, it will show the notes of the loaded team regardless whether the notes are intended for what you're about to fight.

I recommend checking 'Only once per team'. If you need to start over on the tamer and need a to go back to the notes you can mouseover the notes button on the addon as a refresher or click the notes button to lock it there.

To the reasonable suggestion that notes should pop up for the target instead of the team, it would mean notes would never pop up for teams without an npcID (teams with a gold name). I could add an option 'Only for targeted teams' to make it pop up if the opponent's npcID matches the team. (edit: this option is done for next update, 3.4.4, which will probably be posted tomorrow)

With a caveat that I'm discovering with the new popup to offer to save teams, there's no 100% sure-fire way of knowing what npcID you're battling so notes may not always pop up.

(Speaking of the new feature where a popup asks if you want to save a team after winning a fight, it's going to opt-in instead of opt-out in next update. This may have been an example of a solution being applied to what wasn't a genuine problem. I thought it'd be helpful to new users but it seems overwhelmingly confusing to new users woops.)

Request:
Kura and Erris have different NPCIDs, yet, they are for all intents and purposes identical. However, we cannot save 2x NPCID on one team.
Can we get an option, if we have White teams saved for either, the team is used for the other too?
I.e. I have a team for Kura's Aqua team, that same team will be used, if I once in a blue moon is online on an Alliance toon, batteling Erris's Aqua team

This is something I definitely want you guys to be able to do: enter multiple npcIDs for a team.

Jere asked earlier in this thread if we could outright enter an npcID in a team. For "power users" this may be a better alternative than the awkward challenge post solution in the recent updates. I had envisioned some method of linking teams some time in the future. But just entering in a couple npcIDs into a team may turn out to be a really good short-term solution.

Either the next update or the one after should allow entering a direct npcID. I don't know if it will specifically allow entering more than one but we'll see.

As for the addon itself making the npcID association "this Erris == this Kura" without any user involvement, it almost definitely would not happen. I would far prefer to find a solution where the user sets up content-specific associations than the addon.

[FuxieDK]

Notes:
Maybe not display notes, when fighting wild pets? Usually you won't need notes for them..

Kura=Erris:
More NPCIDs per team would be nice... However, I already asked for that some time back and it was rejected, with the reason, you wanted to do the opposite; More than one team per NPCID.
I know, hardcoding dependancies is not nice (I was a systems programmer for 6 years, 15 years ago, myself), but when Blizzard does stupid things, sometimes stupid things are needed to counter it.
I know hardcoded stuff also require more maintainance (because you need to monitor that the constraints doesn't change), but it it was MY AddOn and only this one thing, I'd make this the exception to the rule..

[Gello]

Notes:
Maybe not display notes, when fighting wild pets? Usually you won't need notes for them..

Many that we would consider noteworthy fights like Stitches Jr. and Beasts of Fable, are classified as wild battles.

And in further testing there are some major issues with identifying the npcID that initiated the fight across all methods.

The 'Only for targeted teams' sub-option of 'Show notes in battle' won't be making the next update. I've removed all the code that deals with identifying who you're fighting for the moment.

Kura=Erris:
More NPCIDs per team would be nice... However, I already asked for that some time back and it was rejected, with the reason, you wanted to do the opposite; More than one team per NPCID.

For the record, I said:

A big problem with saving the same team across multiple npcIDs is its implementation. Assuming the code and UI could be done (which it could), how would you envision that happening?

A UI is intended to communicate the intent between the human and the computer. The code stuff on the computer end is trivial. Making UI widgets is trivial. The tricky part, which I'm not the best at, is designing ways to easily translate intent into a UI. When I say "how would you envision that happening?" it's not the least bit snarky or dismissive. I'm literally asking what you envision its implementation would look like.

At the time that post was made I was strongly resistant to having the actual npcIDs become an editable part of the team (a wrong edit can make a team fail to interact with a target with no easy way to get the original npcID back), and was trying to think of ways to tie teams together with the UI. The clearest mental picture so far was to drag one team onto another to make an association. How would the association be displayed? Expandable "category"-like headers for primary teams and its components?

Frustration with the challenge post issue and erris/kura, and the unsatisfactory solutions so far has changed my resistance to having the raw numbers editable:

I've resisted having a user outright enter an npcID, but perhaps it's time it was possible. The latest updates made it very easy to add attributes to a team, so it wouldn't be difficult.

So things can change over time.

I know, hardcoding dependancies is not nice (I was a systems programmer for 6 years, 15 years ago, myself), but when Blizzard does stupid things, sometimes stupid things are needed to counter it.
I know hardcoded stuff also require more maintainance (because you need to monitor that the constraints doesn't change), but it it was MY AddOn and only this one thing, I'd make this the exception to the rule..

