Weakauras Addict Cautionary Tale

[Machinelf]

>In the past i also raised my concens about this addon, but of course all the WA fanboys denied any of it and tried to protect their >precious auras, as well as called me a retard. I also use TellMeWhen and i can see some inefficency on that addon too, specially the >addon updates the auras when they are not even visible is a big clusterfuck, but it's nearly not as bad as some issues in Weak >Auras.

No one denies the contribution Power Auras (you're maintaining it, right?) made to the evolution of WOW UI; anyway there could never be a fair matchup between the two addons because last I checked it isn't even possible for there to be several thousand Power Auras or Tell Me Whens running, much less the level of custom lua. (Funny side note: YES I MAXXED OUT POWER AURAS We are comparing apples to watermelons here.

I am an extreme outlier that has tested the limits of thousands of auras, what I am discussing will not apply to 99% of users unless they (a) start going hog wild with (b) a large volume of CPU intensive auras on (c) a not so new computer in a (d) intensive environment a la raiding or pvp situations.

[Resike]

If you must resort to the childish behaviour of calling people fanboys, then you aren't helping your cause.
You failed to convince people, so then come back and insult them.
Well done.

I don't think calling someone "fanboy" is an insult.
You know why is it hard to convice peoples about something they protect? Because they are fanboys.

[ComputerNerd]

I don't think calling someone "fanboy" is an insult.
You know why is it hard to convice peoples about something they protect? Because they are fanboys.

I have been called a blizzard fanboy regularly based solely on a SINGLE point of view I have for no reason than disagreeing with someone.
But they choose to ignore, or don't care about my other views where I am not so positive in my support.
Yes, it is a childish insult, a common kneejerk reaction when someone can't or won't come up with a constructive argument.
You are throwing a tantrum that your big crusade failed to achieve what it was meant to.

I won't deny the good that PowerAuras has done in promoting the use of on-screen, and audible alerts to aid awareness.
But this behaviour is not helping to convince anyone that PowerAuras is better.

[Deleted]

.....Gentlemen. Stay civil.

Please don't make me go all HULK INFRACT on this thread.

[Resike]

I have been called a blizzard fanboy regularly based solely on a SINGLE point of view I have for no reason than disagreeing with someone.
But they choose to ignore, or don't care about my other views where I am not so positive in my support.
Yes, it is a childish insult, a common kneejerk reaction when someone can't or won't come up with a constructive argument.
You are throwing a tantrum that your big crusade failed to achieve what it was meant to.

I won't deny the good that PowerAuras has done in promoting the use of on-screen, and audible alerts to aid awareness.
But this behaviour is not helping to convince anyone that PowerAuras is better.

I dont want to convince people that x addon is better then y, i also don't want to compare addons, or force users to use addons that i promote.
I just want to alert users about inefficient addons which can cause HUGE fps drops for no reason on a lower end PC, that all.

[papajohn4]

WA is the only addon I miss on any game I play...I am not fan of addons in general but I think games should have WA built in the default interface. I think the problem is that I use keybinds for all my spells and I want to look at the middle of the screen instead on my action bars...with WA I can enjoy looking my character performing all the actions while keeping vital information in the middle of the screen.

I had problem playing swtor. Tracking buffs/debuffs and procs/stacks in the tiny icons on player portrait was not something fun. You could manage to do it but it wasn't fun. I think it depends on the game at the end...action combat games like GW2 and Tera does not need addons and especially WA...but games similar to wow, need to have WA addon style built in..

[ComputerNerd]

I dont want to convince people that x addon is better then y, i also don't want to compare addons, or force users to use addons that i promote.
I just want to alert users about inefficient addons which can cause HUGE fps drops for no reason on a lower end PC, that all.

Then perhaps highlight specific problems rather than calling people fanboys.
I saw general comments about inefficiency, but unless I missed something I didn't see specific causes highlighted.
Real constructive discussion can only improve the experience for us in general and push all the addons forward, but namecalling will not.

[Resike]

Then perhaps highlight specific problems rather than calling people fanboys.
I saw general comments about inefficiency, but unless I missed something I didn't see specific causes highlighted.
Real constructive discussion can only improve the experience for us in general and push all the addons forward, but namecalling will not.

