Brackman's Tools of Witchcraft and Widgetery

I made various widgets that I have tested for some time now. Today, I share the best ones with you!

I publish each of them under GNU GPL v2. They all deactivate themselves if no longer needed, for example if spectating.

Overshooter 3.4
AoE units overshoot on closest enemy outside range

This one became famous as the insane Badger widget in this battle. But that is only the tip of the iceberg of what it can do. Due to AoE, many units have a higher effective range than their nominal range. This widget makes full use of it. For example, Warrior=Reaver has higher range than Scallop. But a Scallop with my widget has higher range than a Warrior without it. A Warrior with my widget has even higher range than a Scallop with my widget.
Scallop < Warrior < Brackman's Scallop < Brackman's Warrior
Here you can see a picture of ranged Warriors in action. (Yes, they are actually damaging those buildings.)
My widget extends the range of the following units: Glaive, Warrior=Reaver, Pyro, Wolverine=Badger, Tremor, Scallop, Venom, Recluse, Brawler=Nimbus, Spidermonkey, Tiamat, Kodachi, Corsair, Dooms Day Machine=Desolator. The units usually attempt to overshoot their range by 200. Only Tremor overshoots by 500 and Wolverine by infinity.

My widget keeps track of the overshooter units, iterates through them efficiently and makes sure that no more than 1 command per frame is sent to not overload the server with commands. If done naively, an overshooter widget wouldn't work properly for units that move away from the enemy because then, the target would become out of range until the next update or one would have to reduce range in general. In order to use maximum range without too high update frequency, my widget considers the future 3D movement of the unit until the next update in the target calculation.

It does not interfere with player commands: By keeping track of which commands are from the player and which ones are from the widget, it gives priority to player commands. It also obeys fire states and treats "return fire" as "fire if not cloaked". Nowadays, return fire is only accessible through the GUI as default state, though. It also removes its own commands if enemy units enter the nominal range because then, the target priority widget is more important than distance minimization.

Nano Factory Assist 2.0
When newly built or received from other player, Nanotowers assist closest own factory in range or closest allied factory if no own in range

It's not a perfect nano widget, but in contrast to other ones, it ensures that nanotowers do their most important job reliably: assist the factory. Strider Hubs are also treated as nanotowers and Missile Silo and Strider Hub are also treated as factory. If you already have nanotowers, you can just place the nanoframe of another one and walk away to expand. The other nanotowers will automatically finish the new one and then go back to assisting the factory that they had previously assisted. They will remember if you have changed their target factory manually.

Scorcher Close Attack 1.1
If Scorcher receives an attack command, a move command close to the target is inserted before

If you attack with Scorcher, you want to get close. You usually don't want to stop when you barely have your enemy in range. I was wondering why my widget's behavior was not the default. My widget also works as it should if a queue of multiple commands is given to multiple units of which some are Scorchers.

Idle Factory Reminder 2.0
Reminds oneself of own idle factories

This is the most simple but also most useful widget. It outputs notifications about your idle factories and triggers a warning sound.

Squad Autojoin 3.1
Invites players of own team with < own WHR-500 if they are the only ally to join squad

I have experimented with different settings for squad joining. My first intuition was to only join with good players. My tests have shown that this makes players less proactive and less willing to do good risky and creative strategies. Also, commands of front units may inerfere. It is much better to join with noobs as they don't have the APM to meaningfully interfere with you, but you can do a lot of good with their idle units. So I have come to the conclusion to only join with players whose WHR is smaller than yours by 500. The widget also explains how to join to the invited players automatically.

These widgets are not perfect, but probably good enough to be helpful.

quote: If Scorcher receives an attack command, a move command close to the target is inserted before If you attack with Scorcher, you want to get close. You usually don't want to stop when you barely have your enemy in range. I was wondering why my widget's behavior was not the default. My widget also works as it should if a queue of multiple commands is given to multiple units of which some are Scorchers.

This is the default behaviour, with exceptions for targets where the behaviour would be annoying or lead to hugging explosive units. The decision to dive or kite is an important one for a lot of Scorcher matchups. Make PRs to fix the behaviour if it is broken or to tweak the list of dive units if you think its appropriate.

quote: Idle Factory Reminder 1.2 Reminds oneself of own idle factories

Nice to have, but doesn`t just remind yourself but is readably to all spectators as well (and probably to allies? have never been in a team with the user).

Is there a way to make the notification exclusively for the user so it doesn`t clutter the chat? Especially if, say, 11 ppl out of 16 in a team are using it?

Less important: It could also say: "Construction-queue finshed" or something like that.

[Spoiler]

GoogleFrog
So do you want to make set target commands to a position out of range fire at the edge of the range by default? And consider command option keys with it? Or which problem are you trying to solve?

If this is it, then this part of my widget is certainly a good way to do it. I can also think of a different way to do it gadget-side with pros and cons. If you send a link to those 3D range utilities, I can probably take a look.

PRO_rANDY
I think that all possible widgets should already be considered in balance. That's probably not the case, though. Exact numbers are hard but possible to give because DPS falls off quickly with overshooter range.

katastrophe

quote: Is there a way to make the notification exclusively for the user so it doesn`t clutter the chat?

Yes. Just replace line 34 by

        Spring.Echo(text.." is idIe")

line 36 by

        Spring.Echo(text.." is idle")

[Spoiler]and line 44 by

        SendNotification("game_message:"..spGetPlayerInfo(myPlayerID).."'s "..spGetHumanName(unitDef))

as Nano Factory Assist does it. It will not be highlighted with color and sound, though. According to Alcur, you can also make a private big text by

gl.Text(text, textX, textY, fontSize, "o")

nvm

If I wanted to hide it, I could have released only the Badger part. But I have released the full Overshooter for the other units and other widgets as well and have advocated the introduction of a public MM widget archive.

If you quote me, then please do it right: I also said that while they should, they probably are not all considered. All possible strategies are supposed to be considered in balance. But they probably aren't either. Nonetheless, a list of all possible strategies is not necessary. A widget can just be seen as an implementation of a strategy. What is possible is clearly limited by gadgets.

I recommend to move longer arguments about widgets in general to this thread, potentially with a quote to here.

I will post an updated version of the Idle Factory Reminder with highlighting and without any spam.

See http://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/34108?postID=243706

quote: Idle Factory Reminder

A similar small icon under "idle com icon" but for Factory/Plate would be nice.

Can the Idle Factory Reminder, Nano Factory Assist and Scorcher Close Attack widgets be added to the core game (probably not default UI)? I have tested them a fair bit for bugs and they just work.