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03/14/20, 03:13 AM   #1
Shmayken
Join Date: Jun 2019
Posts: 8
Too Many Anchors Processed.

Ever since ZOS removed the custom scaling to work in gamepad mode I get this UI error when i switch from Gamepad Mode to Mouse/Keyboard and vice versa.

Too Many Anchors Processed. Tail of Anchor List:
then it gives me a wide variety of different things listed from craftstore panel fixed,map pins,world map container and on and on. Then sometimes, it doesn't pop up at all. Help?
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03/14/20, 03:42 AM   #2
sirinsidiator
 
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This is just how it is and only ZOS can do something about that. Anchors define how UI elements are placed relative to each other and when the scaling changes they all have to be recalculated. Due to their nature it is easy to define them in a way that causes an infinite loop (e.g. anchoring a child control to its parent) and crash the game. In order to prevent situations like this, the game only allows a limited number of anchors to be calculated every frame and errors out otherwise. When no addons are active the number of anchors is well within the limit, but when you have many addons with lots of UI elements installed, it's a different story.

EDIT: Your best course of action is to report this via /bug ingame. When enough people do that, ZOS' management may allow them to change something.

Last edited by sirinsidiator : 03/14/20 at 03:53 AM.
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03/14/20, 04:35 PM   #3
Shmayken
Join Date: Jun 2019
Posts: 8
thx siri, so i either disable some add-ons or hope ZOS rectifies this hahaha zzz. i will report this as a bug tho. thanks again!
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03/14/20, 05:42 PM   #4
Baertram
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You can try to suppress teh error ingame without disabling other addons, by using Zolans anchor away (if it still works).
But be sure to report it as well, yes.
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05/22/20, 03:47 AM   #5
Anubis
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 3
Hi Everyone,

never had this before (over 60 addons / 126 with libs). Now I installed Perfect Pixel and got that message.
Baertram brings me into reading this here.

Ive understand that PerfectPixel seems to be an addon with a huge ammount of anchors. And that in case of reloadui all anchors will reload in short time maybe simultaneously. And with all my addons its too much for eso.

And all addons were loaded after another, right? (Because of that the error message is different with different sets of activated addons)

What im not understanding:

How are anchors actually used in the source code? If an addon was loaded successfully, are the anchors still needed? Or can the anchor-list be cleared? In one post there was a link to a source line like "ClearAnchors".
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05/22/20, 03:53 AM   #6
Baertram
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First you should read this for an understanding what controls and anchors actually are and how they are used:

You got controls in the game. https://wiki.esoui.com/Controls
Like a label for text or a background or a texture, a chekcbox etc.
Each needs anchors to "anchor themselves" to another control of the UI.
Some need more anchors to e.g. anchor to the left and the right of the inventory = 2 anchors -> maximize the visible size.
https://wiki.esoui.com/Control:SetAnchor

It's not PP which got the huge amount of anchors. PP maybe just adds a few anchors which will result in a sum > than the games allowed maximum value in a defined time period.
But as PP changes the inventory and there are a lot of controls in the inventory (icons, rows, etc.) it might be thjat PP alone re-anchors the exisitng controls which will make PP the one addon causing the "too many anchors" (in a time period) processed error message.
It's all addons together as a sum which causes the problem here.



control:ClearAnchors() is a function which will remove the anchors and then these controls will be floating around without actually being anchored to something else anymore. The next time the UI refreshes e.g. the controls they will be in a wrong state, size or position.
So anchors are needed to kept up2date and you are not able to remove them unless the controls WON't resize, hide or be moved at all.


You can use addons like AnchorAway to suppress the error message but a real solution would only be to disable addons or check which ones really produce a lot new controls (or re-anchor a lot exisitng ones) and thus anchors as well, and tell the dev to maybe delay the creation somehow in oder to make the game not spam that error message.
But this is hard to track as there are not functions to find the addons or amounts of anchors.

Last edited by Baertram : 05/22/20 at 04:27 AM.
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05/22/20, 04:23 AM   #7
Anubis
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 3
thx 4 ur patient. Im really interestest in understanding it.

and tell the dev to maybe delay the creation somehow in oder to make the game not spam that error message.

I understand it like an overflow in a predefined time limit and after that the last listed anchors were not set. That means that the whole addon is loading at the beginning, no matter whether the windows/ elements are visible or not, right?

In my case ive loosing the position of some elements in CraftStore (f.e. the outer frame of a dropdown menu is at the upper left corner and not at its position, like u mentioned the detailled impact) and i am opening the CS-Window with a keybinding. And if i move the CS-window, everything is repostioned (including the lost element)

Would it be possible to reposition all elements when the window gets visible? Is this maybe a thing the dev can fix?
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05/22/20, 04:33 AM   #8
Baertram
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Exactly about the time limit and amount of anchors processed.

The addons recreate the anchors at defined events like moving a control or resizing etc.
Beside this you'd manually need to create a function reanchorAllControls e.g. in your addon which most likely is not going to happen
As you need to find all your controls and list them there, call ClearAnchors and then reanchor them properly.
As this is very time consuming and not a good way to do (some controls will be anchored automatically to their parent controls, others won't, some only need to anchor as they are moved etc.).

What I meant was to check the addons (enable/disable) and see which ones together might be a problem.
Do some more tests than in order to find out if single addons of these, enabled with other addons, also produce the problem to find out which one of them really anchors a lot.
It's hard to find out and you need to invest a lot of time...

And after you e.g. found one or a few addons which seem to anchor/re-anchor controls a lot you coudl tell the devs about it in the addon comments .
They would need to check their code then and find out which are the controls that are created/updated and anchored/re-anchored. If they are able to they might also be able to add a delay in there.
Like if the addon adds textures to exisitng controls, which will make the texture controls set their anchors, they might delay the creation of the texture controls in packages so e.g. 10 will be created in a row and then there is a small delay (200ms) before the next package gets created.
This is what I know some mapPins related addons (like HarvestMap or others) are already using.
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05/22/20, 04:51 AM   #9
Anubis
Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 3
Thumbs up

thx, that brings some light in the dark.

but to check my whole bunch of addons
would take a while.
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05/22/20, 06:56 AM   #10
Baertram
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Yep, as I said...
I guess it's easier to just rethink the usage of many addons and strip some.
Also increases the load times at loading screens a bit
Or just live with the error message, use the AnchorAway addon by Zolan (https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info...chorsAway.html).

Or you'll invest the time and share the info with us. Maybe we can find some addons where an improvement can be made.
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ESOUI » AddOns » AddOn Help/Support » Too Many Anchors Processed.

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