About addons -- don't make them use Adobe Flash, please....

[Jinko]

I'm not too familiar with LotRO. What is the addon community like there, and why don't you want FFXIV to emulate them?

Last time I checked the addon community isn't very active, the addons in general aren't very useful either, I'm not sure this is due to the developers not allowing players access to specific functions or whether the community just isn't interested in making good addons.

It goes back to what I said about SE providing a good API so that addon developers can make specific calls to the server for data. (this is something they will need to build upon over the course of the game no doubt, hopefully they will have a sub-forum for addons)

I have hope that FFXIV will have good ones because windower was quite well made given its lack of support from SE.

On a personal note, I like my screen to stay pretty clear... so unless an add-on is EXTREMELY useful then I'll pass

I am the same, a lot of the addons I use in the past have been things which stay hidden unless you are doing specific functions.

Something like an addon which can download the price history from the marketward, or one that can help manage gear when swapping between classes (I know they have something official planned for this)

Better inventory sorting functions etc.

[Rydin]

I am the same, a lot of the addons I use in the past have been things which stay hidden unless you are doing specific functions.

Something like an addon which can download the price history from the marketward, or one that can help manage gear when swapping between classes (I know they have something official planned for this)

Better inventory sorting functions etc.

I like that idea

[tymora]

1) A better sorted inventory for certain. By tabs, categories, alphabetical...etc etc, by ascending/descending order...
2) Ability to right-click - Right now its left-click only.
3) More detailed logs on some stuff...like the actual stats/grade of materia you get.
4) Real time log parsers of all flavors
5) In-game recipe references.
6) Map annotations and markings.
7) Distance to target UI
8) Actual HP of target instead of a bar
9) Multiple enemy threat meters (for large fights like Moogle)
10) UI to show current target of party members (> /assist)
11) Log -> Website and Website <- Log chat forwarding
12) Longer action bars, multiple action bars
13) Community statistics projects (drop rates, chest treasure rates...etc)

[Rhianu]

On a personal note, I like my screen to stay pretty clear... so unless an add-on is EXTREMELY useful then I'll pass

An addon doesn't necessarily have to add an extra widget to the screen. Sometimes an addon will just change the way an existing widget functions, or automate certain tasks for you. Even if an addon does provide extra or additional data, that data can still be context sensitive so that it only appears when you need it and gets out of the way when you don't. So hypothetically speaking, it's actually entirety possible to have a ton of addons without adding any clutter to the screen at all.

[Rydin]

An addon doesn't necessarily have to add an extra widget to the screen. Sometimes an addon will just change the way an existing widget functions, or automate certain tasks for you. Even if an addon does provide extra or additional data, that data can still be context sensitive so that it only appears when you need it and gets out of the way when you don't. So hypothetically speaking, it's actually entirety possible to have a ton of addons without adding any clutter to the screen at all.

In which case I'd be all for that

[Arathalion]

I agree using flash is a mistake, personally I think they should use Lua, many MMO players/addon programmers are used to this language.

This. Lua is very lightweight AND easy to learn, and can be adapted to pretty much anything they have in mind.

[Meskyanichi]

Lua seems fine to me. I have never used it but a quick glance over the syntax and other resources makes it seem pretty simple to learn. Although I just that it doesn't really support the concept of "classes", you apparently can somehow emulate it. This reminds me of JavaScript, except that the syntax seems cleaner. However, speaking of JavaScript, using CoffeeScript (which compiles to JavaScript) you get very clean syntax to write JS. However, this might be too hard to set up for a lot of people that aren't developers.

Other dynamic languages might be interesting as well. To name two: Ruby and Python. Not sure whether they could be embedded in their add-on engine but these languages are easy to learn and are object-oriented. Although they are probably heavy-weight compared to Lua, but I'm not sure about that.

Regardless, Lua seems like a solid choice. If you check the wiki page under Applications ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lua_(pr...)#Applications ) you can see that great systems like iOS, Nginx and a pretty long list of other fairly big names, all incorporate Lua. It also states that it's used by many game programmers as a scripting language. So it sounds like its the way to go.

However, I will be disappointed if SE uses Flash, Silverlight, .NET, C# or similar languages/frameworks and/or it requires an IDE. I've experienced them first-hand and it's just horrible. If it does require any of these, then no addon's will be written with these hands, as these technologies just offend me as a unix-based programmer. I'll just end up using other people's add-ons. huehuehue!

UPDATE: After looking around a bit I came across this question over at StackOverflow. It's pretty interesting: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3...-game-language It states some opinions from actual game developers and other programmers that actually used the language in production. Turns out it IS in fact very lightweight, and more performant than Ruby or Python (or many other dynamic languages that are similar) due to this. It also appears to be very low on CPU/Memory usage, which is excellent of course.

To be honest if SE is doing an add-on system, they might as well do it right and use tools/languages that have been proven to do the job very well for existing systems. Why opt in for a crappy tool like Flash/ActionScript to code it? This is what will probably keep programmers with excellent programming skills, that program for a living, away from building good addons for the community.