Chained Timers Plugin

This plugin adds another spell timer method to Advanced Combat Tracker. The plugin does not replicate all of the capabilites of native spell timers. The plugin provides the following new capatilties:

• Start a timer when the fight starts and generate an alert a specified number of seconds after the fight starts (i.e. to warn of the very first occurrence of the spell).
• Handle the case where the mob casts the spell with two different, alternating, recast times.
• Handle the case where the spell does not hit anyone but the timer still needs to restart. For example, if it's a joust call and everyone jousted so the spell did not hit anyone. (Note that the plugin timer can drift from the game timer when actual occurrences are not observed for realignment.)
• Timers are stopped when ACT determines that combat has stopped.

Spell data is entered by the user in the data grid. The spell name is required.

If the 'Mob' name is entered, the spell only triggers for fights with that mob.

If the 'Zone' name is entered, the spell only triggers in that zone.

Grid Fields

The meaning and usage of the grid cells is described below.

• Reset - This button resets the state of the timer. It will then act as if the fight has not yet started.
• Realign - This button will set the timer to wait for an occurrence of the spell and start Timer 1 when the spell is detected.
• Enable - Spells must be enabled for the plugin to monitor them.
• Spell - The exact name of the spell to monitor.
• Mob - (Optional) The exact name of the mob that casts the spell. The plugin uses the mob name to determine when the fight starts. If the mob name is specified, the plugin must detect that mob is in combat before starting the timer(s). The First Timer does not function without a specified Mob name.
• Zone - (Optional) The zone where the spell occurs. If left blank, the spell will be available for monitoring in any zone (depending on the Mob and Enable settings). Otherwise, the zone entry needs to "match" the zone where the spell should be monitored. Since the Zone filter uses partial matches, this does not need to be an exact match to the zone name.
• First At - (Optional) The number of seconds after the fight starts that the first occurrence of the Spell is expected. The Mob name must be specified for the plugin to detect the start of the fight.
• Recast 1 - (Optional) The recast time of the spell. Optional in the case where only the First At timer is used. Otherwise, this is the equivalent of the native ACT spell timer time period.
• Recast 2 - (Optional) In the case where the mob uses two different alternating recast times, this is the second one. This is only functional if Recast 1 is also specified.
• Fill Miss - When checked, the plugin will assume a spell was casted at the time the timer expired even if the actual spell hit was not detected. When unchecked, timers only restart when the plugin sees the spell actuallly land. If using both Recast 1 and Recast 2 with Fill Miss disabled, spell hits must be detected within plus or minus Warn At seconds of the expected times or the sequencing will break.
• Warn At - This setting serves several purposes:
  • When a countdown timer reaches this count, the Alert is sounded.
  • This also serves as a "window" around the expected timeout.
    • Once a timer counts down to this many seconds or fewer, a detected spell hit will stop the current timer and start the next one.
    • When Fill Miss is enabled and a timer is automatically started after missing a detection, the spell actually hitting within this many seconds will restart the automatically started timer.
• Alert - When a timer counts down to the Warn At time, the plugin sends this phrase to the text-to-speech engine.
• First Timer - Time remaining for the First At timer.
• Timer 1 - Time remaining for the Recast 1 timer.
• Timer 2 - Time remaining for the Recast 2 timer.

Other cells that are used by the plugin but cannot be edited by the user can be displayed by checking the Show internal states checkbox at the bottom. Watching these may be useful when debugging timer settings.

Demo GIF

The GIF below is contrived to demonstrate how the timers work by monitoring a player-casted spell on a training dummy. The GIF starts at the Before the fight annotation when all 5 timers are listed. Starting from the beginning, the actions that the demo reflects are as follows:

1. The player starts the fight by hitting the training dummy.
   • The plugin sets the Enable and Zone filters to only show active timers.
   • The First Timer starts counting down beginning at First At seconds.
   • When the First Timer reaches Warn At seconds, the Alert is sounded.
2. The player uses the monitored spell when the First Timer is about to expire.
   • The First Timer clears
   • Timer 1 starts counting down beginning at Recast 1 seconds.
   • When Timer 1 reaches Warn At seconds, the Alert is sounded.
3. The player uses the monitored spell when Timer 1 is about to expire.
   • Timer 1 is cleared.
   • Timer 2 starts counting down beginning at Recast 2 seconds.
   • When Timer 2 reaches Warn At seconds, the Alert is sounded.
4. The third occurrence of the spell is not casted on time, Timer 2 times out. Since the Fill Miss option is enabled:
   • Timer 1 starts anyway.
   • Timer 2 shows red background negative numbers showing how late the spell cast is.
5. When the third spell occurrence is 4 seconds late (the Timer 2 red counter is -4, i.e. within the Warn At window), the player casts the monitored spell.
   • Timer 2 is cleared.
   • Timer 1 is restarted at Recast 1 seconds.
   • When Timer 1 reaches Warn At seconds, the Alert is sounded.
6. The player does not cast the spell again and eventually ends combat.
   • When Timer 1 reaches Warn At seconds, the Alert is sounded.
   • When Timer 1 expires, Timer 2 automatically starts since Fill Miss is enabled.
   • When Timer 2 reaches Warn At seconds, the Alert is sounded.
   • When Timer 2 expires, Timer 1 automtically starts since Fill Miss is enabled.
   • Combat ends.
7. When combat ends, all timers are stopped, the Enable and Zone filters are cleared, and the entire spell list is displayed.

