Questions from a New Dev (wanna-be)?
 

Hello all!

I have been lurking here for some time. I play daily (religiously) and have become quite familiar with most of the 40+ addons I use for my personal gaming, many of which were written by some of the most popular Devs here (you know who you are) :D

I am an old dude (nearly 60), have been an IT professional for 30+ years and have experience in web, comm, and bbs development (who remembers computers in the 80s?). With that I have decided to try my hand at the thankless hobby of ESO Addon development. I have developed a few QoL addons for myself and friends but after recently opening my mouth to request updates from an author here I was offered control over those developed by that author.

So, to jump right in I have a few (very) basic questions that might seem commonplace to the mega-experienced authors here but will certainly help me and may help others (in future) to get started.

1) I currently use Notepad++ to maintain the addons I use and the few I have authored but not released. I'd like to know if there is a better IDE out there supporting autocomplete & ESO APIs? Many of the threads I've read on this topic seem quite aged.

2) One of my first tasks will be to bump API support for those addons I now maintain. What process do you use to validate API support? Details would be great!

3) Can you please describe your development environment? Do you develop and test in the PTS? Any tips on making life easier for the beginner dev?

4) What practices should I avoid? I appreciate that BearTram quite often offers valuable advice to keep devs on the right path. I also VERY MUCH appreciate the wiki!

5) Other than 'Run!', what's your go-to advice for the first time addon dev?

Thanks in advance!

1 - I think there's some intellij plugins, but personally I use sublime text.2 - Increase a number that's it there's really
3 - For the most part, develop on live. There's usually little point to developing on pts. Reasons could be for the template toons and free resources (maybe you burn through lots of temp alloys?) or an upcoming patch. But even with an upcoming patch, there's usually little enough difference that it doesn't matter which you use. I haven't done anything on PTS in ages.
4 - Nothing off the top of my head, sorry
5 - Fly! Get Circonian's addon selector, create a coding profile with only essential addons. MM is an absolute no-no while coding. Check outTextureIt, torchbug or zgoo, and possibly other dev utility addons depending on what you're doing. The esoui github can be useful, and the esoui gitter chat is good for help with stuff too.

Thanks for the reply Dolgubon! I honestly don't expect to get many so I truly appreciate it. BTW: IMHO, your LWC addon is probably one of the most useful in the game! (but you already know that)

Does Sublime have good Lua autocomplete? ESO APIs supported? I don't mind paying for a good Editor if it meets my needs.

HAHAHA! Yeah, I was wondering how I was gonna sort through EVENT changes. Not a problem now but if I had a half dozen or so to support that process could get overwhelming without some automation. Guessing that waiting for reports from users might be a strategy and would point out problems, regardless? For popular addons such as LWC that data would come in quickly but for new Devs with fewer addons I'd guess a few testers would be best?

I hadn't considered the wasting of resources. That all makes sense.

:cool:

I have been using addon selector for a very long time now. Its a great addon! I moved away from MM not long ago. Not sure I'll be going back to it. Not wanting to beat up such a popular addon but it appears to use way more resources than I'm comfortable with. Instead, I'm using Arkadius' Trade Tools. I'm hoping to see continued support for it. In any case, I have created addon profiles for each of the addons I maintain, just as you suggested. I will absolutely check out the addons you recommended, Thanks!

One additional question for you, please: 'Is there a Developers Discord Channel you could recommend?' Looking for an invite, if so!

https://www.esoui.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9867
Hi and welcome.
In this thread I had collected info for new devs. Hope it helps you.


2) Use /tb or /zgoo GetAPIVersion() ingame and check the result. It should be printed to the chat
Or look at the wiki. We try to keep it updated as well.

/tb comes from the dev helping addon "mer torchbug" and /zgoo is from the "Zgoo" addon
Both are great to inspect in game values/variables or run code like /script does.

You are not that old to reduce to ESO addon development with all your experience :D But sharing your current work won't hurt I guess :) Unfortunately there is not much to recommend except using the editor you currently like, keep studying API functions and other addons' code :<