World of Warcraft Interface Modification

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World of WarcraftInterface Modification

• Bryan Sullivan

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World of Warcraft

• World of Warcraft (WoW) is an MMORPG or Massively
  Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
• There are 2 continents, 38 zones, 6 capital
  cities, 28 instances, 3 battlegrounds, 2
  factions, 8 races and 9 classes.
• It comes on 4 CDs and takes up approximately
  4.5GB of space on your hard drive.
• You are immersed in a massive world full of
  thousands of other players. You can form
  alliances, battle against the other faction,
  quest, barter to sell items, grind, farm, or raid
  to take down the toughest bosses around.
• There are over 6 million players worldwide.

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Addon or Modification

• All games and programs have what is called a user
  interface (UI). In World of Warcraft, Blizzard
  Entertainment developed the game such that you
  could modify your UI by making addons or
  modifications (mods).
• This does not mean you can cheat.
• An addon or mod is a program that changes your
  user interface. It can be very small such as
  simply displaying a clock on your screen, or it
  can be very massive such as NurfedUI which
  completely changes most aspects of the World of
  Warcraft UI.

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User Interface

• The following slide is what the Blizzard UI looks
  like.
• The slide after is a slide of my UI, followed by
  other custom UIs. Notice the radical differences
  between all of them.

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Addon Basics

• All mods are composed of a minimum of three
  files the .toc file, .xml file, and .lua file.
• All these are generally stored in the same folder
  with the .toc file, although it is possible for
  them to be in different folders. They are stored
  at C\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\Ad
  dOns.
• The .toc files filename must be exactly the same
  as the folders name it is in.
• Blizzard designed the UI so that all the
  functions and systems are already set up for you.
  All you have to do is figure out how to use what
  theyve given you.

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.toc

• This is the table of contents file. It contains
  the basic information needed to start the addon.
• There are only a few lines needed an interface
  number line, a title, and then the name of the
  xml file that you will call upon loading the
  addon which occurs when you load your character
  when you enter the world.
• There are other options such as optional and
  required dependencies and notes.

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.xml

• This is the file that contains the information
  used for display. You call image files to be
  displayed and create all your frames in this
  file.
• It is written very similar to HTML with tags and
  attributes.
• There is a line that tells
  it which .lua file to go to when it calls
  functions from the commands.
• The file starts with and ends with .

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XML code example
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.lua

• The .lua file is where all the actual coding is.
  This is where you make the addon actually do
  something.
• Many functions are called from the .xml file
  through the commands which respond to
  events such as or . You can
  also call functions from other functions or slash
  commands.
• The language is similar to C. All the regular
  programming statements (if, else, for, etc.) are
  used.
• Syntax is a bit different mainly due to there not
  being variable types other than global and local.
  Because of this, its much easier to send and
  receive variables without worrying about
  datatypes or function types.
• Heavily object oriented. Uses the names of the
  frames or fontstrings to do things from LUA with
  predefined functions.
• Virtually all game related functions are already
  made. All you have to do is use them and provide
  the logic!

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Sunder Countdown XML

• Made using 4 frames/layers a single unifying
  background frame on which the other frames are
  based, the bar is a separate frame on the
  background frame, the text is a fontstring
  layered over the background and the border is a
  texture layered over the background.
• All are anchored and positioned so that it looks
  like a single bar with text instead the four
  different frames and layers that it actually is.

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Sunder Countdown LUA
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Let the games begin! - Lord Victor
Nefarius