Sunday 4 February 2018

Blazing Trails


Hi!

Sorry for the lack of updates lately, real life chaos prevented me from having the energy or the time to work on TacO since August.

In the meantime, Tekkit's marker packs have become quite popular and a regular source of helpful information (I myself used his pack for the daily Wintersday orphan runs). He does, however, tend to stretch the limits of the system with how many markers his trails require. There are less resource intensive ways of doing what he does, not to mention the time and effort it must take to place all of these markers.
Sooo many markers!
In order to make his job easier, I created a new feature that should also be more resource friendly.
Introducing: trails!

He went that way!
Trails are continuous lines on the terrain that have a custom scrolling texture animating over them. Other than this in many respects they function just like markers with the same enabling-disabling controls, etc. The main difference is the way they are created: by recording the movement of whoever wants to record a trail.

As trails contain a lot more data, they are stored in an optimal binary format, which makes it harder to edit them by hand, so (for now) rudimentary recording tools have been added to the overlay as well.

The documentation has been updated to show how to use and share trails.

Note: this build is only a feature enabler build, and as such doesn't contain any recorded trails yet.

You can download the new build here.

Changelog:

  • The marker filter submenu will now stay open after toggling the visibility of a marker group
  • Turned off the DPI awareness feature by default. This should fix TacO UI scaling issues that arose when the GW2 client was made DPI aware
  • Added the -forcedpiaware command line option to preserve the previous scaling behavior should the need arise for some reason
  • Added an option to toggle automatically hiding the marker editor when not standing over a marker
  • Added trails
  • Added trail recording tools to the marker editor menu
  • Added trail recording hotkey binding options (find them under the marker editor submenu)
  • Fixed a bug in keyboard handling where key actions would be transmitted twice to TacO
  • Added "Hide TacO on loading screens" option. (On by default)
  • TacO will now recognize if it's already running and won't start a second instance

44 comments:

  1. I was wondering if there is anyway to turn trails off. I have made one just to see. It works, but when I turn off the Marker [x] it is embedded into, the trail stays visible. Am I doing something wrong?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Trails and Markers are separate things, neither is embedded into the other. They can share categories though. If you only created a trail through a recording session simply end the recording and it'll disappear. If you placed the trail into a marker pack and added a category to it then you should be able to disable the category to make the trail disappear.

      Delete
    2. Solved trailData="Random.name" , needs to be the same as POI type="Random.name" . Just a input error on my part

      Delete
    3. Can anyone show me an example in categorydata? I dont know if the lack of sleep but I cant figure it out :-D

      Delete
    4. Tekkit: there's an example on the documentation page :)

      Delete
  2. TacO continues to get better and better.

    Thanks for fixing the information line jitter!

    The new link for tekkit workshop TacO packs is: http://tekkitsworkshop.net/index.php/gw2-taco/download

    Please point to a link for a MapId-to-MapName table that has to exist somewhere. I am building one slowly, but why reinvent the wheel?

    Are there escape characters that would allow users to put end-of-line, line and block comments in the xml files and not cause TacO to complain? It would make breaking the poidata.xml file into separate marker packs easier.

    A featiure suggestion: Add a TacO menu item that would solicit and insert a line of text describing then next series of points being stored into the poidata.xml file.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Link updated.

      As for the map stuff, the official API should be of service:
      https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/API:2/maps

      Standard xml comments should work fine, if there are any issues with that, let me know :)

      As for that feature, it's not as simple as TacO only keeps the data in memory and recreates the xml from scratch every time it needs to be dumped.

      Delete
  3. "The marker filter submenu will now stay open after toggling the visibility of a marker group."

    Can you do the same for the map timer filter?

    ReplyDelete
  4. without a way to erase part of a path, this is no replacement. I fail a jump and have to start the whole thing from the start.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You fail the jump, pause the recording, go back to the jump, undo the trail until it's where you are, resume the recording and do the jump again.

