What does Personal Sentry do?
Short answer:
It creates a popup menu of Players/NPC's by using your combat log, mouse-over, and/or minimap. You can 'left-click' the buttons to target or 'right-click' to target AND announce their position to a specified channel.
More detailed answer:
By using 'Sentry Mode' you will get enemy player targets to appear on the popup automatically if they do anything near enough to you that your combat log reports it. Also, the popup does more than just allow you to target and announce things. It can keep track of targets over time and adjust the background color fade to let you know which is more recently active (darker is higher priority). It removes dead targets (optional) and adds new targets as they appear. It will also update targetted and moused-over targets health (shown by how filled the colored bar is). It can keep track of all damage taken from enemies and you can also add enemy player targets to your own 'Hit List', which will give you extra warning if they appear on your popup.
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= Questions and Answers =
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Q) How does it work?
A) It can sense enemies by using information from the combat log. It also gathers targets by mousing-over them and by clicking blips on the minimap if you're a tracking class.
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Q) I installed it and I see the minimap icon but where is the popup menu?
A) At fresh install your menu will appear as soon as you mouse-over or target any NPC.
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Q) Can I move and/or resize the popup menu?
A) YES, both! Click the 'Lock' icon in the corner of the menu to UNLOCK it, then move your mouse above or below the 'Clear Targets' button and you will get a tooltip telling you when you can drag the menu. You can then LOCK it where you want it to stay. Click the minimap icon of Personal Sentry for sizing/scaling options.
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Q} Will Personal Sentry function when I'm in combat?
A) Yes and no. During combat the menu will function normally except you won't be able to use it to automatically target units.
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Q) Why are the popup names yellow color with a skull icon and 'UnKnown'?
A) When targets are not yet stored in Personal Sentry's database they appear this way on the popup. Once you target or mouse-over them the data is saved (if you set it this way) and the correct colors and information will appear next time you see this name. This data is saved forever (with the exception of Battleground player data).
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Q) How do I announce targets to my friends?
A) Just 'right-click' on the target's name in your popup and you will (if possible) target and announce their information and position to the channel you have set.
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Q) Will storing all this information take up too much disk space??
A) No. Even if you stored everything you see in WoW you'd still use very little space. Also, battleground players are stored in the database as temporary. They will be deleted automatically the next time you login into WoW.
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Q) Can I search the database to find someone I've seen before?
A) Yes. Use '/ps search <name>' to find all matching players. If you don't know their whole name you can just use a partial name and you'll get anything that matches. It will also report the last zone/subzone you last seen them in.
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Q) As a tracker; can I add more minimap targets without erasing my current popup?
A) Yes. Just use 'right-click' instead of 'left-click' on the minimap! It will add targets to your current popup!
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Q) Can I manually remove targets from the popup that I don't want to see?
A) Yes. Just 'middle-click' the targets you want to remove and they will vanish from the popup and not be allowed to re-appear until you relog. Alternatively you can use Alt-Left-Click if you don't have a middle mouse button.
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Q) Can I mark enemy players on my own 'Hit List' and receive extra warning if they appear on the popup?
A) Yes, just 'SHIFT LEFT-CLICK' an enemy player on the popup and it will toggle them on your 'HIT LIST'! You can also use '/ps hitlist (name)' to toggle them manually even if you don't have them in your database already. You can use '/ps hitlist clear' to erase your entire 'HITLIST'.
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Q) Can I define the number of targets I want to see on the popup?
A) Yes, just use the minimap icon and change the targets slider or type the command line '/ps maxtargets ##' where the ## is the maximum number of targets (from 1 to 40).
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Q) How do I configure Personal Sentry?
A) Use the minimap icon or type '/ps options' to show the options window. You can change just about every setting to suit your needs. Here are a few that might need explanation:
- Sentry Mode: Enables the addon to parse your combat log to create buttons for enemy players that you may not have noticed yet [ON by default].
- Sentry Sounds: When Sentry Mode is enabled this makes a quiet sound for each target it adds to your popup and a much louder noticable sound when it's the first/only target to be added.
- Minimap Mouse-over Mode: (tracking classes only): Indicates if you want mousing-over the minimap to automatically acquire and display targets [ON DURING BG/ARENA by default]. You can turn this off and manually cause the same effect by holding down the SHIFT key while moving the mouse over the minimap!
- Tracking or Mouse-over settings: This allows you to decide which type of targets you want the 'mouse-over' to add to the menu. If you're a tracking class this setting also determines how your minimap clicks work.
- Popup display settings: Lets you choose which direction you want the popup to draw from. Ex: If you prefer to have the menu appear at the bottom of your screen you'll probably want to set this to 'Draw from bottom to top'. You can also reset the popup's position here if it should somehow get moved offscreen.
- Popup Clear Timing: This sets the MAXIMUM amount of time you want any target to appear on your popup menu. Each button is timed according to when you last saw activity from the target. As the time runs out the button background will fade out, letting you know they are less of a threat.
- Pingmode Settings (tracking classes only): Lets you define when you want the audible 'party ping' sound to function as you use the minimap to get targets.