Mapster: Constantly updates something on player CLEU.

Prat: Constantly updates something on player CLEU.

TMW: Constantly updates all the groups all the time, despite they're visible or not. (It's not that bad but clearly there are some better ways to do that, like update the group once before it's becomes visible again.)

WA: Each time Weak Auras triggering an animation it's memory usage peaks at 1%, which indicates it's creating a lot of frames for no reason while the animation is happening. It's ~1% Memory usage per aura, so you can imagine how does it looks like if you have more auras shown.
Each time you delete an aura, it's frames and onupdate scrips won't get killed so basically it's just like you hided that aura, but still updating everything about it.

These come off the top of my head.

[ComputerNerd]

Mapster: Constantly updates something on player CLEU.

Prat: Constantly updates something on player CLEU.

TMW: Constantly updates all the groups all the time, despite they're visible or not. (It's not that bad but clearly there are some better ways to do that, like update the group once before it's becomes visible again.)

WA: Each time Weak Auras triggering an animation it's memory usage peaks at 1%, which indicates it's creating a lot of frames for no reason while the animation is happening. It's ~1% Memory usage per aura, so you can imagine how does it looks like if you have more auras shown.
Each time you delete an aura, it's frames and onupdate scrips won't get killed so basically it's just like you hided that aura, but still updating everything about it.

These come off the top of my head.

See, now that is better.
Why could we not have had that earlier rather than the alternative approach you took.

[Snichy]

Which is more intensive on the fps/cpu, visual auras or audio? Most of my WA are visual, maybe half a dozen per character so not enough to affect my fps, but if I was to introduce an audio element to them, or go audio only I wonder if this would be a detriment to my gameplay.

[SlippyCheeze]

Prat: Constantly updates something on player CLEU.

So, I can't locate that in the code. Can you point to which module, or core part, does that in Prat?

[Resike]

So, I can't locate that in the code. Can you point to which module, or core part, does that in Prat?

It's might not be CLEU, it was just a wild guess, but to reprocuse the problem:

Enable all modules.
Engage combat with a dummy.
Try to push down as many key as you can.

http://i.imgur.com/3lnhiA1.jpg

This ~1-2% usage is on my beast i7 rig, it much more worst on dual-core CPUs.

- - - Updated - - -

This seemed like a bug so I looked into it. It isn't true. Let's step through the code - I'm using today's release version for line numbers.

Then how come i can reprodue it any time i want?

0 Auras, fresh install:
http://i.imgur.com/5CUNpW3.jpg

10 Auras, animating:
http://i.imgur.com/GwKINOQ.jpg

10 Auras deleted:
http://i.imgur.com/xFyeV9G.jpg

As soon as i start moving around this happens:
http://i.imgur.com/H0LKWtP.jpg

No conflicting ace addons installed, which could get blamed for the CPU usage.

It is true that frames cannot be destroyed, but that's a limitation of the WoW API.

Not true.

It's not such a big deal to have frames in memory but otherwise idle.

They are not idle, their scripts are still running.

They're not listening to events so creating a thousand frames doesn't really hurt frame rates except for when auras are forced to reload.

Clearly you have never used a lower end computer.
Guess what not just events can use resources what about the frame scripts?

Why would you bother guessing when you can just go look and know for sure? I'm sure you've got the knowledge to read code, you can see that this is false. Start around line 3650, and then skip down to 4050 and read over the next ~300 lines in WeakAuras.lua. No such thing is happening.

Your reputation already precedes you; there's no reason to make it worse, and thanks for wasting my time looking for a bug that doesn't exist.

Because i have better things to do, then reviewing codes that doesn't even belong to me. I gave you the report, i gave you the proof, if you don't belive me i don't care, but dont blame me for not digging deeper into every byte of an addon that i don't even use.

If you think animating a single frame needs to consusme up to 1% constant memory usage, then you are wrong.

A table is eligible for garbage collection when there are no more references to it in the system. All you need to do is ensure that if you want to allow a table to be garbage collected, nil out any references to it.
Which is awesome but WA recreates all of the frames (or just simple don't the lua to clear them), and their scrips after each garbage collection.

