A [Not So] Simple Request

[Hulan]

What I am asking isn't even that unusual, in fact, it's an industry standard. Sony releases the specs for their next gen system to developers years before it comes out so that they can start working on games in time for the system release.

[Inaaca]

I wouldn't blame SE if they wanted to focus on making their own standard UI the best it can be before player's start shifting their attention to making addons for it.

I mean it would be a little disheartening if that, during beta, where SE needs lots of feedback for adjustments and improvements, players instead just start making addons to compensate for shortcomings. One thing at a time, yeah?

[Hulan]

I mean it would be a little disheartening if that, during beta, where SE needs lots of feedback for adjustments and improvements, players instead just start making addons to compensate for shortcomings. One thing at a time, yeah?

It's not really an either/or kind of thing. If they've done it "right" - which under Yoshi-P's leadership I have no reason to believe they haven't - the API should already be well established since it is part of the fundamental building blocks of the GUI (even for them).

Releasing API docs would take almost none of their time, and would give them a new pool of player input to draw from. Not to mention, if they really wanted 5 stars, they could open up a add-on submission form and steal our ideas for the main UI in beta. I don't mind, seriously SE, take any and all of my ideas (for FFXIV).

[Wolfie]

Releasing API docs would take almost none of their time, and would give them a new pool of player input to draw from.

Yes and no. Exposing API to users/3rd parties means you have to account for any securities/vulnerabilities in it. There's more work that needs to be done there besides just opening it up and documenting it. But

Not to mention, if they really wanted 5 stars, they could open up a add-on submission form and steal our ideas for the main UI in beta. I don't mind, seriously SE, take any and all of my ideas (for FFXIV).

I've said it before and I'll say it now. Opening up the API does the vast majority of the work for SE. Design, collecting feature requests, testing, refinement, etc is all crowd sourced -- done by the community. All they have to do is take the popular/useful addons and implement them as is into the default UI once in a while, and they'd be able to keep an up-to-date, competitive UI with much less effort.

[Hulan]

Exposing API to users/3rd parties means you have to account for any securities/vulnerabilities in it. There's more work that needs to be done there besides just opening it up and documenting it.

While true, these are steps they should have already taken/considered when first developing the UI API much earlier in the development cycle. Though I will admit... This being Square Enix's first real step into open source, I do expect a few... hiccups... early on. All the more reason to let us at it in the beta so we can do our damage and they can respond and learn.

[Randelmire]

For the map on 2nd monitor, worst case scenario I guess an addon could export player position and current location to a XML file every 1 to 5 sec, or maybe directly send info to an external software that would display map + current position.

[Astora]

What the UI is written in and utilizes will be completely different than what we'll have available to us. Example: RIFT uses Scaleform, but the entire Addon API is Lua.

If they're doing it right, we won't be touching Scaleform at all and will be locked in a sandbox playground that they establish after they've flushed out the feature set of the base UI. I'll be very, very surprised if it isn't Lua that will power the Addon API. Do they have an idea of what they want to give us access to? Sure, but I honestly don't expect anything solid until well after release.

Maybe, maybe, we'll see some of it during beta, but I doubt it'll be available at launch. If it is, I expect it to be very basic.

[Hulan]

Not to get into a debate, but yes, of course we won't be touching Scaleform itself (just the functions it exposes). But I disagree point for point on the "right" way being segregating the player API and developer API. Uniform development environments offer innumerable advantages. Similarly, if they don't want us (Add-on developers that is) to have access to a set of functionality, it means that that is functionality they do not intend players to have. Meaning their UI won't need access to that data either. Special cases only lead to headaches.

Either way, be it Lua or Actionscript, the point still stands. Giving developers more time, even with a beta interface, would do them and us a world of good.

[Wolfie]

They SHOULD be doing some open API betas, yes. But since I'm totally skeptical about SE's abilities, I don't want them to just flip that switch on or have it on during the ARR beta, since problems introduced by insecure API can totally f**k up more conventional testing and debugging.

[Signy]

I really hope SE don't use scalaform...

I have bad experience with it on MMOs...