TargetAnnounce does not help you mark mobs. There are other addons that do that. TargetAnnounce helps you communicate the meaning of the marks to other members of your party or raid. TargetAnnounce does not have a short, fancy name that makes it sounds awesome. TargetAnnounce does have a name that reflects what it's used for.
When you first load TargetAnnounce you will see a box at the top of your screen. It will have two buttons. "Targets" will bring up the main dialogue window, while "Announce" will do nothing yet, but will work exactly like the one in the main dialogue window once you make some changes there. This box can be moved around to where you want it.
In the main dialogue window, you will see the eight raid target icons to the left, with eight long text fields in the middle and eight checkboxes to the right. The text field that corresponds to a raid target icon holds the text that will be announced for the icon, and the checkbox will decide whether the mark (with text) will actually be displayed (a checked box means it will).
There's a ninth checkbox at the bottom, labeled 'Announce to raid'. If this is checked, the marks will be announced in raid chat rather than party chat. There are also five buttons:
"Reset" resets the fields to their default values, and unchecks all checkboxes.
"Announce" announces the checked lines to the party or raid.
"Close" closes the main dialogue window.
"Profile" allows you to change to a different profile. The fields are saved to each profile, you can use a different setup without losing the one you have.
Then there's "Suggest", which will bring up the Suggest feature.
The Suggest feature has two modes, one for parties and one for raids. If you're in a regular party, it will bring up a list of your party. Check the CC or DPS characters (aka. not tanks or healers) and press Apply, and the fields will be filled with values that should work for your party. This won't fit all instances, but should cover most of them.
If you're in a raid group, you have to be inside the raid instance you want to suggest marks for. Instead of giving you a list of raid members, TA will look through your raid and set marks accordingly. These marks should suit the raid you're going to. It might not be perfect for how you plan to tackle the raid, but should still provide a nice starting point for setting up the marks.
TargetAnnounce was made to use Ace2, and took a lot of help from WoWWiki. I've probably made it in a horribly inefficient manner, but I haven't noticed any slowdown so I'm pleased. If I've forgotten some license information or acknowledgement that I'm supposed to put it, feel free to chew me out.
Some code has been reworked and improved. Also, TargetAnnounce now has marking buttons built in. The 'Expand' button in the small frame will show these. Previously unsupported raids have been added to the Suggest function. Also, Naxxramas suggestions will now suggest marks for humanoid targets, as manual marking beyond kill order is mostly used for the Grand Widow's adds.
As always, there may be undiscovered bugs, I may have made stupid mistakes somewhere in the code.
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)...
