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AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft


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Getting Started

If you're new to World of Warcraft development, go to AddOn Studio 1.0.1 Download and click install. Depending on your system configuration, installation can take over 30 minutes, please be patient! After installing, select Help>>Tutorials >> Creating your first World of Warcraft addon to get started.

Key Features


Visual Design Surface - AddOn Studio includes a set of toolbox controls that you can drag-and-drop onto the designer to visually design the layout of your addon including popular Visual Studio features like Snap lines which enable you to visually align controls.

snaplines.png

Lua Code Editor - AddOn Studio includes a powerful Lua code editing environment including syntax highlighting, colorization, collapsible functions, built-in IntelliSense support for Warcraft functions and events, IntelliSense Code Snippets for common Lua language constructs, code navigation features like bookmarks and Go To Declaration, and all IDE settings are customizable.

IntelliSense.png

FrameXML IntelliSense - AddOn Studio provides built-in support for FrameXML schema validation for addon developers who want to manually edit and customize FrameXML markup.

xmlintellisense.png

Auto-Generate Table of Contents - AddOn Studio also takes the hassle out of building the Table of Contents (TOC) file by automatically building it based on what files are in your project.

toceditor.png

Auto-Generate Lua Events - The Addon Studio property window shows all of the properties and events available for a Lua control or frame and enables one-click creation of event handlers like a button_OnClick event.

frameOnEvent.png

Other Goodies - AddOn Studio includes lots more features including project templates for creating Ace2 addons, automatic deployment to your Warcraft directory, Task Window, Error List for FrameXML and Lua parsing errors, TGA and MP3 file format support, powerful search-and-replace features, and its fully extensible so that developers can build additional tools and editors to improve addon development.


Add-ins for AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft

AddOn Studio itself is extensibile the same way Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and other Visual Studio Shell products are. See the Add-ins page for add-ins developed for AddOn Studio by the authors and the community. To build your own add-in for AddOn Studio, refer to Build your own add-in for AddOn Studio and the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 SDK.

Visual Studio Shell Extensibility

AddOn Studio is also a great project for developers looking for examples of how to build their own IDE. For more information on extensibility or the Visual Studio Shell, please visit http://msdn.com/vsx/.

Building AddOn Studio

If you would like to contribute to AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft or you just want to build it yourself, visit BuildNotes and follow the steps described there.

Kudos and Thanks

This project wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for: Catherine Crim, Shawn Nandi, Anson Horton, James Lau, and the amazing team at EPAM including Attila Szucs, Gabor Ratky and Attila Kisko. Special thanks also to the Microsoft World of Warcraft alias for helping us with the bug bash!
Last edited Jul 31 at 1:25 AM by danielfe, version 27
Comments
Also available: 3 reviews for current release.

Pon_the_Pony wrote  Dec 15 2007 at 3:05 AM 
Oh my god.

Now I have to install WoW.

icelava wrote  Dec 15 2007 at 2:11 PM 
Is this for Visual Studio 2005 or 2008? I suppose the Express editions will suffice?

icelava wrote  Dec 15 2007 at 2:17 PM 
Ah nvm.... the package installs .NET Framework 3.5 and VC++ 2008.

Webbot wrote  Dec 15 2007 at 2:40 PM 
Seriously...this is just so freaking AWESOME!
Thanks a lot for this. Gonna start producing some own addons now :-)

cralor wrote  Dec 15 2007 at 3:54 PM 
Install Directions:

1. Install .zip at the "Releases" Tab.
2. Open folder, open setup.exe
2. A. if you don't have Visual Studios, it will install that, which will take 20min or so. then restart computer (go to step 2. B.)
2. B. after you installed Visual Studios, you open setup.exe again, and install the WoW Addon part of it

Hope this helps!

RGabo wrote  Dec 15 2007 at 3:57 PM 
Keep the feedback coming and let us know if you want to contribute and have any questions. There'll be multiple blog posts that share our experience regarding the development with focus on the Lua Language Service and the Frame XML Visual Designer as well as general Visual Studio package development / VS Shell insights. Watch the wiki pages too!

unrusodecaracas wrote  Dec 15 2007 at 7:06 PM 
Awesome!!!!

Amoa wrote  Dec 17 2007 at 12:46 AM 
This is a brilliant tool! Thank you so much!

I have noticed and error in the Tutorial for making your first WoW AddOn. Where it says to add "this.RegisterEvent("PLAYER_TARGET_CHANGED"); " It should be "this:Register..." not "this.Register...". If this is the wrong place to say about this, just say and I will head to the right place to inform you! :-)

hjuhlin wrote  Dec 17 2007 at 2:53 PM 
I can’t get it to work, its just keep saying "Invalid License data. Reinstall is required."
Can it be because I have VS2005 installed in the same machine?
Can remove that as I work in 2005. :(

WhyKillMe wrote  Dec 17 2007 at 3:05 PM 
Hjuhlin, i made an account to answer this question.

I was stuck at this problem aswell, the problem to solve this is:

DO NOT START Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Instead, start: Addon Studio for World of Warcraft

hjuhlin wrote  Dec 17 2007 at 3:31 PM 
Oo.. it worked, thanks for helping! :)

RGabo wrote  Dec 17 2007 at 6:34 PM 
Amoa, good catch! You could also open an issue any time in the Issue Tracker so that you can track the progess and see which release fixes the issue but comments work fine too ;)

Kryton wrote  Dec 18 2007 at 4:25 PM 
Thanks Amoa that expains why I had issues :)

So im a newby to this and dev in general but i have tinkered in the past. What I want to know is how to properly load other mods into addon studio.
I learn via cut and past and lots of examples :)

grimmeld wrote  Dec 18 2007 at 7:59 PM 
First things first: I already had Visual Studio.Net 2005 on my computer.