Just because Lua dumps the memory when it's reached a certain level, so you couln't even notice it in longer intervals. Whats basically happening is filling a table with variables, then dumping it over and over again and over. And if you call that efficient and not buggy, and "calling" me a retard again, well up to you.

[Kowloon]

If you have lag issues from WeakAuras just Disable WeakAuraOptions once you have the strings set properly and you'll never lag.

[ComputerNerd]

If you have lag issues from WeakAuras just Disable WeakAuraOptions once you have the strings set properly and you'll never lag.

The options are load on demand, only loaded if you type /wa to change anything.
Just reload the UI or relog afterwards.

[ComputerNerd]

In his defense; WAOptions is pretty nasty: it's big and complex and definitely has some issues.
For example, if you try to import a 'very long' string, WA will simply refuse. That's fine, but it also has this behavoir where the encode string that you cut/paste might be short enough to be 'okay', but once decoded it's longer than whatever it's maximum is. The import will be successful but it breaks the aura list on the side until you /reloadui

That's not really a problem unless you use "gigantic" auras or huge groups (say 20 items in a group) but it should still be handled more gracefully. I've little doubt there are plenty of issues with the configuration interface for weakauras and would probably recommend disabling the options addon once your auras are configured too 'just to be sure' if you've got a lower-end computer. For the most part it works, but I'm glad it's a separate load-on-demand addon because it's not nearly as nice as the core of the addon.

At least it would mean you must be sure you want it loaded.
Though being load on demand it won't do anything until you type /wa.
It would be good practice anyway to reload the UI or relog once everything is set up, not least so that saved variables are written in the event of a crash.

[Machinelf]

If you have lag issues from WeakAuras just Disable WeakAuraOptions once you have the strings set properly and you'll never lag.

FWIW, no, this just isn't true. While having ~2500 total auras in WA and about 400 active/loaded and WA Options isn't enabled, I still lagged in combat.
Yes, disabling WA Options does help some, but only some.

With regards to performance after a /wa, I'vce noticed sounds don't work. So yeah, once you start getting a serious amount of auras, you'll have to negotiate around this.

On another note, I noticed the WA options file is full of vestigial variables for old auras that have changed. I guess this is a necessary evil due to auto fill-in. Doesn't really make a difference I guess but I'm thinking a 7 meg WA option file has to be cumbersome.

[Resike]

If you have lag issues from WeakAuras just Disable WeakAuraOptions once you have the strings set properly and you'll never lag.

This issue (at least the ones i described) has noting to do with WeakAuraOptions, if the main addon has a ~10% memory usage up, with around 3 MB base memory usage that means the addon writes 300 kB data to the memory in each second. And since the the game is very CPU orientated means consuming extra and useless CPU usage can greatly effect frame rates specially in a lower end computers. This is just simply causing FPS drops, but you can reach a level which will overdrive your CPU that much it will no longer going to be able to run the game's code smoothly enough and going to cause lag spikes.

[Anzen]

I had a pretty mighty collection (nowhere near 3000 though!), world server went down a couple weeks ago whilst I was in game and they all disappeared.

I only use a handful now and can't say I notice the difference (don't bother with boss specific ones anymore).

[Machinelf]

I had a pretty mighty collection (nowhere near 3000 though!), world server went down a couple weeks ago whilst I was in game and they all disappeared.

I only use a handful now and can't say I notice the difference (don't bother with boss specific ones anymore).

It's easily the most precious chunk of my WTF. I save my wtf onto DropBox and sometimes my external drive after a few hour's work.

[Vargur]

In the past i also raised my concens about this addon, but of course all the WA fanboys denied any of it and tried to protect their precious auras, as well as called me a retard. I also use TellMeWhen and i can see some inefficency on that addon too, specially the addon updates the auras when they are not even visible is a big clusterfuck, but it's nearly not as bad as some issues in Weak Auras.

"Their precious auras" have much less of an impact on performance, considering not all people have 2500 of them..... or even a few hundred. That was the point of this thread, since you missed it.