Livestock: For all your companion needs
Now that your pets and mounts don't take up space in your bags, Livestock lets you manage them intelligently. This addon sorts your companions into land mounts, flying mounts, and vanity pets. Then, with the push of a button, you can randomly summon any of the three, or designate a favorite pet to have out on command. You can also have Livestock always keep a pet by your side, and have it dismiss your vanity pet when you are in PVP battle and it would give away your position.
You can even tell Livestock to put you on a random land or flying mount depending on whether the area you're in lets you fly or not. Underwater or in combat, Livestock can also be configured to cast certain spells relating to travel, such as Path of Frost or Ghost Wolf.
You can summon critters, land mounts, and flying mounts in various ways - see below for details.
Planned Updates and Localization Help
Because I am getting lots of suggestions and bug reports from users, I have a section of the FAQ (at http://www.wowinterface.com/portal.php?id=474&a=faq&faqid=345) devoted to seeing what's in store for the next version. If you're wondering if I'm working on something, that is the place to check. I will try to keep it as up-to-date as possible!
Livestock currently only completely works for the enUS, deDE, and frFR clients. If you are on another client, Livestock will work but will show all English strings. However, it will classify all your mounts as land mounts and slow mounts - defeating much of the purpose of using the addon. If you are willing to help localize the addon for your language, please let me know - you'd only need to provide some simple translations and I'd do the rest.
Slash Commands:
- Use "/livestock" to bring up the main menu bar.
- Use "/livestock reset" to move the four Livestock Buttons (described below) back to their default positions.
- Use "/livestock scale <scale>" to change the size of the Livestock Buttons (described below). They will be reset to the lower center of the screen and resized. If you use scales larger than 1.5, the buttons might be pushed off the screen by the rescaling before you can move them manually. You have been warned.
- Use "/livestock prefs" as a shortcut to access the preferences, described in the FAQ. More details below.
- Use "/livestock redo" to force Livestock to reset and rewrite your menus. This is helpful if you are seeing nothing in your menus at all, or you learned a new mount and it's not showing up correctly. It should restore your menus with all visible mounts checked and remind you to go through and uncheck any you don't want to include.
Livestock Options:
You can find the options for Livestock in the Addons tab of the Blizzard Interface options menu. You can find the options for Livestock in the Addons tab of the Blizzard Interface options menu. The "Livestock" tab has the major options, while options for pets and Smart Mounting are in sub-menus. You can read more about the preferences in the FAQ at http://www.wowinterface.com/portal.php?id=474&a=faq
Building Your Summon Checklists
Before you randomly summon a vanity pet (critter) or mount, you must build its checklist first. If you try to use Livestock to randomly summon an animal before you do this, it will prompt you to build the checklists.
Open the Livestock menu bar and click one of the three buttons to open a list of the critters, land mounts, and flying mounts you can summon. You will notice that your slow and epic mounts appear in your mount menus. If you wish to hide slow mounts, you can do so by accessing the Filter Options in the Livestock Options frame.
As you move your mouse over the animals in the menus, you will see them appear in the 3D model window if you've enabled it in the main menu. (The slider at the bottom of the viewer controls how fast your animal rotates so you can view it from all angles. Excessive rotation speed may result in animal complaints.)
Select the animals you want for each checklist by clicking on them individually or by clicking "Select / Unselect All" at the bottom. If you are in the vanity pets menu, you can designate a favorite pet by right-clicking it.
Random Summons
Once you've made your checklist, you can summon your pets and mounts randomly through unique Livestock buttons, keybinds, or macros (action buttons).
Livestock Keybinds: Open the WoW keybinding menu and assign keybinds to the various functions you want. You can assign keybinds to random pets, random mounts, dismiss whichever pet you have out, or summon your favorite pet.
Livestock Buttons: In the options menu, choose which buttons you would like to show/hide in the first set of options. The critter button resembles a pet carrier, the land mount a horseshoe, the flying mount a winged boot, and smart mounting (described below) a running brain. These can be placed anywhere on the screen, can be scaled with /livestock scale <scale>, and can be reset to the center with /livestock reset. To move them, hold down Ctrl, Alt, or Shift and drag the button to its desired location.
For the Critter button, you can summon a guaranteed different critter by left-clicking, or dismiss your current critter by right-clicking. You can summon your favorite pet by holding down Alt, Shift, or Ctrl and clicking the button.
Livestock Macros: Make sure your macro window is closed first! Open the options menu and click any of the three top macro buttons to create a macro that will summon a random animal. These macros will go in your individual character macros and can be placed on your action bars. The bottom macro button creates a smart mount macro (explained below).
For the Critter macro, you can summon a guaranteed different critter by left-clicking, or dismiss your current critter by right-clicking.
To have a macro that summons your favorite pet, you can use "/run Livestock.SummonFavoritePet()" in a macro of your choosing.
Smart Mounting
When you activate Smart Mounting through macro, button, or keybind, the addon checks to see where you are, if you're in combat or not, and what class you are. In general, it tries to pick the "smartest" option for you.
For example, you will mount a flying mount if you're in an area where flying mounts can be summoned and you have the ability to do so. If you're underwater and a druid, you'll shift to Aquatic Form. You'll dismount if you're mounted already. For classes that can access movement increases in combat (Hunters, Druids, and Shamans) you have options to access those forms or spells with Smart Mounting.