      Delete
  5. Hey great to see you're still working on it ^^ i'd like to request a feature: tactical markers for hero challenges. would be great if you could implement that :) keep up the great work!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's the question of someone making a marker pack for it, not an implementation issue ;) Maybe you'd like to give it a go? :)

      Delete
    2. oh i didn't realize. maybe i will! but how do i do that?

      Delete
    3. There’s documentation for it on the blog, you can find it in the quick links :)

      Delete
    4. your documentation is telling me i shouldn't do a marker pack for hero points since you are planning on getting them via the API?

      Delete
    5. Oh. Need to update that :)

      Delete
    6. Updated. The API only contains 2D coordinates, which isn't enough information to display a marker in TacO.

      Delete
    7. alright. i'm already trying to figure out how to add my new catergory but i'm having issues. 1st space gets converted into _ underscore, 2nd i can't get it to use the icon i provided. could you maybe be so good and make me a working poidata.xml with the category "Hero Points", behavior 6 and an icon path to "Data\Hero_Challenge_empty.png"? that would be great :)

      in case you're wondering about the png: it's from the wiki resources. 32x32px ,4kb, with transparency

      Delete
    8. I'm at work atm so can't check right now, but you can have a look at Tekkit's marker packs for some pointers :)

      Delete
    9. that confused me even more x) i've never done any (light) coding. i gotta get some irl stuff done too now. i'll do the marker pack for hero points if you can make me the category ^^ otherwise i'll just give up and move on, to be completely honest. not proud of that, just honest.

      i'll check back later. have a nice day at work!

      Delete
  6. I have faith in this mod, but the latest build is getting blocked and quarantined by Bitdefender as malware. I never had a problem with the previous build.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Happened to earlier versions as well, until they got whitelisted as a false positive. Would you be so kind to send it to them as a false positive if there's such an option in the software? They'll check it more thoroughly personally and clear it.

      Delete
  7. Dont know if i'm the only one but when I use the -forcedpiaware command (because I dont use the DPI scaling and love the small interface on a 4k screen) I cant click in the middle of my screen, for example, if I want to use f12 and than "Chatacter Select" I have to click on the far side of the button because it wont react when I click on the middle of the button. Same for waypoints, if I want to click a linked wp, I first need to move the map a but so that the wp is not in the middle of the screen. Only happends when I have TacO on with no DPI scaling.

    Also a problem I found is that when I exit taco and want it back again I have to shutdown gw2 first of taco wont start.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I moved this comment from the Documentation thread:
    I am unable to locate the 'Export Trail' button/menu item.
    Any way to use Ctrl or Alt or Shift in conjunction with another key (or the Numeric Keypad Keys) to work with the Trails? Most of my single keys are already mapped.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Open the marker editor window (and resize it in window edit mode so the button shows)
      Also, I hope you updated more than just the exe ;)

      Delete
  9. I can't get build 031 to work. Reverting back to 030 works fine. It looks like the exe for 031 isn't running. I have downloaded the zip again, tried installing it to another folder, and still it won't work. I have looked at my process list in Task Manager. The 030 build shows up there, but 031 does not. Running the 031 build as administrator does not solve this problem.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Might have something to do with the new "is TacO already running" feature. You didn't have the old one running the same time, or some other process called the same as the taco exe running, did you?

      Delete
    2. No, I checked in the Task Manager and looked in the Processes and Details tab. I did have a Windows Defender pop-up occur when I first tried to run it, but have turned off all Windows security options (I run third party firewall and anti-virus). Could there be a registry setting that has been affected, even though I have turned off the Windows protection.

      Delete
    3. No idea, TacO itself doesn't mess with the registry at all. There was a report of a false positive virus detection about the new build again, I asked the reporter to send it in to the antivirus company to be thoroughly checked. You're the only one who's reported the inability to run TacO though. I'll put in a command line option to the next build that will forcibly open another instance so you can check if that's causing the problem. (Putting it on the todo now)

      Delete
  10. In desperation, I restarted my computer, started up GW2, then started build 031, and now it works. Weird. But hooray!

