World of Warcraft Addons
World of Warcraft Addons are files that players put in their game folders, which are meant to improve the way they interact with the game. Some may make it easier to play, or give players more information about actions in the game. These are basically self-contained User Interface, or UI, modification components. There are some Addons that can work independently, while others need more Addons for them to work. Additionally, some Addons are just collections of others. As there are no size restrictions for World of Warcraft Addons, these can grow to be really large.
Many times the terms modification, or mod, and Addon are used interchangeably. This is not quite accurate. The modification is a third-party Addon that changes some part of World of Warcraftís interface. These mods can accomplish many different types of tasks. This includes the ability to add new buttons to the screen, along with changing the built-in and party frames. There are some instances that the mods can fully replace the standard World of Warcraft interface, which may offer more advanced functions.
In order to make World of Warcraft Addons, your first step is creating a new directory in Interface/Addons. Naming this directory is rather important. It is what other Addons will use to refer to your independent Addons. This is why it is not a great idea to use numbers in your AddOn directory name. You will risk having other AddOns ìbreakî if you change the version. This can cause other players to feel that your Addons are unreliable, or they will keep using an old version.
In order to create your World of Warcraft Addons, the first thing you need to do is get the Custom UI tools from the Blizzard site. Doing this will let you access all of their XML files. There are also 2 tutorials to explain everything.
Now, you can plan your AddOn. Note a few questions about what you want from your AddOn. What is your resulting goal? What information do you need from WOW for your AddOn to work? Do you need to make custom frames? Do you know what functions are needed to do everything you want?
Getting the right information from WOW is vital to making your World of Warcraft AddOns work. The site has a list of functions that make this information available to you. This is where you will form your building plan. If there is something you need that you donít have, donít worry. Any programming language has many different ways to do what you need to do. You just have to find it.