I did use the qualifier "almost"! Nothing is totally off the table except maybe sprawling too much the addon becomes a behemoth I wouldn't want to use myself. Even integration with the journal, which I've been adamant against, is probably going to happen. I'm excited to start working on the XML once I become satisfied with a general layout. (The issue of stepping over other addons can be ameliorated by created a self-contained black-box tab that neatly replaces the default or exists as a separate tab if the user chooses.)

This isn't only this one thing, unfortunately. A few other things off the top of my head:
- The challenge posts beg for some hardcoded tables or pre-made teams. I'm disappointed with how badly the solution turned out to be.
- The frustration of knowing what npcID you're actually battling can be cured by assigning tables of opponent pets to an npcID.
- Some are wanting to adjust maximum preferred level based on opponent's tamer bonus, level, number of pets, etc and safari hat/treats.

What I would like is an addon that's simple to use, flexible enough to handle difference ways of using it, without excess baggage.

It may be that #2 there, the frustrationg of knowing what npcID you're actually battling, will be what makes me break the rule about not wanting to get involved with content-specific data.

So we shall see. I make absolutely no promises and nothing is a proclamation of binding intent. Things can (and likely will!) change over time.

[Jerebear]

Out of curiosity, which situations are difficult to pull the NPCID from? I assume challenge posts...any others in particular that are beasts?

[Gello]

When you right-click an npc and then a gossip window pops up to start the battle.

When you mouseover a unit out of combat, the name and npcID are noted (mouseoverName and mouseoverNpcID). The "right-click" function (TurnOrActionStart) is hooked to assign interactName and interactNpcID to the mouseover stuff. (During a TurnOrActionStart, you have no mouseover unit). This hook also needs to happen for InteractUnit for those who interact via key binding and the "left click" (CameraOrSelectOrMoveStart) for those who have interact on left click setting enabled.

There's also an issue if a unit isn't cached it won't get a mouseover event before you can start a fight. So if you have a new npcID that you haven't seen in a while, if you target with right-click it will assign your previous mouseover to the target.

This can happen for beasts of fable/stitches jr/quintessence of light/and other battles you start by right clicking (Blizzard classifies all of those as wild pets/battles which is annoying) too.

I think with some refinements it could be made to work okay, but it feels too invasive for me. This addon shouldn't be hooking such critical points of the game.

The reason I'm more likely to add content-specific tables is because a cheap/effective way of marking "noteworthy" npcIDs is by making a table of npcIDs and the speciesIDs they use to fight. Then it'd be trivial to know what noteworthy npcID is being fought.

On a tangent, I think the addon is due for a major rework very soon. I was going to do some more work on the sharing bit (make sending/exporting teams include notes and preferences) and a few other minor things like notes for pets. But with the more free time I have over the next few weeks, I may invest that time instead in a very large overhaul.

I've admantly kept away from messing with the default pet journal, but what do you guys think if the "team building" portion of the addon was moved over to the journal. To prevent it stepping all over other addons, it could exist as a separate tab, or if a user wants, it would completely replace the default pet journal.

There would still be what is now the collapsed view with the current of health/xp of pets and buttons to heal/bandage/etc. But instead of expanding the window it would just open the tab in the journal.

Perhaps the collapsed view could expand to just teams only. But the act of looking for pets to put in a team would happen in the journal.

Thoughts? If anyone has some time and wants to suggest layouts I'm wide open to ideas. Here are a few more random thoughts I'm working with:
- Ideally I'd like the pet list to look the same as default, with the team list of similar dimension/"density".
- The queue can be that way also, and maybe share space with the team list.
- It's not imperative but I'd like a slot that has your currently summoned pet too.
- The "pet card" tooltip concept is preserved, with more space to mark breeds/known breeds/both ability icons and type/etc.
- The "team card" concept is removed, and single-clicking a team will load it always. In the team list you can mouseover the individual pets in the team. (with abilities saved in the team possibly highlighted)
- Dialogs would be drastically increased in size and made less ugly.
- The resizing/multiple layers of escape/etc may have been fun to do, but it kind of detracts from the basic function of the addon. There's maybe too many clicks/window dragging needed to accomplish basic things.

Once I get some basic templates going I may try a bunch of rearrangements and post them here for feedback too.

[Donnamartin]

Soooooo yeah I just switched to this addon from Pet Battle Teams, and wow is it way better. Never looking back. A true improvement!

Here's one thing that has come up for me. My situation is that I have about 170 pets left to take up to 25, and a disproportionate amount (70+)of them are Beasts. I buy the Mystery Bags from the WoD lady for the random stones to level. I need a lot more Beast stones than other races, and I will start getting ""dead" stones soon - I only have 2 Humanoid pets that are not 25 for example, and only 1 Dragon.

