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Post by lothaer on Jun 24, 2007 10:49:56 GMT -5
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Post by bearhooves on Jun 24, 2007 13:11:26 GMT -5
Meh... I've got more memory than WOW could ever use. I like the Ace mods b/c then I only have to go to one place to get them (other than a couple of key ones with LS being one of those) and that alot of the Ace addons get updated more regularly than their non-Ace counterparts. Plus the Ace addons generally have alot of synergy with each other than you can get when you get an addon here and there (aka built-in FuBar support).
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Elesarr
Jittery Beta Tester
Arcane Dawn of Khadgar - Guild Leader
Posts: 312
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Post by Elesarr on Jun 24, 2007 13:43:45 GMT -5
/signed
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Post by lothaer on Jun 24, 2007 14:03:02 GMT -5
Ace mods also get update more then they really need to imo
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Post by Moongaze on Jun 24, 2007 16:47:46 GMT -5
I try to avoid Ace addons like the plague, not because I think they're horrible ... it's just that when one is updated with a new library, there is the possibility that it will break all the other Ace addons that use an older version of that library. When that happens, I gotta go and update all the Ace addons because I am too lazy to figure out which ones are outdated. The Ace updater is a cool concept, but I also feel the same as lothaer when it comes to *too* many updates. Fixed a bug? Awesome, update the addon. Changed a little tiny function that doesn't really do much and I thought that it needed one more line of code to, well, change the color of something. That, right there, I think should be saved for a major update. If I updated LS with the mentality of some of the Ace authors, you would see, literially, 5-10 updates a day. Sometimes, maybe 20 on those really good coding days. I've already made a bug fix and a feature change for Stage 3, but since they aren't horrible bugs, or really all that important, they won't be seen until Stage 4 goes live. Of course, you'd also have a bunch of sandbox areas that don't really do much, but you'll see the progress I made on Stage 4 and really get frustrated because clicking some things don't work As for addon authors that use Ace, I'm split on this. On one side, yes, Ace does make an author's work easier by giving them access to some stuff that is already made, so they can just use it and "focus on the meat of their addon" without needing to build it from the ground up. On the other hand, there are addon authors that know a little programming or none at all who find Ace and use that as their tool to help make addons. This has the potential of molding the author to the ideas of Ace, and not really fully understanding how it works or what ELSE can be done, thus hindering their ability to adapt and grow their own abilities while programming. I have some crazy/nutty/insane settings window code that works brilliantly for what it needs to do, which I really couldn't do with Ace. Most of the event handling I could do in Ace ... but I feel like it would hinder some of the options I have. Some of the database tables I use could be done with Ace, but some of the optimization I use would be lost. Haha, maybe I'll add Ace Support, just one line of code and upload it to their site, just so that people can auto-download it. Addon would be 99.999% non-ace. ;D Anyway, I like what a lot of the Ace addons do, and have some that get the job done that really aren't made non-ace. I dunno, as an addon author, Ace just doesn't appeal to me for development's sake
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Post by AvaCam on Jun 24, 2007 16:58:39 GMT -5
Meh... I've got more memory than WOW could ever use. I like the Ace mods b/c then I only have to go to one place to get them (other than a couple of key ones with LS being one of those) and that alot of the Ace addons get updated more regularly than their non-Ace counterparts. Plus the Ace addons generally have alot of synergy with each other than you can get when you get an addon here and there (aka built-in FuBar support). Even though the user may have a very large amount of memory available for the game to access, there is still a performance hit by the additional memory that these add-ons use. This is especially visible at the initial load time when the data is being read from the hard drive into RAM. It also affects your frame rate slightly during the game and with the more add-ons that are used it is more significant.
