Nauticus
Tracks the precise arrival & departure schedules of boats and Zeppelins around Azeroth and displays them on the Mini-Map and World Map in real-time.
For better accuracy, get your friends and guild mates to install Nauticus as well.
Official Homepage: drool.me.uk/naut
Click here to report an issue or request a new feature
(Please do not post in the comments section to report bugs)
Before posting a comment...
Please read the entire addon description below - especially the Frequently Asked Questions section! You can also comment on the WowAce.com page.
What is Nauticus?
Nauticus tracks the precise arrival & departure schedules of boats and Zeppelins around Azeroth and displays them on the Mini-Map and World Map in real-time.
Look up arrival & departure schedules for any transport and know exactly when you need to be there. Less time waiting on platforms, more time at the AH or mailbox, less duelling rogues or shamies who want you to take a seat while they crit you... 'for fun'...
To track a transport requires that you, or someone else running the addon, has taken the route sometime earlier. Nauticus uses hidden addon-to-addon communications to synchronise and share up-to-date schedules between players automatically.
Important: This addon works best the more players on your realm also using the addon. So get your friends and guild mates to install Nauticus - the more the merrier! Even if you don't use transports because you're only ever in Outland, you can help store and transmit up-to-date data to everyone that needs it. Nauticus performs well in the background and you can disable the map icons for zero interference.
Main Features
- Plots all (16) Horde, Alliance and neutral transports on the World Map in real time
- Displays the most relevant transports on the Mini-Map, based on your current zone
- Map icons rotate to show their actual direction at any point in time
- Shows arrival or departure schedule for each platform when you mouse-over any map icon
- Discovers schedule by travelling a route in either direction
- Calculates future schedules, based on precisely measured round-trip cycles
- Automatically share schedules with other users of the addon on your realm
- Differential delayed updates keep communication bandwidth low even with many users (O(1))
- Ranks quality of data based on number of reboots and swaps, always picking the best
- Remember schedule data even after computer reboot (see FAQ for caveat)
- Select any transport for viewing in any LibDataBroker (LDB) display addon.†
- Shows the next arrival or departure event in the button text.
- Button icon changes colour to indicate status (yellow = docked, red = about to depart, green = in transit)
- Auto-selects nearest transport when standing at a platform (optional)
- Alt-click button to manually set audio alarm to warn you before next departure
- Less spam: Filter ship crew talk and Zeppelin Master yells from your chat window (optional)
† If you're new to Broker plugins, they're a bit like FuBar plugins but displayed how you want. Try StatBlockCore, Button Bin or Fortress for display addons and see here for more plugins. Titan has LDB support built-in. FuBar requires the lightweight bridge addon Broker2FuBar (not to be confused with FuBar2Broker, which does the opposite).
Usage
Find out the status of a transport via World Map/Mini-Map or via an LDB button display.
For options, type /nauticus or /naut in the command line.
To Do
- Auto pop-up tooltip and/or sound arrival/departure alarm (i.e. Zeppelin horn or boats bell) when at platform
Note: Nauticus is always in continual development. You should try to keep your version up-to-date, not least because the addon interacts with other users and they rely on good quality data from you. You'll be notified upon login when there's a new version available, after other users are seen using a later version. For this reason, please DON'T redistribute or include in a compilation pack!
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. I just installed Nauticus, why don't I see any schedules?
A player with the addon needs to travel on the boat/Zeppelin/turtle before the schedules come up. This could be you or someone else who may have taken the transport earlier. The most recent schedules are synchronised between other players running the addon, so after a short while the data will most likely be available to you before you take any transport. Get as many of your friends and guild mates to install Nauticus - the more the merrier.
Q. How does Nauticus get the schedules?
There are no Blizzard-provided API methods to directly determine the transport schedule. Thus we do it indirectly by getting player coords and comparing them to a known set of coords along the route. When the player 'triggers' these coords, we know the cycle and can subsequently work out future schedules at any point in time.