This caused me to strategize my leveling pet in the addon - I only wanted to use Beasts against the trainers, since I need to dump as much exp into that horde to minimize the amount of stones I need to finish Beast all off. Additionally, I always wanted to level the lowest level Beast I could, to minimize the amount of stones I need when I do eventually get done with them. So I typically just threw in a level 16 Beast, it hits 20 or whatever, and on the next match, put in another level 16 Beast, an so forth.


Implementing the above strategy into Rematch took some doing. I could sort the Leveling pet by Type, which was great because it grouped all my Beasts together. But Flying was always on top, so I went through and right-clicked each Beast and moved it to the top. Perhaps a way to select multiple pets at once in the Leveling list? Or even options for moving the Types around as a whole?

Also, the "always use lowest level" Beast didn't have a good fix. Let's say I have a level 21 snake, and I get to a trainer, and the team loads up. Cool. The snake hits 23. I get to the next trainer, team loads up, and it still has the level 23 snake of course, because it hasn't hit 25 yet. But I want to instead use my next level 21 Beast in that slot. I used to just right click the level 23 snake and "Stop Levelling Pet". I figured I'd just repopulate the leveling list when I ran out of level 21 Beasts. Later, I realized I could just set the max level on each team to 23, and that then did exactly what I wanted. Perhaps an option for "always level lowest of x category" or something like that could be implemented in the Leveling Pet addon.


Overall great addon and I love it.

[Gello]

Implementing the above strategy into Rematch took some doing. I could sort the Leveling pet by Type, which was great because it grouped all my Beasts together. But Flying was always on top, so I went through and right-clicked each Beast and moved it to the top. Perhaps a way to select multiple pets at once in the Leveling list? Or even options for moving the Types around as a whole?

If that happens I'd probably make it a preference for the team: preferred leveling pet type. Then there's no need for list management with an enormous amount of code to create a shift+multiclick drag-and-drop listbox (I love creating complex widgets--but a listbox like this would be even too gratuitous for me lol). Eventually you'll be able to set preferences for a whole tab instead of setting it for each team.

If you decide to focus on beasts, you can filter the list to the left of the queue to beasts and then Fill Queue will only add beasts to the queue. (Fill Queue only fills the queue with pets from the search/filter results.)

Perhaps an option for "always level lowest of x category" or something like that could be implemented in the Leveling Pet addon.

When the queue is actively sorted (Active Sort in queue menu) it will re-sort the queue after each fight. So when the 21 levelled to 23 the other 21 would've swapped in. That is, if you only had beasts in the queue it would've kept the lowest beast in the leveling slot. If you sorted by type it would've dutifully put the flying pets back higher in the queue.

I'm not opposed to the idea. But I need help to understand what the UI would look like and what "category" means in the context of what the user would enter or click.

Off and on, I've considered making "scriptable" rules for the pet filter, which could be done for the queue too. You enter in a bit of lua and it would apply the results of the script to the filter (or queue). Then all of these very application-specific suggestions could be done with a script with no extra burden to the addon or other users.

[Donnamartin]

That's a great solution - I hadn't thought of filtering the Queue before populating with Fill Queue. That would definitely have worked.

And I didn't really understand what Active Sort did lol. That makes sense, and would have definitely served my purposes.


So in summation, looks like everything I needed was already in the addon! Alright! Thanks!

[Gello]

So in summation, looks like everything I needed was already in the addon! Alright! Thanks!

Those are words I love to hear.

---

I already mentioned it in this thread recently, but I thought it may merit mentioning that I've decided to shift focus to a general rewrite of the addon, especially the UI, which will be a 4.0 update. I'd love to hear thoughts/suggestions if you guys have any. In the updated "future plans" section of the addon's page on wowinterface/curse:

Right now I'm working on Rematch 4.0 which will have a completely new UI. Goals with the revamp:

• Less dense UI: Lists and buttons should not feel cramped.
• Less cumbersome UI: There's too much collapse/stretch business that get in the way of the important functions of the addon. Loading a team should be a one-click effort.
• Integration with the default pet journal: This is more of a replacement than integration, but looking up pets and creating teams will be done in the journal.
• Update UI widgets: Larger buttons, more consistent style across elements, less gratuitous use of frames.
• Trimming of superfluous extras: The leveling carousel will probably go, sorry! It was fun to make but it's too many frames to justify its infrequent use. The independent horizontal/verticle resizing will likely be going too.
• Greater emphasis on saving for targets: A new panel will display your recent target from where you can either save a team for that target or load its saved team.
• Large sections of the addon are being rewritten for a better foundation for future changes.
• All teams, queues and settings will seamlessly work in the new addon.

This is a very large undertaking that may take a while, so any changes to the live version of Rematch in the meantime will likely be minor. But I'm still open to suggestions and of course please comment any and all bugs you encounter.

You guys here on warcraftpets have been especially helpful in shaping the addon so special thanks for taking the time to help!