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Post by Moongaze on Jun 24, 2007 16:59:15 GMT -5
Oh, and no one asked me (thank god) to "convert" this to Ace, which makes me happy. I see a sentiment on comments for addons that "If you convert this Addon to Ace, I would use it because it would be better and take up less memory," which makes me want to tear my hair out. Some people honestly think that Ace is a magic little box that, when you open it up, rainbows and sunshine and low-memory usage pop out. It isn't, and was never meant to be that. But *somehow* a lot of addon users have come to that conclusion. I blame it on addon authors who say that "I converted this to Ace! It's memory footprint went down by 20k! It loads faster!" ... of course it went down by 20k, a lot of the code you're using is from Ace, not your addon. Of course it loads faster ... your original code might have had an issue with it which really slowed it down. Ace only makes things better if the way you originally made things was not very well designed. *sigh* Okay, rant over ;D
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Post by bearhooves on Jun 24, 2007 17:21:11 GMT -5
I'm glad that you're doing everything from scratch, I tried to use Henge (an Ace attempt to do what LS does) and it isn't even close to half as cool as LS (not to mention they've been working on it for months and it still doesn't really work) as I think the ones working on it fall into the "I can't really program but this Ace thing makes stuff easy to try". I love to see addons like this that are really well crafted and designed to be future-proof as replacements for addons that have broken or been abandoned (eXtreme Unit Buttons is another great example as even with Elenesski retiring from WOW it's well enough written and loved for someone else to be able to pick it up unlike Discord Unit Buttons).
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Post by Moongaze on Jun 24, 2007 17:24:39 GMT -5
Unless Blizzard changes some code (like they did with the secure action buttons with 2.0 .. grrr) ... I don't think this addon will break. Of course, I'm probably being VERY hopeful. It's my dream and hope that when I'm done working on this addon, or if I stop playing WOW, that this addon will continue to function and be bug-free, and will require only a simple TOC change.
*dreams*
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Post by robshield on Jun 24, 2007 17:32:15 GMT -5
Haha, maybe I'll add Ace Support, just one line of code and upload it to their site, just so that people can auto-download it. Addon would be 99.999% non-ace. ;D That's actually the main reason that I try to use ACE addons. It's so sweet to just have to load one program to update most of my addons, yes I'm a bit lazy. So if that is possible I'd love if you could do that.
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Post by viserion on Jun 25, 2007 0:53:00 GMT -5
The reason Ace addons update so much is due to the zips generated directly from the SVN after a commit. There was a discussion on the Ace boards about having the updater only download release version but I think it mostly go shot down(I don't peruse the Ace boards anymore). I think a lot of the bigger addons though do a release to the major site periodically.
That said, most of the addons that I've written are non-Ace. It's about choosing the right tool for the job really. There are some really small addons on the Ace SVN that shouldn't really be Ace'd it's kind of silly. I'm talking about those addons that are like 30 lines of code that do something specific. Why Ace something so simple.
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dredd
Junior Beta Tester
Posts: 17
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Post by dredd on Jun 25, 2007 1:35:00 GMT -5
ACE addons does not equal good memory usage by default. But some setups of this & that addons WILL be sweet for the computer. Altho that seldom fits the general player It is way better to have addons like LS (not just written to get the function, but to preserve performance & stability as well) & if they are in ACE or not... dont really matter. how much overhead can you have on some functions??? 200 lines of code?
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Post by lothaer on Jun 25, 2007 9:17:45 GMT -5
if you've read the post i made on the link in the OP got flamed for saying what i did, and the only reason im saying it is because people DO think that Ace mods use less memory which is FALSE, maybe some of them do but like in the OP APX pre Ace uses 112KB and the post Ace uses 663KB of memory.
I my self use a number of Ace mods ie BigWigs.
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Post by happyburger on Jun 25, 2007 20:54:49 GMT -5
it's funny i guess because i used to have such a crap puter that ran at 4 fps with or without addons and i now have one that runs at 60fps with or without i've never even slightly considered this an issue... after all wowecon uses 35mb and ctmailmod uses 17mb... itemsync 4mb...then most mods after that (that i have) are under 3mb which is nothing.
