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While I never played WoW, I have heard that many addons used a private chat as a means of inter-... whatever communication. If there is a way, people will event

While I never played WoW, I have heard that many addons used a private chat as a means of inter-... whatever communication. If there is a way, people will eventually find and use it.

robobro 3y ago
As a means of what?
- lifthrasiir 3y ago
  Like, sockets. (Addon instances are not processes, so it is not exactly interprocess communication...)
- taspeotis 3y ago
  Interprocess communication?
maxbond 3y ago
I don't recall the name of the company but I read about a startup who's product added chat features to a client's website. They noticed a developer using it for IPC, and ended up pivoting into making a product to enable IPC for web apps. (Or inter-something, like you point out it's not an OS process, it's an application-level process. Intertask communication if your prefer.)
- Philpax 3y ago
  Sounds like the story of Firebase? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebase
  - maxbond 3y ago
    I didn't find that specific story after searching for a few minutes with Firebase as a keyword, but it does seem plausible based on the summary on Wikipedia, at least if I misremembered some details (which could well be).
- chupapimunyenyo 3y ago
  Whose*
  - maxbond 3y ago
    You're right, and I do appreciate it, I ought to know that.
Hamuko 3y ago
I think a lot of roleplaying addons exchanged information by just having a public chat channel that just wasn't made visible in the user interface. You could actually make it visible and see the addon sending information to other users there.
onetoo 3y ago
Not just private chat, almost any chat channel can be used[1]. It's quite common for certain addons to quietly share their versions upon e.g. joining a group, so that you get a notification if a new version is out. It's a bit of a longer explanation, but another fun example of out-of-band privileged information in World of Warcraft: The "fight" between Blizzard's boss design and addon creators trivializing said encounters is long and not worth going deeply into. But, for example, if the strategy of a boss is "if you get a glowing glyph over your head, run over there and stand in a square formation with the other guys with glowing glyphs", an addon could use hard-to-ignore sounds and visuals to tell you that a) you have to run now, and b) exactly which corner of the square formation to run to. I believe that in the latest raid, the developers tried restricted certain information from the API (e.g. "there is a glyph over the player's head") in an attempt to reduce that kind of strategy automation. The players then proceeded to manually feed this information (e.g. "i have a glyph over my head") into their addons using buttons mapped to API calls like this, allowing for partial automation (e.g. "your corner in the formation is top-left"). This stirred quite the drama, but the that's besides the point. [1] https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/API_C_ChatInfo.SendAddonMessage https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/API_C_ChatInfo.SendAddonMes...

While I never played WoW, I have heard that many addons used a private chat as a means of inter-... whatever communication. If there is a way, people will eventually find and use it.

robobro 3y ago

As a means of what?

lifthrasiir 3y ago
Like, sockets. (Addon instances are not processes, so it is not exactly interprocess communication...)
taspeotis 3y ago
Interprocess communication?

maxbond 3y ago

I don't recall the name of the company but I read about a startup who's product added chat features to a client's website. They noticed a developer using it for IPC, and ended up pivoting into making a product to enable IPC for web apps. (Or inter-something, like you point out it's not an OS process, it's an application-level process. Intertask communication if your prefer.)

Philpax 3y ago
Sounds like the story of Firebase? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebase
- maxbond 3y ago
  I didn't find that specific story after searching for a few minutes with Firebase as a keyword, but it does seem plausible based on the summary on Wikipedia, at least if I misremembered some details (which could well be).
chupapimunyenyo 3y ago
Whose*
- maxbond 3y ago
  You're right, and I do appreciate it, I ought to know that.

Hamuko 3y ago

I think a lot of roleplaying addons exchanged information by just having a public chat channel that just wasn't made visible in the user interface. You could actually make it visible and see the addon sending information to other users there.

onetoo 3y ago

Not just private chat, almost any chat channel can be used[1]. It's quite common for certain addons to quietly share their versions upon e.g. joining a group, so that you get a notification if a new version is out. It's a bit of a longer explanation, but another fun example of out-of-band privileged information in World of Warcraft: The "fight" between Blizzard's boss design and addon creators trivializing said encounters is long and not worth going deeply into. But, for example, if the strategy of a boss is "if you get a glowing glyph over your head, run over there and stand in a square formation with the other guys with glowing glyphs", an addon could use hard-to-ignore sounds and visuals to tell you that a) you have to run now, and b) exactly which corner of the square formation to run to. I believe that in the latest raid, the developers tried restricted certain information from the API (e.g. "there is a glyph over the player's head") in an attempt to reduce that kind of strategy automation. The players then proceeded to manually feed this information (e.g. "i have a glyph over my head") into their addons using buttons mapped to API calls like this, allowing for partial automation (e.g. "your corner in the formation is top-left"). This stirred quite the drama, but the that's besides the point. [1] https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/API_C_ChatInfo.SendAddonMessage https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/API_C_ChatInfo.SendAddonMes...