- Storage Mode: Personal Sentry works best by creating a database of every character you target. This option lets you choose wich data should be saved.
- Announce Mode: Specify what channel your target will be announced to when you 'right-click' the button.
- Tooltip Mode (tracking classes only): Lets you choose how you want the tooltips on the minimap to be displayed.
- Target Colors: You can define your own colors for friends/enemies and unknowns!
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Q) Can I set my own customized popup and announcement messages?
A) Yes, each important bit of information has been converted into variables that you can use to create your own 'look' in both the Popup and the Announcement. The functions to do this are '/ps popupmsg (text)' and '/ps warnmsg (text)'. Here's a list of the variables and examples below how to it works:
Variable - What it does
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%n - This displays the NAME of the target.
%l - This displays the LEVEL of the target.
%c - This displays the CLASS of the target.
%r - This displays the RACE of the target.
nohealth - This disables the healthbar background from displaying on the popop buttons.
%w - This adds the 'Detecting/WARNING Friendly/Enemy Player/NPC:' message (whichever part is applicable to your target) to the announcement.
%z - This adds the zone or subzone where you seen the target to the announcement.
%x - This adds the numeric map location to your announcement in the format x, y.
RESET - This resets the popup or announcement to the default message.
Example 1:
/ps popupmsg %l %c %n -%r- nohealth
displays on the popup as:
|61 Druid Filche -Tauren-| (And would display no healthbars on the popup, making the background almost invisible)
Example 2:
/ps popupmsg [%c] %l %n
displays on the popup as:
|[Druid] 61 Filche |
Example 3:
/ps warnmsg %w %n the deadly %l %c is close to %z {%x}! Can you smell his %r butt?!
would announce as:
WARNING! Enemy Player: Filche the deadly 61 Druid is close to Azshara {22, 63}! Can you smell his Tauren butt?!
Installation Guide
- Exit "World of Warcraft" completely
- Download the mod you want to install
- Make a folder on your desktop called "My Mods"
- Save the .zip/.rar files to this folder.
- If, when you try to download the file, it automatically "opens" it... you need to RIGHT click on the link and "save as..." or "Save Target As".
- Extract the file - commonly known as 'unzipping'
Do this ONE FILE AT A TIME!
- Windows
- Windows XP has a built in ZIP extractor. Double click on the file to open it, inside should be the file or folders needed. Copy these outside to the "My Mods" folder.
- WinRAR: Right click the file, select "Extract Here"
- WinZip: You MUST make sure the option to "Use Folder Names" is CHECKED or it will just extract the files and not make the proper folders how the Authors designed
- Mac Users
- StuffitExpander: Double click the archive to extract it to a folder in the current directory.
- Verify your WoW Installation Path
That is where you are running WoW from and THAT is where you need to install your mods.
- Move to the Addon folder
- Open your World of Warcraft folder. (default is C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\)
- Go into the "Interface" folder.
- Go into the "AddOns" folder.
- In a new window, open the "My Mods" folder.
- The "My Mods" folder should have the "Addonname" folder in it.
- Move the "Addonname" folder into the "AddOns" folder
- Start World of Warcraft
- Make sure AddOns are installed
- Log in
- At the Character Select screen, look in lower left corner for the "addons" button.
- If button is there: make sure all the mods you installed are listed and make sure "load out of date addons" is checked.
- If the button is NOT there: means you did not install the addons properly. Look at the above screenshots. Try repeating the steps or getting someone who knows more about computers than you do to help.
Translations
When you download a mod, please be sure that the mod is compatible with your translation of wow. Some mods only work on the US versions, while some only work on some of the various European versions. These variations are called "Localizations".
TOC Numbers (Out of Date Mods)
When Blizzard patches WoW, they change the Interface number. This means that all mods will be "out of date" unless or until the author releases a new version for that interface. Some people go into the .toc files and update the numbers themselves, but this is STRONGLY advised against as it will cause problems locating possible incompatibilities addons. When you log into WoW after a patch, you DO NOT have to delete your interface directory. All you have to do is simply tell WoW to ignore the interface numbers and load all the mods anyway. All you have to do is, while at the "character select" screen, look in the lower left corner and click on the "addons" button. A window will pop up listing all your installed mods.
If you look in the upper left corner of that window there should be a box that says "Load Out of Date AddOns". You want to CHECK this box. Now simply go into WoW normally and all your mods should load. As of the 1.9 patch, you will have to do this after EVERY patch/update that Blizzard posts! If you encounter any problems with a mod after a patch, please be sure to let the author of the mod know so they can fix it.
See also: About "Out Of Date AddOns"
Mac Support
WoW addons are not platformed based. As such, they can be used on either Mac or PC. You can extract both .zip and .rar files on a Mac using StuffitExpander.
Directory Structure
World of Warcraft
|_ Interface
|_AddOns
|_*AddonName*
|_ *AddonName*.toc
|_ *AddonName*.xml
|_ *AddonName*.lua
|_ (possibly others as well)...