TargetLines - FFXII Style Action Lines

Github: https://github.com/MogSafe/TargetLines

This is a package (addon + plugin) for adding FF12-style target lines. If you've used Ashita, you might already be aware of an existing addon by Jyouya, but I haven't seen one yet for Windower and decided to create one, especially with the intent of matching the style in FF12.

If you're not familiar with this feature, basically lines briefly animate from a source to a target, and use different colours based on the intent. I've tried to configure it similar to FF12's design:

• blue: player/party/trusts/pet actions

• green: support actions between party/trusts

• red: enemy actions to player/party/trusts/pet

• magenta: all enemy-to-enemy actions (and NPC-to-NPC, eg other parties)

By default, I have it set up such that:

• the first melee/ranged attack draws a line

• WS/JA/spells draw when the action first starts (cast or readying) and duplicate lines from the final use/finish event are suppressed (to avoid duplicate lines)

The lines are rendered in 3D space, so they'll rotate with the camera:


There's also a settings panel in-game that you can display with to toggle lines on/off and adjust line visuals.



I'm currently working on and testing out improvements to the aoe effect, but let me know if you have any other suggestions or have other use cases.

Updates
1.0.4
Performance improvements

• state read/writes between the addon/plugin were happening too frequently. Cached the data to prevent multiple lookups

• several, separate render calls were happening for every line. Combined this into rendering batches to reduce calls from potentially hundreds to a few per frame (tested under a benchmark which drew 100 lines)

• improve line tracking so that it's smoother when a target/source moves. Previously, line rerendering caused when someone moved was quite choppy.

1.1.0
AoE rings

• added 2 new AoE styles: Ring(A), Ring(B)

• updated settings for AoE Styles and Opacity

• improve line and ring positioning for players/trusts

Difference between the new styles:

Been using this for a few days now. It's kinda awesome.

I do get a little bit of slowdown when a lot of things (like 15-20+) get hit with aoe at the same time, but it's not too terrible overall, it's still pretty awesome.

Did I mention this was awesome?

It was a little wonky after the update

Was one of the few plugins that almost made me try Ashita. Thanks a ton for the hard work, looks awesome, can't wait to use it!

Hey thanks for the responses so far. I did push up new changes for 1.0.4 which should address some performance issues, and improve tracking if a target/source moves. Overall, the main performance issues were addressed by caching repeated calculations and removing duplicate renders, which should reduce CPU overhead and rendering calls. It may not improve fps right away but it'll reduce the chance for fps drops.

Draylo - anything in particular that was off? You could also try the new 1.0.4 release build

For me the line keeps blinking. When I first downloaded it, it didn't do that.

Edit: Seems restarting PC fixed it

Been using it some today and I love it so far! This is the stuff that keeps the game fresh for me! Keep up the great work!

Been absolutely loving the addon, it's definitely a no thought given auto-on, fulltime addon usage for me!

I would love to see more settings or more options with the settings that are already implemented, but the addon by itself is already great even if it's not touched again as far as development.

Thanks a ton!

I added a new style for the AoE effect which is based off FF12's expanding AoE ring design. Though it works really well in 12 because it shows up while the game is paused, I had to add some indicators as the ring hits its targets so you know whos affected during live combat. There are currently 2 styles, but let me know if another style could work and I'll see to adding it in.

Btw, someone did report an issue with multiboxing; I've never tried multiboxing but there's a potential for duplicate lines if you have multiple instances of the game reading/writing to the same lines.json file. I'll have a look into that issue, though verification may be hard on my end.

This addon is fantastic, this is one of those things I've long been jealous of from the Ashita side. I think the new ring animation is a great choice for AOEs, it looks nice and keeps everything from getting too busy with too many lines going on.

I know there are two color modes right now for the normal defaults and for increased colorblind visibility, but would it be possible to make all of the colors user-definable in a settings file? Also, I feel like there is a lot more flexibility and color options that could be made available based on types of actions, and source/target types. For instance, auto attacks could have different colors from weaponskills or spells. Different colors could be set if the source or target are self, PCs, NPCs, party members, alliance members, trusts, hostile enemies, etc. I can absolutely see that this could get way too busy quickly if every permutation is a different color, but I feel like there could be some balance that still looks nice, but helps pack more useful information in the color of each line.

Also, this has recently come up with regards to the TargetRing and GEO-HUD addons that were just posted here in the past few days, but the Windower team highly discourages users to make plugins for Windower. They would prefer that if the addon requires functionality that can't be accomplished in lua, that the .dll is called directly from the addon, rather than loaded as a plugin in Windower (similar to XICamera, XIPivot, and now the TargetRing and GEO-HUD addons). Do you have any plans to transition over to this structure? I'm worried that this functionality will break the next time that Windower pushes an update. There's a long history of Windower unsympathetically breaking third-party plugins, and I don't want this functionality to be lost.

Thanks!