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dredd
Junior Beta Tester
Posts: 17
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Post by dredd on Jun 26, 2007 1:01:10 GMT -5
it's funny i guess because i used to have such a crap puter that ran at 4 fps with or without addons and i now have one that runs at 60fps with or without i've never even slightly considered this an issue... after all wowecon uses 35mb and ctmailmod uses 17mb... itemsync 4mb...then most mods after that (that i have) are under 3mb which is nothing. Have you been in any 40man 5+mob encounters? Those fights are the "sh*t" if you have plenty addons supposed to make life easier in combat Not many of those fights going on theese days, but ive been raiding 40man for 2 years before TBC. Was rather NOT fun if any of the addons had memory issues then... Ah well, jsut had to spam
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Post by happyburger on Jun 26, 2007 3:08:42 GMT -5
yeah we were doing naxx ...hadn't quite finished aq40 though :/ ...the point is that my old puter was so crap that it only ran at 4 fps in heavy situations without addons and so stacking addons really made no difference and the new one handles them all just fine with no desecernable diff either...i got it just b4 tbc and the stake rooms in bwl still ran at 60fps with everything turned on and all my mods working overtime inc. swstats... I know lots of people find this an issue i just think it's funny how the 2 extremes cancel the problem out
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wolftusk
Very Talkative Beta Tester
Posts: 140
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Post by wolftusk on Jun 26, 2007 7:05:59 GMT -5
Gee, i did not realize that this topic was still going. I agree with the OP. No one platform or library of code will make your code be fast or efficient. Throw a bad coder anything good and he will make bad code. The appeal to ACE, besides the fact that there is common functionality in libraries that a good author could take advantage of to make fast and efficient addons, is the fact that the majority of it is Object Oriented (OO). Not sure who here has a software development/engineering background but it is known to be a fact that if you write code in OO programming, you are not necessarily making the fastest/most efficient code around. The advantage of OO is that it reduces the amount of code you need to write and reduces the amount of repeated and/or similar code. This buys you a couple of things: 1. Programs are faster to write in the first place since the programmer is writing less redundant code. 2. The code base is easier to maintain since there is less lines of code. Bugs are generally easier to find since they are all in one location 3. When code is written in OO, it is generally easier to replace/rewrite functionality with out creating a ripple effect of problems throughout the rest of the code base. There are other advantages as well, but those are the first three that just popped into my head. If you want to get the most of your addons, figure out which addons do what you need it to do. and find the one that uses the least amount of resources while still doing what you need it to do.
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Post by Moongaze on Jun 26, 2007 7:34:10 GMT -5
Mmmm... Java. =)
Object Oriented Programming and procedural programming ... god I wish I could just stick with one or the other. My brain constantly switches from OOP to non-OOP mode so much, it drives me crazy. I would start working on something with an OOP mindset, and then somewhere in the process, I start doing the complete opposite. I started LS with the idea of OOP with the sphere and item modules, and the the button module ... and that went to hell when I made the API module and needed to intergrate some things a little better. *sigh*
Then again, I'm more of a C++ person than a Java person. Unless, of course, I start working in the Java environment again, and then I like Java more because everything is pretty much made for me and I can expand upon it.
... that is until I deal with JNI, then I want to throw my laptop out the window.
wow, that went in a totally different direction that I wanted it to.
/agree wolftusk
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larania
Very Talkative Beta Tester
Posts: 128
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Post by larania on Jun 27, 2007 23:40:08 GMT -5
LOL Moon Nice to see you seem to get as lost as we do when you are posting But as for the Lothaer's stand on whether or not the Ace mods use less memory... I couldn't agree more that to me it truly appears that they do not at all...
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Elesarr
Jittery Beta Tester
Arcane Dawn of Khadgar - Guild Leader
Posts: 312
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Post by Elesarr on Jun 27, 2007 23:46:44 GMT -5
hehe this discussion is definitely an interesting one and one in the Mod community that I feel will engender better and cleaner coding whether it is Ace2 or not. On a personal note, I dumped a bunch of non-ace2 mods, and added quite a few more Ace2 mods and increased my FPS by 10, so in my experience they do use less memory; however, that being said I think the underlying result of this is what was said earlier about good and bad coding: I got rid of the badly coded ones and picked up well coded ones which just happened to be Ace2 Ele
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