    ReplyDelete
  11. And now it's stopped working again, but the previous build 030 is fine.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Faulting application name: GW2TacO.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x596bc86b
    Faulting module name: GW2TacO.exe, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x596bc86b
    Exception code: 0xc0000409
    Fault offset: 0x000a7714
    Faulting process id: 0x3918
    Faulting application start time: 0x01d3a0ba18b9237f
    Faulting application path: C:\GW2 extra stuff\TACO\GW2TacO.exe
    Faulting module path: C:\GW2 extra stuff\TACO\GW2TacO.exe
    Report Id: 5ccf8f4e-8096-4687-b9c6-8f1020def8c4
    Faulting package full name:
    Faulting package-relative application ID:

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hm. Could you look to see if TacO generated a crash.log file? If yes, please show me its contents.

      Delete
    2. It works so long as I reboot my machine. It is very odd as the other two builds work perfectly. I cannot find a crash file, is it deleted upon reboot or successful launching?

      Delete
    3. I'll do the command line stuff to disable the check and you can see if that fixes it. It'll be in the next build.

      Delete
  13. IDK if its just me but I recorded two trails and added them to a custom POI-file and deleted the two entries from the default poidata.xml -> but now every time I start gw2taco, it adds those two trails to the default poidata.xml again - so that file is getting longer and longer because the trails are getting added to it.

    Then the drop-down-menu where you select the (default) marker type seems to be messed up. It doesn't close itself after selecting an entry. And if you click on the dropdown-area again, it opens another menu on top of the old menu.

    But other than that, this release is pretty epic :) The trails are an awesome addition.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Both seem to be valid bugs reported, yeah. I'll look into them.

      Delete
  14. So I saw a few videos about the program and got really excited to download it and use it! But It's not working for me. I run it as Admin as well as GW2. I get a large black box that covers the launcher. I managed to click login and play just by guess but then the whole screen went black with the GW2 cursor being the only thing visible. Had to ALT+f4 to exit the game. Here is the log:


    ----------------------------------------------
    [2018-02-10 06:58:58] (Info) [GW2TacO] build ID: GW2 TacO 031.1787r
    [2018-02-10 06:59:00] (Info) [core] DirectX11 Device initialization successful.
    [2018-02-10 06:59:00] (Info) [gui] Successfully loaded Skin 'UI.wbs'
    [2018-02-10 06:59:00] (Err) [base] OleLoadPicture failed (Unknown error 0x800A01E1)
    [2018-02-10 06:59:00] (Info) [core] Successfully loaded D3DCompile from d3dcompiler_47.dll
    [2018-02-10 06:59:01] (Info) Fetching URL: api.guildwars2.com//v2/wvw/objectives?ids=all
    [2018-02-10 06:59:01] (Err) C:/Users/Armando/Desktop/TaCo/test.angel - (0, 0) : Err : Failed to open script file 'C:/Users/Armando/Desktop/TaCo/test.angel'
    [2018-02-10 06:59:01] (Err) Please correct the errors in the script and try again.

    [2018-02-10 06:59:01] (Err) The script must have the function 'void tick()'. Please add it and try again.

