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
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Forge_User_65007114 Owner
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Posted Jan 2, 2007@Galanna - I'll cut 'n paste what I said on another site:
The new SendAddonMessage() call is limited in two fairly big ways:
1) It will only send to one of guild, party, raid or battleground. You will get far better results sync'ing with as many players on your server as possible.
2) There's a danger you can cause you and/or your fellow raiders to disconnect - essentially a Distributed Denial of Service attack, since there is NO way to opt-out of receiving these broadcast addon messages (even if you don't have the addon, you still receive the data). During boss fights such as Thaddius, where CTRA, KTM, and other healing mods are spamming the channel, this can be catastrophic for your guild/raid. (You don't even have to respond to the message, the shear bandwidth causes the problem.)
--- I will add that, I DO however plan to make use of the [guild] addon channel in a future version, but I need to completely rewrite the sync code to tread very carefully. I don't want to be responsible for 1000's of gold worth of repairs. ;)
It might even be possible for a random guildie to act as a bridge between the two types of channel. That's far down the line though. Lots of other things to do. (Rest assured, I've been working on the addon a lot over the holiday period.)
At the very least, next version or two will allow you to choose 'none' as the channel name and it won't attempt to join one.
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Posted Jan 2, 2007Hi,
For those of us that already have 10 chat channels, is it possible to add an option to use the standards addon channels (GUILD/RAID/etc) instead of a chat channel ?
Thanks
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Posted Dec 26, 2006@Aeryin - I'll look into adding an audio alert feature. Perhaps an Alt-click on the FuBar/Titan button to set it up?
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Posted Dec 26, 2006Yup, something definitely wrong with your setup Torium - that's not normal, and nobody else has reported such problem in months (and I haven't touched the comms code in my revisions). Perhaps a rogue addon intercepting the call and sending it to /say.
I recommend you drag a friend to a remote part of Azeroth and, before running WoW and re-enabling ZM, delete your WOW\WTF\Account\<account>\SavedVariables\ZeppelinMaster.lua file. Once in WoW, type /chatinfo to ensure you're in the channel.
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Posted Dec 26, 2006It says that on in the ZeppelinMaster channel and is simpily addon communication. If it was spamming in general chat something is messed up since it should only say that in ZeppelinMaster chat
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Posted Dec 24, 2006This is apparently what I was spamming...
2006/12/24 20:29:13 Torium ZeppelinMaster RESP:1.7:ratch2bb:329.95699999988:1166843409 2006/12/24 20:29:13 Torium ZeppelinMaster RESP:1.7:grom2uc:293.72399999996:1166909236 2006/12/24 20:29:13 Torium ZeppelinMaster RESP:1.7:org2gg:260.91600000002:1166895647 2006/12/24 20:29:13 Torium ZeppelinMaster RESP:1.7:rtv2ds:72.18299999994:1186700628 2006/12/24 20:29:13 Torium ZeppelinMaster RESP:1.7:org2uc:139.61800000003:1166897921 2006/12/24 20:29:13 Torium ZeppelinMaster RESP:1.7:mh2aub:148.43200000045:1185850065 2006/12/24 20:29:13 Torium ZeppelinMaster VER:1.7:1.92
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Posted Dec 24, 2006I received an email from a GM stating that I was "spamming". I dont know why, but apparently this addon was spamming either in /say or general chat or something. I might get temp banned or a 3 day suspension, at least that's what the GM said in the email. Can you please check into this, and be wary if you are goin to use this addon, something like this might happen to you. I'm deleting it for now.
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Posted Dec 24, 2006First off, this is a great add-on. I have my entire guild on it now, and it's quite wonderful. One suggestion: would there be a way to toggle a feature to have it play a sound when a zepplin is a given time-period away.
For example: say I'm on the Zepplin town, and I see the next ride is four minutes out. I want to go grab a coke, and then mod plays a sound, telling me from the next room to hurry my ass up, because the zepplin leaves in 30 seconds.
Thanks again, -Aeryn
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Posted Dec 23, 2006Apologies for such a quick update after the last but I think the performance improvement is worth an early release...
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Posted Dec 16, 2006@shamsael - That isn't a bug with ZeppelinMaster, it's a known Blizzard UI problem that supposedly gets fixed in TBC. If you choose to disable ZM when the error comes up, other addons will generate it too (especially those that use drop down menus). It's all related to the issues detail here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=53926704&pageNo=2&sid=1#22
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Posted Dec 16, 2006NICE ADDON ;)
great thx
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Posted Dec 16, 2006This mod gives me an error when I try to dismiss my demon.
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Posted Dec 13, 2006Thanks for the 2.01 edition of this nice AddOn!
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Posted Dec 13, 2006Yep I'm working on that now. Since I don't use FuBar myself I'm not sure how long it will take but it looks simple enough. First I must optimise the Titan plugin - it's doing the work of the main addon (calculating the transport cycle times), which is unnecessary. That should help with the Fubar implementation. Please bare with me.