Check the "Travel & Mounts" menu of the preferences to see what options are available to your class and Smart Mounting.
Bugs Reports and Feature Requests
If you find unexpected behavior in Livestock, especially in locales other than enUS, please check the FAQ at http://www.wowinterface.com/portal.php?id=474&a=faq first to see if it has been addressed and if there is a possible fix.
Please report any bugs you find with Livestock -- or feature requests you'd like to see -- using the "Tickets on Curseforge" link above the comments section.
If you are reporting a bug, the following information is helpful: Any error messages that you saw, where you were (if you can give coordinates, that's excellent), what you were trying to do, what your menus looked like, and what class you play.
Thanks!
Well-deserved credit goes to the following people:
- Khanthal (Uldum), for the original idea and being our MT so often!
- A BIG thank you to Sbo (UI and Macros forum, Live) who helped me figure out what was the issue with Dalaran and Wintergrasp as well as suggesting the way to get around it.
- Grimgear (UI and Macros forum, Live) for helping troubleshoot a bug, pointing me to keybindings, and suggesting rotation speed. Also for pointing out how best to adjust my GUI to compensate for localization.
- Lunessa (UI and Macros forum, Live) for pointing me to Blizzard's instructions on creating panels in the Interface menu.
- Xelron (UI and Macros forum, Live) for helping construct debug messages to get more information and indirectly convincing me to make my own dropdowns.
- Ro (UI and Macros forum, Beta) for the 3D model viewer idea. Ro also originally suggested making my own custom dropdowns, which I thought was beyond me!
- Elloria and Tgulics (WoWInterface) for helping spread the word and test the addon in its earliest stages and for suggesting highlighting the buttons when they're clicked.
- The MVPs (UI and Macros forum) for providing the resources needed to accomplish this one as well as stepping in and answering my questions from time to time. Special thanks to Alestane and Iriel for helping me with secure handlers.
- kdkunde (WoWInterface) for helping translate this mod into German so far!
- Vastilia (WoWInterface) and Yorgl (Curse) for helping translate into French!
- Certainly not least, Brenkite (Uldum) for being my personal troubleshooter and moral support.
Version 1.1.6:
- UI for preferences reverted to use Blizzard's Interface Options Panel. Thanks to those who voiced their feedback for the experimental interface.
- Added a new slash command, "/livestock prefs" to shortcut to the preferences in the Interface Options Panel.
- Preferences for vanity pet summons and Smart Mounting behavior are split into two sub-sections of the preferences menu.
- Hunters now have the option of tying Aspect of the Cheetah or Pack to Smart Mounting. You can select this option to happen when indoors, or while moving (and out of combat). You will cast Cheetah if you're playing solo, and Pack if you're in a group (and have learned the spell).
- Mages and priests have the option to cast Slow Fall / Levitate on themselves with Smart Mounting if they're falling and not in combat.
- When wearing the Bloodsail Admiral's Hat, Don Carlos's Hat, or while under the effect of any of the level 80 Jewelcrafting trinket buffs that summon a pet, Livestock's pet summoning features will be suppressed.
- Druids mounted on a land mount who activate Smart Mounting when they move into a flyable area will shift to flight form (if they have this option selected and they are not in combat) instead of dismounting.
- Druids who use Smart Mounting to cast Travel Form in combat while moving will see it recast instead of toggle. (Equivalent to /cast !Travel Form) This has not been tested on locales other than enUS, so please let me know if you see funny behavior with Travel Form in combat!
- Levitate and Water Walking cast underwater using Smart Mounting are now self-cast instead of cast on target. This fixes the issue of using Smart Mounting when you had a friendly unit targeted who was not in your group.
- The macros created with the Macro Generator no longer have the [nocombat] and [noflying] conditions attached to them. The conditions were interfering with some of the newer combat and flying mount behaviors of Livestock, and were leftover from earlier versions that needed them. All checks for combat and flight are now handled through the addon, respecting the Livestock preferences you've selected, rather than being filtered through the macro system. This cuts out potential undesirable behavior for preferences that only happened in flight or combat.
- Fixed a bug where Death Knights and Priests who changed their underwater Smart Mounting options may not have seen the changes go into effect, and may have had unintended effects when they left the water.
- Fixed a bug that may have been responsible for Livestock trying to summon flying mounts in areas where they are not allowed -- most particularly the old world continents. Feedback is appreciated as always.
- Fixed a bug where players on the frFR client would not properly summon land mounts in Wintergrasp.
- Fixed a bug where completing the quest "Blast the Gateway" would result in your character summoning a vanity pet from their checklist automatically even if the option to do so was not checked.
Version 1.1.5:
- New preference: if you have Livestock set to not summon a pet when you are PVP flagged, you can now set the addon to ignore your PVP flag in an instance and summon one automatically anyway.
- Livestock will no longer automatically summon a pet when you are falling. (No more trying to cast Flight Form or Levitate to save yourself and dying because Livestock used your GCD to summon a pet!)
- The option to dismiss pets when going into the air should no longer dismiss pets when you are mounting a land mount. It will still dismiss a pet if you enter a ground vehicle.
- Livestock will no longer change your world map to your current zone when you are moving between zones.
- French and German localizations updated to include all strings.
- Changed the look of the settings frames to create a more integrated look -- heading toward a more complete UI solution as I have time for it.
- Change log up to this version removed from hosting site and archived in Change Log.txt
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)...