Creating WoW Addons
I was in the bookstore yesterday, browsing for webpage inspiration, when I was rudely ambushed by a huge behemoth of a book: “World of Warcraft Programming: A Guide and Reference for Creating WoW Addons
Okay, it didn’t actually jump out and accost me, but it is an amazingly thick volume. And I’ve been hearing a lot about it lately. A number of my coder friends have asked me if I can loan them a copy — apparently they just assume I have an extra on hand. (I’ve been pointing them at WoWInterface, which is raffling off 10 copies over the next five weeks, and telling them, “Good luck!”)
Although I haven’t really gotten into programming add-ons yet myself, I have been impressed with the power and variety of game tools than can be written within Blizzard’s system. (To tell you the truth, this is one of those quiet systems that I suspect will provide the dividing line between AAA and not-so-AAA MMO titles in the future: the best titles will need a solid add-on infrastructure right out of the box.) And goodness know that there are plenty of odd little functions that I’d like to have an add-on to handle for me. So maybe I should get off my rear and get moving on that.
Anyway, I haven’t bought this impressive tome yet, but I’d love to know if anyone has. In particular, do you think this book is actually useful or can the same info be found easily for free online?
6 Comments
I’m sure it’s helpful and all, but how much would it fall victim to the same problem that other WoW books have: namely, how much of it will be invalidated next time Blizzard makes a major adjustment to the way addons are handled? Since there might be such a major change coming in the next expansion.
The reference sections (which are a little more than half the phonebook-like massiveness of the book, and were a heck of a job to do tech editing on) not only can be found easily for free online, but are more complete and up-to-date on the book’s companion site at http://wowprogramming.com.
What I find compelling about the book is the other half. People often ask me how to get into WoW addon authoring; before the book came along, the best I could answer was, “Hang around the WoWInterface discussion boards, browse through the UI/API pages at WoWWiki, and dig into Blizzard’s and other addon authors’ code until hopefully you learn something by osmosis.” There’ve been decent tutorial resources for the Lua language itself and good references to the WoW API out there (and a wonderfully supportive community of addon authors), but the book is really the first thing that brings it all together and tries to teach WoW programming as a whole.
Ah, that’s a very good point, Gazmik. Thanks for pointing that out.
RE: Amber’s comment…
The reference parts of the book were already out of date by the time it reached bookstores. (Just the revamped combat log in 2.4 invalidated quite a few pages in the events reference.) As WoW evolves, the API changes too fast for any book to have a complete and current reference to it all. That’s why the book has a companion website — the reference section is kept up-to-date there.
The non-reference stuff will keep its relevance and accuracy much longer, though. True, some of it might be invalidated if Blizzard changes the addon system for Wrath as much as they did for BC… but not much, as most of the core tasks of addon authoring are likely to stay the same. Blizzard would have to massively re-architect its UI system for the instructional portions of the book to completely lose their usefulness — and if they did that, they’d have to rebuild their own UI from the ground up, when I’m sure they’d rather be spending their time building stuff that’s actually new for the expansion. Or to put it another way, we can predict the future by looking at the past: send the book through the Caverns of Time back to the days of WoW 1.5 and a budding addon author would still learn much from it… only a few chapters on advanced topics really involve stuff that’s new since then (or since 2.0).
(No, I don’t receive royalties or commission as a technical editor, I just care about my work! :D )
Great comments, both here and on Amazon. You convinced me (especially the reply by Gazmik, thanks for that). For some one with only very minor C exp. Im hoping this works out good. We shall see in a few days when it arrives at my door. Thanks for the heads up on the book Arcania!
And the LICD/LFG guys at Blind Ferret did the cover. Very very Cool.
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