Q. How accurate is it?
Round-trip cycles have been calculated to one microsecond (six decimal places) over a 1-2 week period. This is significantly better resolution than provided by the API, which only measures in milliseconds (three decimal places). Baring slight adjustments in Blizzard's clocks etc., 99.9% of the time there should be no observable drift of more than a second or two.
Q. Why are some of my schedules wrong?
Rarely, schedules can become corrupted due to changes in your computer's system clock that may occur between WoW sessions/reboots. This can also be caused by dodgy CMOS batteries and some over-clocked systems. Otherwise, Nauticus can normally keep track of schedules between reboots. Additionally, while realm servers appear to keep very precise clocks for running the transports and to generate their positions, from time to time they may re-synchronise these clocks, sending the data slightly out of wack. Nauticus should quickly fix the schedules, as it will gather more recent and better quality data from other users or from your own travels.
Q. Doesn't weekly maintenance ruin the schedules?
It doesn't! We can only assume how Blizzard calculates transport schedules and their positions but it's probably based on the realm server's system clock, which is likely synchronised with a centralised ntp time server at each data centre. You can verify this by visiting another realm (at least, in the same geographical location - e.g. EU, US Eastern) to observe exactly the same schedules. This is another way to obtain accurate schedule data - from other realms. If there is one, an epoch is presently unknown - if any maths wiz can manage to reverse engineer it (simultaneous equations?), do let me know!
Q. Why does Nauticus have to use a chat channel?
Blizzard's SendAddonMessage() API is effectively limited to guild and raid addon communication, which is insufficient to get data spread furtherest across your realm. For maximum availability and accuracy of schedules, we need to use a chat channel. You shouldn't be concerned if you have the channel slot spare - we're extra careful not to mess up channel numbers.
Q. Where did the GUI disappear to?
The red window was removed in favour of map icons with tooltips. It became difficulty to maintain the rather clunky code necessary to provide this functionality and consumed more resources than desirable. Plus it didn't cater for other languages very well due to its fixed size. Native FuBar support was removed in favour of LibDataBroker (Broker/LDB) displays. Broker allows ''you'' to choose your method of displaying plugins. The lightweight bridge addon Broker2FuBar returns the old FuBar functionality, as well as allowing you to put it as a Mini-Map button (even if you don't use FuBar).
Q. Can you add the Deeprun Tram?
Unfortunately no, since it's treated as an instance and we can't properly track player coords within instances.
Nauticus is a complete rewrite of ZeppelinMaster which was originally conceived by Sammysnake. He runs a DKP hosting service online @ dkphost.net.
Comments
-
Forge_User_65007114 Owner
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Oct 17, 2007Uploaded 2.2.0 as a stable release. Get your guild mates and friends to update gogo.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Oct 14, 2007Beta 'f' just uploaded.
This release should fix the initialisation errors once and for all.
I need to properly document all the changes since v2.1.4 for an imminent stable release but briefly...
Map icons obviously. Both FuBar & Titan plugins are integrated into the main addon now, although it shouldn't use any additional resources if using one or neither. Plus, Nauticus filters out the annoying goblin chat spam when you're standing at the Zep towers (option to disable that via the newly rewritten /naut slash command interface).
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Oct 14, 2007Ah, hopefully that means Nauticus will stop stealing channel 1, wich is kinda annoying when it does... Suddenly my tradechannel is /3 instead of /2 and I dont like that... In fact I hate it so much, I removed Nauticus yesterday. Today I can put it back in it seems. Thanks!
