Spotter

Version: 0.9.7

Spotter is a support addon for all gathering professions that rotates your gathering spells automatically in a short period of time. You can activate the rotation automatically while your mounted, flying or even shapeshifted. Increase your farming efficiency and search for ore, herbs and fish in one overflight.

You can customize a blacklist and a whitelist to automatically stop the rotation in cities or just areas of cities. If you get aggro while farming, no problem. Spotter stops the rotation on its own if you'll be attacked and restart on aggro loss.

Ping on your minimap to mark farm spots for a short time.

How to use Spotter

Installation

Unzip the Spotter-archive to your Addon-directory. Make sure you don't create any folders in the AddOn-directory and unzip Spotter there. WoW won't find Spotter then. More informations about installing AddOns can be found on the Spotter-page unter the menu-button "Install": http://my.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/spotter.aspx

Configuration

Before running, you should set Spotter up correctly, otherwise, Spotter won't run. You can configure all settings over the chatframe, the minimap-button or the FuBar-Plugin of Spotter. To make Spotter running, you need at least to set up when Spotter should start and what you are looking for. Spotter has to be active too. Read the following instructions to configure Spotter.

Configuration over chatframe:

To configure Spotter over the chatframe, you have to use the so called "slash-commands". If you type "/spotter" in the inputfield of the chatframe, you get a list of all possible settings.
You can configure the settings by typing them in like described in the chatframe. If you want to delete all entries of the personal blacklist for example, you have to type:
"/spotter area blacklist deleteall"

Configuration over minimap-button or FuBar-Plugin:

The configuration over the minimap-button or the FuBar-Plugin is barely the same. Right-clicking on the minimap-button or the FuBar-Plugin of Spotter brings up a graphical menu with all settings.

The following description uses the graphical method to configure Spotter.

Activation-settings

Clicking on the "active" entry starts and stops Spotter. The entry "active while" contains settings to start Spotter while you are mounted, flying or shapeshifted, if you are a druid. You can also make Spotter always running.

Interval-settings

Here you can configure the interval Spotter uses to change the search spells. You can define an interval between 1.4 and 20 seconds, I personally prefer a setting between 1.5 and 1.6 seconds. This works for me to get all spots while flying with an epic flying mount. This is also pretty much the lowest interval you can use with a regular connection to the servers because of the global-cooldown of 1.5 seconds and the accuracy of the timer which depends on your current ingame-framerate.

Area-settings

Spotter contains an internal blacklist which contains several areas where Spotter shouldn't run. These areas are actually the capital cities of Azeroth and all cities of Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. The reason is, there are no resources in cities normally and Spotter would bother you. All battlegrounds are blacklisted too, because if you are using Spotter with an change-interval near global-cooldown, you can't attack another player.
If you enter a blacklisted area, Spotter stops automatically and starts itself when you enter a non-blacklisted zone.
Additional to the general blacklist which is the same for all characters, you can define personal black- and whitelists for every player.

Personal blacklist

The personal blacklist is meant to extend the general blacklist. You can add a zone or subzone by typing the name in the textfield of "Append user blacklist". Clicking the entry "Append current location" adds the current subzone your character is in to the personal blacklist.
To delete an entry of the blacklist, just click on the zone-name under "Remove zone/area" or if you want to reset the blacklist, click on "Reset Blacklist".

Personal whitelist

The personal whitelist allows you to activate Spotter in zones which would normally be blocked by the general blacklist. This means, if you want to enable Spotter while you are in Shattrath, just type the name in the textfield. The configuration is the same as the personal blacklist.

Minimap

Here you can enable and customize the minimap ping feature. The idea was, if you fly over an area and Spotter runs really fast, you may can't remember of all spots you saw and you don't want to wait untill the rotations show the spots next time. The minimap ping feature allow you to draw a little icon on the minimap just on the place you clicked on it. So you can fly over and mark all seen spots and can start gathering without checking the minimap all the time. The icons you set fade out after a short time. You can set this up in this menu and you can choose an icon shape you like.
Sadly, this feature is not stable at the moment. The first icon you set after log in, relog or looting something is set at the wrong place. All further icons will be set right.

Logging

Spotter has a simple logging-mechanic you can configure here. You can select several message types to show or hide. Spotter has the following categories at the moment:

• Info -- General infomations, nothing important
• Warning -- System warning, errors the system can handle
• Error -- Errors the system can't handle

Debugging

This entry contains several debugging options. Normally, you can totally ignore them. Debug-messages may give you a hint if something goes wrong.

Usage

Activation

You can activate Spotter over the chatframe, the minimap-button, the FuBar-Plugin or a key-binding.

Chatframe

Type "/spotter active on" in the input line of the chatframe

Minimap-button or FuBar-Plugin

You can rightclick the button or the plugin to view the menu and click on "active" or you left- click on the minimap-button or the FuBar-Plugin to start or stop Spotter.

Key-binding

Open the key-bindings of your WoW-Client. There should be a section named "Spotter" where you can define a keystroke to start or stop Spotter.

Automatic activation/deactivation of Spotter

Additionally to the blacklist, there are some other events that causes Spotter to start or stop.

Aggro

If you gain aggro, Spotter stops immediately to give you the chance to defend yourself. After you lose aggro, Spotter restarts automatically.

Looting

Spotter stops automatically if you open a loot-window. This also happens if you gather herbs or minerals. After to loot-window is closed, Spotter restarts automatically.

Casting

If you begin to cast, Spotter stops untill you have finished or abort casting.

Disclaimer

Please check my disclaimer-page under http://wow.curseforge.com/projects/spotter/pages/disclaimer/