MobMap development blog

DAMN! I must have missed a little bug in v3.11 that had devastating consequences: it pretty much fucked up the tradeskill frames, the quest completion frames and quest acceptance frames.

I'm very sorry for this - usually I do run more testing on new releases in order to find at least such horrible bugs, but I did skip most of that for 3.11 since I felt a release ASAP was more important - well, shouldn't have done this.

The new v3.12 fixes the bug and is online for download. The v3.11 has been up for about 10-15 minutes though, so unfortunately some people have gotten this buggy version :(

Phew...okay, so bigger changes always tend to grow disagreements. I'm sorry for the disturbances I might have caused with some people in the 3.10 update, but unfortunately you can't do it right for everyone when it comes to changes - though I am always open for suggestions and have been looking into the biggest issues. I have read the comments in the MobMap v3.10 posting and extracted some changes from them which I could integrate rather quickly to improve the user experience with the newly added quest tracker.

First of all: many people didn't seem to find the option to completely disable the tracker. I understand that this is an important option, as there are many different quest tracker addons out there and quite some people already have a quest tracker which they like and don't need another right now. The option is actually there, it's in a new sub-tab on the Interface options screen (Interface -> Addons -> MobMap -> (click the "+" to open the sub-tabs) -> Quest Tracker). But I have now added a shortcut: by Alt-clicking on the "triangle" button you can immediately deactivate the quest tracker. It'll then be entirely gone from your screen and won't use up any processing power, too.

A new tooltip that's being displayed when hovering over the "triangle" explains how to move, toggle and deactivate the tracker. That should help people find out how this new instrument is to be used. Some bugs have been fixed and I have added some more options in the options screen, but read the changelog for yourself...

v3.11:
- fixed: An issue with Carbonite that caused the Carbonite map to flicker in certain situations
- added: A new tooltip to the MobMap quest tracker toggle button that explains how to use it
- added: A shortcut to completely disable the new quest tracker by alt-clicking onto the toggle button (can be reenabled using the regular option in the MobMap configuration sub-panel in the interface options)
- added: New options for the quest tracker: Option to hide finished objectives, an option to hide finished quests, an option to hide the "turn in to..." objectives and an option to hide the distance to quest targets
- added: new tooltips when hovering over quest names in the tracker that show the short quest description from the questlog
- added: Finished quests are now colored in a bright green color to indicate their finished status
- added: Quest levels are now being displayed in the quest titles, as well as minimum group size suggestions from Blizzard
- fixed: Reenabling the quest tracker now works without an interface reload

Oh, and of course I'd still like to read suggestions, opinions, bug reports and stuff about the new quest tracker. That feature is far away from being perfect, and I know that, but you always have to start somewhere, don't you?

But please - before you ask "how can I turn this off?" just alt-click the triangle in MobMap 3.11 ;-)

[edit] Big flaw found in 3.11, 3.12 fixes it.

A new version of MobMap has just been released - and it's a bigger release, as the version number jump from 3.04 to 3.10 indicates.

The most significant new feature in this version is the new MobMap Quest Tracker.



It's basically meant to be a full replacement of Blizzard's quest tracker, as you won't need it anymore if you feel comfortable with the MobMap tracker (if you don't, you can completely deactivate the MobMap tracker, though I really suggest to try it out first). First of all, the MobMap tracker automatically tracks everything in your quest log, you don't have to add quests to it. To keep your monitor from exploding though, quests are grouped by region as they are in the quest log. The region you're currently in is automatically moved to the top!

Then, there are of course the usual "questionmark buttons" from MobMap to do quick searches for quest details or quest targets. But those buttons have gotten significantly smarter: their behavior has been tuned for offering a much better "flow" when doing many quests. First of all, if a quest target as, for example, an NPC you have to kill, is only found in one zone, then its locations are immediately displayed on the map, and if you have TomTom or Cartographer Waypoints (I highly suggest installing TomTom if you haven't already, it's really useful) installed a waypoint with an arrow to it will automatically be created for you pointing into the direction of the quest target. You can even completely suppress the map display if you wish so and have just the waypoint being created, though I personally find it rather informative to glance at the dots and see which area they cover to know the exact area where the quest targets can be found. In addition to the quicksearch stuff, clicking a quest title will open the Blizzard quest log with the selected quest being displayed.

The new quest tracker frame also shows an estimated distance from your current position to each quest target, in order to help you decide which one you could do next (and yes, the data that allows this would even be suitable to create a full-blown routing feature, though that is a veeery big and complex thing which I might add some day in the not-too-distant future, but not tomorrow or such, as it really takes time to develop such a biggie in a way that doesn't suck). And another nice detail: the guy where you have to turn in a quest is added to the quest targets, so even quests which usually don't have a target now have at least this last "turn this quest in at [npc name here]" target (which you can of course quicksearch with MobMap).

The new quest tracker window is of course freely movable and sizable, to suit your personal needs and interface configuration. You can also pin it in one location once you have found the perfect place, just shift-click onto the arrow in the upper right which you should grab to move the window. This arrow is also used to toggle the quest window on and off, so you can hide it while not questing. And of course MobMap won't load its quest databases into memory until you actually show that quest tracker for the first time, so if you don't need it in a WoW session, it won't chew on your resources.

Okay, so there've been some more minor fixes in MobMap itself and the data collection routines besides this feature addition, but that's nothing big. This release is focused on the quest tracker, which is meant to be the basis of some more feature additions I've planned to streamline questing with MobMap. And I'd of course like to hear what you think about this new feature, if you like it or not, if there are problems with it (detailed reports about new bugs are greatly appreciated!) etc. - just leave me a comment.

Oh, and don't forget to update your database if you move from MobMap v3.04 to 3.10, as there has been a DATABASE FORMAT CHANGE!

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changelog v3.10:
- added: The new MobMap quest tracker was added. This tool allows you to track all your quests at once like with the Blizzard Quest Watch, but it has multiple improvements like showing quests which don't have a target, showing an estimated distance to the place you have to go to for each target MobMap knows about, allowing quick access to the questlog page of a quest and showing the NPC where a quest has to be turned in as a "quest target", all complete with MobMap quicksearch buttons of course.
- added: A new MobMap options sub-panel on the Blizzard interface options screen to configure the new quest tracker (or disabling it entirely, if you wish so)
- added: An option to directly create TomTom/Cartographer waypoints when searching for a quest objective via the new quest tracker
- changed: when using the quicksearch buttons to search for quest objectives, the MobMap window will not pop up anymore if an objective is found that is only located in one zone, if a quest drop is found which only drops from one mob in one zone or if a pickup item is found which can only be gathered in one zone. Instead, the locations you need are directly shown on the map.