FIX the bloody pet bar already

#0 - Sept. 30, 2007, 1:10 p.m.

Yes, we know. Bad, bad addons (EVIL addons) are the root cause of the problem.

WE DON'T CARE.

Clearly the problem is way too difficult for addon authors to figure out, because here we are, ten months after the release of 2.0.1 (which introduced this breakage), and it STILL happens.

Blizzard needs to either ensure that this never happens, or put in a detector that tells the ordinary user "hey bozo, addon XYZ just broke your pet bar", and that also tells the developer "hey moron, your addon XYZ did ABC at line 123 and broke the pet bar, so stop doing that you idiot"

Because clearly we are all too stupid to comprehend the brilliance that is the 2.0 pet bar behavior.

/sarcasm

Slouken

#16 - Oct. 7, 2007, 5:52 p.m.

We've been trying to nail this down too, but haven't ever been able to reproduce it in house. Does anyone have any steps?

Please include the following:
* Reproduceable steps - "most of the time this happens" is fine
* AddOns enabled, with links to the exact versions you used (or a zip of your Interface directory)
* A zip of your WTF directory, along with the realm and character having the problem

For those of you who have fixed other AddOns to take care of this problem, what have you done?

Thanks!

Slouken

#18 - Oct. 7, 2007, 6:06 p.m.

Unfortunately, if it is taint, you can't actually fix it in combat, sort of by definition. Cogwheels AddOn which registers the frames to unitwatch will work, but we're trying to find the underlying cause.

Slouken

#22 - Oct. 7, 2007, 6:18 p.m.

Q u o t e:

For my husband who uses very little addons all he has to do to make th pet bar not show up is to "attain" a pet during combat either by being dismounted from a mob or enslaving a demon. To fix this what he needs to do is either mount and remount after combat of course. I will see if he can you the rest of the info when he wakes up. What is odd is that I never have this issue, I use CT and/or Bongos.

Yeah, getting his Interface and WTF directory along with the name of the realm and character that has the problem will really help.

Thanks!

Slouken

#24 - Oct. 7, 2007, 6:35 p.m.

Please, stop the flames. We're trying to fix this, not insult each other. If you can't stop, I'll start moderating this thread.

Thanks!

Slouken

#30 - Oct. 7, 2007, 7:27 p.m.

Q u o t e:
And also - I've probably done more to try to fix this mess since 2.0 came out than you flamers have, having provided fixes for several broken addons to their authors.

Great, so what were the fixes? And what are the steps to reproducing it now? (Interface directory, WTF directory, realm, character, etc.)

Slouken

#31 - Oct. 7, 2007, 7:34 p.m.

Q u o t e:

And there is a new feature in 2.2.2 ! When you get stunned of your mount, sometimes the petbar is frozen as it slides into view! So half of it is visible and half of it is behind the other bars!

<broken record>
Can you post a link to a zip of your Interface folder, your WTF folder, and mention what realm and character is having the problem?
</broken record>

Thanks!

Slouken

#33 - Oct. 7, 2007, 8:05 p.m.

Actually, if you could disable that AddOn, and post the info requested in this thread with the best steps you can get, maybe we can fix this once and for all.

Thanks!

Slouken

#42 - Oct. 8, 2007, 2:12 a.m.

Q u o t e:
Using Titan Panel, I never have a 'missing' pet bar, instead I see about the top few pixels appearing behind my bottom Titan Panel, just above the screen. The rest is off screen and is completely unusable.

For Mind Control, this happens to me roughly 98% of the time if I am in combat. I rarely ever have this problem out of combat with Hunter/Warlocks pets. I rarely have this happen to me in combat with Shadowfiend. I have a LOT of addons (which makes finding the source of the problem for me rather difficult) and it would take me a while to compile a list of them. The only real UI-changing ones I have are Titan Panel, ArcHUD2, MetaMap/Gatherer, IgnoreMore, and various tooltip-enhancing addons.

Can you paste a link to a zip with your Interface and WTF folder, and include your realmname and character name?

Slouken

#54 - Oct. 8, 2007, 5:20 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I was having this problem, and after some experimentation, traced it to a pair of mods called 'charactersviewer' and 'characterprofiler.'

With only these two mods enabled, I was able to reproduce the problem every time. With them disabled, my pet bar works fine, even with several other mods installed.

To reproduce the problem:
mount
enter combat
dismount
say 'woah, no pet bar'

Here is a link to the addons in question (this is the same version I have installed.)

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/316/7

Hope this helps stamp out this annoying bug.

Great! We'll look at this for 2.3, thanks!

Slouken

#55 - Oct. 8, 2007, 5:21 p.m.

Q u o t e:
One thought that occurs to me based on some things mentioned in peoples' posts...

I don't notice it myself, but is there an animation that brings the pet bar out? That would help explain why in some cases RegisterUnitWatch wouldn't work, because protected frames can't be moved during combat, either. So the RegisterUnitWatch solution would show the frame, but since it would still be buried under the main action bar, you'd never know.

Yes, this is exactly right. The cases where this works is where some AddOn disables the pet bar movement (which then taints the pet bar), but has it positioned so it will be visible when shown by the unitwatch code.

Slouken

#64 - Oct. 12, 2007, 2:21 a.m.

Any AddOn that hooked CloseWindow() would cause this problem. This is fixed for 2.3.

There may be other issues though, so please keep reporting as many steps as possible!

We've added a message that shows up in the chat log when an action is blocked due to taint, so you can see when it's happening:
Interface action failed because of an AddOn

Slouken

#66 - Oct. 12, 2007, 5:25 a.m.

Q u o t e:
How about telling us (a) what action, and (b) which addon in that message, since you've added tracking to tell what addon taints what variable?

a) The action is usually pretty obvious (show/hide/move), and we're trying to keep the message short.

b) Which AddOn is involved is misleading, as often it'll be an infrastructure AddOn like Ace or Chaos that shows up, and the real culprit is something quite different.

c) All this information is available if you hook the ADDON_ACTION_BLOCKED event and look at the event arguments and the stack trace with debugstack(). Likely it'll be an AddOn author that will be doing this kind of diagnostics.

Slouken

#68 - Oct. 25, 2007, 3:56 a.m.

There are some instructions on how to find taint problems on the 2.3 test realm here:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=2518903044&sid=1

Please post any findings in reply to that thread.

Thanks!