August Feature Pack for Patrons

Here are some cool updates and fixes that we've been working on for you during August. As promised in the August newsletter, these are all coming to you at once instead of in dribbles throughout the month. I'm willing to bet there's something here that you'll find useful or handy.

Healthimus Maximus

This mainly affects the fighter classes right now, but with the way statflation marches on it won't be long before other classes will benefit from the same fix. On Player and Extended Player windows, I had been using a certain data point for the current character's maximum health (to the right of the slash). For technical reasons that we can't do anything about, characters with more than about 2.1B hit points were seeing a negative number. Rather than wait for the developers to update the value, a different dynamic data value was chosen.

This one is tougher to implement, but it will handle all possible max health values. If you notice anything strange or misaligned, please let me know through the usual channels. Thanks to Darq Side member Pious Venom for pointing out the issue and helping test the fix.

A Heroic Display

This was a request that you might find useful in your DarqUI Heroic Opportunities window. Having a Starter icon on the HO window itself makes a lot of sense, if for no other reason than it saves a hotkey slot. But did you know there's also a /heroic emote?

Using /heroic does a couple of things: It adds a line of text into chat which can be helpful if you are analyzing your combat logs including when and who in your party starts HO's. It also makes your character say something along the lines of "I've spotted an opportunity!" So from technical and roleplaying standpoints, you might enjoy adding the /heroic emote to your HO Starter button.

Also just a side note -- If you're going to use the /heroic emote, or any of the dozens of voice emotes, try out some of the different voice personalities in the Character window. Most of them are quite entertaining; some of them are downright hilarious:

This has been a recording... *beep*

If you are a guild recruiter or a sales and marketing genius I bet you'll find this new premium feature handy. On the Chat configuration page in the Window Manager you can now set up a pre-defined message, a chat channel destination and a time delay. Start the timer and your message will automatically go into the chat channel every 15, 30 or 60 minutes. No more trying to remember how long it's been since you last issued your recruitment or sales message. Convenient!

Class ACT

Recently the DarqUI in-game Browser got a rework, incorporating features from the old standard and lite versions into a more efficient, unified client. One nice extra feature is ACT Mode which displays ACT graphs and charts in a streamlined window right inside the game.

The DarqUI Browser also sports a Minimize feature which reduces the browser down to a small titlebar while leaving the current web page active inside. When the browser is in this minimized state, pressing the [Esc] key won't dismiss the window.

Similar to the Minimize feature, the browser window will no longer dismiss with [Esc] when in ACT Mode, since it's almost certain you want the browser to remain up and active in that state. To close the browser from ACT Mode, either exit that mode and then hit [Esc], or simply click the X (Close) button on the titlebar.

Distance Learning

Here's an interesting new way to deal with Target and Implied Target Distance Monitors. Thanks to member Naviaz for making this suggestion and testing the new system.

Some encounter scripts are designed to incorporate specific distance ranges between the player and certain targets, and using the Distance Monitor can greatly improve your positioning accuracy during these encounters.

The problem comes when the next encounter requires a completely different set of distance criteria. Previously you had to go into the Window Manager and reconfigure your distances manually each time.

You can now set up a hotkey or macro button to reconfigure Target and Implied Target distances with a single click. So when you get to encounter A you can instantly reconfigure the alert distances, then use a different macro for encounter B. No Window Manager needed.  Here's how it works:

Example: Target Alert range 35m ("too far") to 12m ("too close")

On a hotkey macro add these lines:

show_window MainHUD.Target.Dist.Reset
show_window MainHUD.Target.Dist.Far.Add.10
show_window MainHUD.Target.Dist.Far.Add.10
show_window MainHUD.Target.Dist.Far.Add.10
show_window MainHUD.Target.Dist.Far.Add.5
show_window MainHUD.Target.Dist.Near.Add.10
show_window MainHUD.Target.Dist.Near.Add.1
show_window MainHUD.Target.Dist.Near.Add.1
show_window MainHUD.Target.Dist.On

Editor's Note: Disregard the clickable links in the above example. All macro lines are just simple text. Patreon's post editor refuses to stop reformatting them!

Stackable values are 10, 5 and 1.  As you can see in the example, you stack as many 10's, 5's and 1's as needed to move the near and far distances to the desired values in meters. Because these are commands and not spellcasts, you can stack as many lines as needed without worrying about first/last ordering like you do with spells. All of the lines will fire off in sequence.

The first line is required -- Dist.Reset clears near and far distance values to zero.
The last line ensures the monitor is turned on. You can use Dist.Off in another macro if desired to turn off the monitor remotely.

If you want to use the Distance Monitor in the Implied Target window, replace Target in the lines above with ImpliedTarget. You can actually set up both windows in the same macro if desired.

One last note, these remote distance macros assume the Window Manager is closed, so you won't see the monitor UI change when you run a macro if the Window Manager is open to the Target or Implied Target setup page.