    [2018-02-10 06:59:01] (Info) Fetching URL: api.guildwars2.com//v2/maps?id=96
    [2018-02-10 06:59:01] (Info) Fetching URL: api.guildwars2.com//v2/maps?id=95
    [2018-02-10 06:59:02] (Info) Fetching URL: api.guildwars2.com//v2/maps?id=38
    [2018-02-10 06:59:02] (Info) Fetching URL: api.guildwars2.com//v2/maps?id=1099
    [2018-02-10 06:59:02] (Info) Fetching URL: api.guildwars2.com//v2/maps?id=968
    [2018-02-10 06:59:26] (Dbg) Taco integrity: 3000, GW2 integrity: 3000
    [2018-02-10 06:59:26] (Err) gw2 window size change: 0 0 1120 976 (1120 976)
    [2018-02-10 06:59:46] (Err) [core] ---Leaked graphical resources start here---
    [2018-02-10 06:59:46] (Err) [core] Unfreed graphical resource found. Allocation stack:
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\core2\resource.cpp (12)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\core2\dx11device.cpp (887)
    e:\!code\workshop\gw2overlay\traillogger.cpp (252)
    e:\!code\workshop\gw2overlay\traillogger.cpp (307)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (1009)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (965)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (957)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (1003)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (957)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (915)

    [2018-02-10 06:59:46] (Err) [core] Unfreed graphical resource found. Allocation stack:
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\core2\resource.cpp (12)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\core2\dx11renderstate.cpp (137)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\core2\dx11device.cpp (893)
    e:\!code\workshop\gw2overlay\traillogger.cpp (248)
    e:\!code\workshop\gw2overlay\traillogger.cpp (307)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (1009)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (965)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (957)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (1003)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (957)

    [2018-02-10 06:59:46] (Err) [core] Unfreed graphical resource found. Allocation stack:
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\core2\resource.cpp (12)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\core2\dx11renderstate.cpp (137)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\core2\dx11device.cpp (893)
    e:\!code\workshop\gw2overlay\traillogger.cpp (244)
    e:\!code\workshop\gw2overlay\traillogger.cpp (307)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (1009)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (965)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (957)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (1003)
    e:\!code\workshop\basecode\whiteboard\application.cpp (957)

    [2018-02-10 06:59:46] (Err) [core] 3 unfreed graphical resources found.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Please consult the faq's "my screen is black" part.

      Delete
  15. First things first, thank you for this plugin, it helps a lot! I am having trouble with the dpi command. Simple question: how do you execute the command on the plugin? sorry for the ignorance. Thank you in advance.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Is it possible to include trails as part of a Route as seen in the JP_Megapack.xml? I've played with it a bit, but I can't get it to show the trail when I trigger the route.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Would be possible add a function in "marker editor" to automatically save the trails? I mean, instead of create a trail, export, and add it manually to poi xml file, would be possible a button like "save" that automatically save it? (export with basic name like 'trailXXXXX?+add in xml file). It would speed up the creation of it instead to lock me in front of 1thousand windows, stop and restart TacO to reload xml files :P thx u!!

    ReplyDelete
  18. πŸŽ†THE HACK GEEKSπŸŽ†
    Have you ever wondered if it's possible to hack things the way hackers do it in the movies.😡😡

    Yeah its possible!!!😁😁😁
    Hacking can easily be done by planting a computer virus or spyware(depending on what the hacker intend to do) in the targeted device.πŸ™‡

    We at THE HACK GEEKS give you the best hacking service there ever is.πŸ‘ŒπŸ‘Œ
    We understand the Issues of scammers all over the internet and that's why we give you a solid prove of our services.

    We have got the top hackers in hackerone.com that are always ready to hack for you anytime ,anywhere, any device, organisation, federal agencies, university, college you just think of it.
    Do you want:
    *To Hack, Clone or Track a Phone?πŸ“²
    *To Sniff, Erase or Change a file in a Company, Organisation or in a Federal agency?πŸ“–
    *To retrieve, minne BitCoin?πŸ’°
    *To hack an Email or any Social Media account?πŸ’ž
    *To Transfer funds without been detected?πŸ’³
    *To increase your credit score?πŸ”πŸ”
    *To Hack Credit/Debit card?πŸ’°πŸ’³

    All these are what we can do for you.

    We are descrete and won't expose our service to you to anyone.
    Contact:
    thehackgeeks@gmail.com
    We look forward to hacking for you.πŸ™πŸ™

    ReplyDelete