Create a timer from an encounter

The easiest way to populate the 'Spell', 'Mob', and 'Zone' fields is to use an encounter with the mob from the ACT 'Main' tab.

1. In the encounter list on the ACT 'Main' tab, select the spell to monitor under the Outgoing Damage for the mob.
2. Then check the 'Enable' checkbox on the empty row of the ChainTimers plugin to start a new row.
3. Then right-click the 'Spell' cell of the new row and choose the Copy Spell from Main tab menu.
4. If desired, restrict the timer to the encounter mob by right-clicking the 'Mob' cell of the new row and choosing the Copy Mob from Main tab menu. The mob name is required for the First At timer to work.
5. If desired, restrict the timer to the encounter zone by right-clicking the 'Zone' cell of the new row and choosing the Copy Zone from Main tab menu.

Cells can also be hand edited. Note that it can be hard for the user to change values on a line with an active timer because the code is also accessing the data.

Filters

Filter boxes are available above each user-entered field in the spell list. Entering a filter changes the list of displayed spells to only those that match the filter(s).

In general, filters are available to help find timer(s) once the spell list gets long, for instance to change a setting or to share timers for a particular zone. However, the plugin uses the Zone filter as described in the active timers section.

Text field filters are not case sensitive.

Text field filters use partial matches. For example, entering a 'c' in the 'Spell' filter will filter the list to only spells that have a letter 'c' anywhere in them. Continuing to type the spell name will further limit the results list.

Number fields use exact matches by default. For example, entering a '4' in the filter box will list only spells whose setting is exactly 4. Typing a second digit, for example '5', will list spells whose setting is exactly '45'.

Number fields also support one comparison action. Two or more conditions (e.g. >35 AND <75) is not suppored. Supported filters are as follows:

• = which is the same as the default operation - the number must match exactly
• > matches numbers that are greater than the given number. For example '>35' matches spells whose field is 36 or above.
• >= matches numbers that are greater than or equal to the given number. For example '>=35' matches spells whose field is 35 or above.
• < matches numbers that are less than the given number. For example '<35' matches spells whose field is 34 or below.
• <= matches numbers that are less than or equal to the given number. For example '<=35' matches spells whose field is 35 or below.
• <> matches numbers that are not the given number. For example '<>35' matches spells whose field is anything other than 35.

Active Timers

To minimize CPU load, the plugin only monitors for spells that are currently displayed in the spell list. It automatically sets the Zone and Enable filters to distinguish spells to monitor.

If the user has further filtered the list by entering any other filter criteria, the plugin only watches for the resulting filtered spells.

When the user starts combat in the game

• the plugin automatically sets the Zone filter to display and process only the spells whose zone name matches the current zone, or whose zone name is empty (i.e. set to match any zone).
• the plugin sets the Enable filter to only display and process enabled spells

When combat ends, the Enable and Zone filters are automatically cleared.

Sharing

Timers can be shared with other plugin users by:

• selecting the row(s) in the data grid
• pressing the [Copy XML] button

If a single row is selected when the [Copy XML] button is pressed, paste the shared timer into the game by clicking a chat box, adding a game chat channel like /r , and pressing Ctrl-v Return.

If multiple rows are selected when the [Copy XML] button is pressed, the dialog for sharing the timers via macro(s) opens. In the share dialog, pressing the [Macro] button copies the selected do_file_commands line for pasting in a game chat channel using Ctrl-v Return.

Installation

The easiest way to install the plugin is to use the [Get Plugins...] button in ACT. The button is located on the [Plugins]->[Plugin Listing] tab near the upper right corner. Select the (101) Chained Timers entry and press the [Download and Enable] button.

Otherwise, the plugin must be manually downloaded and installed.

• Download the ChainTimers.dll file from the Releases page.
• Install the downloaded file in ACT.
  • On the ACT [Plugin Listing] page, use the [Browse..] button to browse to the location where you downloaded the ChainTimers.dll file and select it. Then use the [Add/Enable Plugin] button.
  • You will likely need to tell Windows to trust the downloaded file.