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Oct 14, 2007Well, that depends... was you getting that issue with the betas? In the previous betas, it was using AceComm, which is supposed to do its very best not to mess up the channel numbers. However, with this latest beta, I've now gone back to the NauticSync channel as used in release 2.1.4 (but rewritten to hopefully not mess up). Importantly though, if you're in a guild or party/raid, it doesn't use a chat channel at all - rather it uses the hidden addon message API.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Oct 14, 2007Another beta (hopefully the last) to primarily test changes to the sync comms and lots of little fixes. Basically I've ditched AceComm as it's like cracking a nut with a sledgehammer. Besides, it's buggy, a resource hog and they have no interest in fixing it. They're busy working on the Ace3 and Rock frameworks, of which the former I'll probably adopt once it's stable.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Oct 6, 2007In my in-game Add On screen, it says that FuBar - NauticusFu, Nauticus - Ace2 -, and Titan Panel [Nauticus] are out of date. How can I fix this?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Oct 7, 2007The easiest way is to tick the 'Load out of date AddOns' tickbox at the top right on the same AddOns screen. The beta version of Nauticus has the correct .toc version numbers and so will the next release in a few days.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Oct 4, 2007Okey, beta 'd' fixes the not-disappearing tooltips on the world map issue, also has better tooltip anchoring (positioning), sizing and generally works a lot cleaner than before. Internally, it's a bit more efficient as well. Now using AceDB for saved vars (timers from earlier betas will be transferred over but the various UI options won't be). Still need to add /slash commands or menu options for some stuff. I'll do that and give it a few more days of testing and I think it'll be ready for proper release...
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Sep 30, 2007It looks like the Tirisfal-Durotar round trip times is slightly out, seems Blizzard changed it ever-so-slightly in the patch. I'll have to recalibrate over the next few days so please bare with.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Sep 29, 2007Re beta 'c', this implements multiple map icons and tooltips. There's still a few things I need to sort out with the tooltips - especially on the world map. There's no options as yet. I've also added filtering of the annoying goblin yells that can spam the chat window. You'll especially notice this when standing at the Tirisfal tower, although you'll still see the chat bubbles on screen, which is ideal. Again, no options yet.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 17, 2007v2.1.4 fixes a logic bug to do with corrupt negative timers that stick forever (since they're in the future and always considered better). D'oh.
I recommend after installing, type slash command '/naut reset' and then relog - that will get rid of any corrupt timers you may have.
(I'll do a more permanent fix to stop them occurring in the first place - on a small percentage of systems where clocks can go bad.)
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Aug 6, 2007Just a minor release, polishing off the UI and cleaning up some dead code before I yank it (when the icons are fully in place - few revisions yet...). German localisation complete.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jul 29, 2007New version out. Shortened version of the patch notes: better, stronger, faster - but most importantly - more accurate. Just so you know, I'm working hard on the next phase - my development copy has a cool zep icon whizzing around the maps.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jun 3, 2007update works fine, except for the fubar plug in, i recomend removing that plug in and adding older plugin, it wouldnt let anything show up on my fubar, just blank bars, i reverted to my previous version of the plug in and all was fixed
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jun 3, 2007FuBar plugin tested and working perfectly fine here - I use it myself. I didn't change anything that could potentially break it - apart from updating the various embedded libraries to the latest (Ace, FuBar, Dewdrop etc.). I suggest maybe need to update your other addons that use Ace etc..
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted Jun 3, 2007Update released. Plans now are to improve the comms and put icons on the minimap very soon.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 29, 2007There seems to be a slight compatibility issue with this mod and 2.1. After you open the main map with "M", right-click menus disappear within, I'd say, 1/10th of a second after right-clicking.
I pared all my addons down one by one trying to find out which one was doing it and it is definitely Nauticus.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 29, 2007First of all, what right-click menus? As far as I know, they're standard pull-down on the main map. Secondly, I hope you didn't disable the supplied MapLibrary addon, as its job is to prevent continuous map events from being fired when Nauticus polls for players coords... re-enable(?) and try again.
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 24, 2007sooo, something coming up?
-
View User Profile
-
Send Message
Posted May 25, 2007Yes, I'm working on a minor update that I'll release in next few days. With plans to improve the comms and put icons on the minimap soon after. (The old version will still happily work in the meantime.)