I have installed the complete package and opened the addon studio. The first run gave me problems on the enviroment settings. The import fixed it although import and export also gave problems (i have the addon studio installed on another drive, is that problematic?) and still it keeps asking for the enviroment settings.

When i try to save a project it states: "Operation could not be completed. No such interface supported"

Also, only the tutorials, and additional documentation (referring to the main page of WowAce or WowWiki, which has no info about Addon Studio) are avaliably in the help menu, is that normal?

Further more, chaninging the XML code does not automatically change the addon when looking at it visually. And is it just me or does changing an object's properties not always work quite perfect (visually)? The toc file gets no updates when the properties of the addon are changed, and changing the name of the addon results not in the change of the eventual name of build result (not the files that are already built, but the files that come after the build). Are all this paragraph's problems the cause of not being able to save the project on my behalf or do more people experience this?


I love this concept and i hope these problems will soon be fixed.

henrikfalk wrote  Dec 23 2007 at 10:02 PM 
This is great. I just hope there will be more documentation and source code available soon.

meteormatt wrote  Dec 25 2007 at 2:02 AM 
???.???????.?????????

garsia1983 wrote  Dec 30 2007 at 11:41 AM 
nice

hakx wrote  Dec 31 2007 at 3:34 PM 
Fantastic piece of work - its helped me to create my first add-in in about 30 mins. Let me know if i can help with any of the development as this has great potential :)

rend wrote  Jan 5 at 7:47 PM 
I have a Problem with the installation of this tool. I had installed VS Express versions of c++ and c# before i got the addonstudio. The studio start correct after installation, but on creating of a new project or are tutorial, there is an error message:
"WowAddon9.wowproj cannot be openend because its project type (.wowproj) is not supported by this version of Visual Studio.
To open it, pleas use a version that supports this type of project"

Is there anybody, who knows as solution for my problem?

henrikfalk wrote  Jan 7 at 3:01 PM 
You should probably make sure that it's AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft that is trying to open .wowproj. It might be some of the other VS you have installed.

Apoco wrote  Jan 11 at 9:03 PM 
I've actually been having the problem that rend is having after the 1.0.1 patch. I've uninstalled and reinstalled a few times, and just uninstalled vs05 and installed vs08 (Just got it yesterday) and it still doesn't work. Says its project type isnt supported by Addon Studio for World of Warcraft.

IllusionSoftware wrote  Jan 11 at 9:08 PM 
Does this work with Visual Studio Express or do I need the full version of Visual Studio (Standard/Pro)

BobbyCannon wrote  Jan 17 at 1:13 AM 
Doesn't work after upgrading to 1.0.1...

Minipam wrote  Jan 17 at 5:42 PM 
Same issue since 1.0.1 "project type not supported by this version of visual studio" and cannot rollback to 1.0.0 please help need a solution to use 1.0.0 again

Robotsrcool wrote  Jan 18 at 4:27 PM 
When I try to install Visual Studio 2008 shell, I just get this message:

Setup has detected that the file 'C:\DOCUME~1\HARRYC~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\VSD48.tmp\vsshell\vs_shell.cab' has changed since it was initially published.

See the setup log file located at 'C:\DOCUME~1\HARRYC~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\VSD48.tmp\install.log' for more information.

What should I do?

Minipam wrote  Jan 21 at 3:43 PM 
Wowproj error could be solutionned :
by running in a command prompt :

%programfiles%\AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft\wowaddonstudio /resetskippkgs

Birdman wrote  Jan 25 at 5:12 AM 
I just download this tool, installed it, and went through the first tutorial. I know about the "this.Register" typo, but I am still getting this error after trying to build:

------ Build started: Project: WowAddon3, Configuration: Default Any CPU ------
Error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
========== Build: 1 succeeded or up-to-date, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

I know others are having this error. How do I fix this? The code is straight forward, but is not compiling....

oakdk wrote  Jan 25 at 3:04 PM 
Hmm I get the same error as Birdman.
Installed it last night and today I was trying to follow the tutorial checked and checked again but no cigar :(

cspencerjr wrote  Feb 9 at 8:16 AM 
I'm new to this but I am getting the same error.
The Object reference error, and WoW is not seeing ACE2, even though it show that the addon has ACE2 as a dependence.

kazaakm wrote  Feb 10 at 5:19 PM 
I can't get the background to show! For example "the blood elf and his pet" The only thing that shows for me is a Dark grey box and a Light grey background !! Help What Do I Have To Do To Fix This???

dbrckovi wrote  Feb 11 at 12:20 PM 
Great concept, but I'm experiencing an annoying bug. Almost every time when I write some code directly in XML, it disappears after a few builds.
For example, I've just added a backdrop to some status bar by pasting the code in XML, saved it, built, started wow, and it was there working perfectly. Then I added some controls through designer, saved, built, started wow, and the backdrop was gone. When I checked the XML source, the backdrop piece of code which I manually wrote few minutes ago was gone.

I remember having similar problem in VS2002 and 2003, where VS would automatically reformat my HTML code when ever I switched between design and HTML view. The only workaround was to save the file right before switching to design view, but this doesn't seem to help here. Does anyone know a similar trick in Addon Studio?

Astra wrote  Feb 20 at 2:26 AM 
hey- will installing .Net 3.5 cause anyhting wrong to happen with wow??

RGabo wrote  Mar 4 at 2:56 PM 
Astra-

no it won't, it does not affect any software that you have already installed.

cturner wrote  Mar 25 at 10:32 PM 
------ Build started: Project: MyFirstAddon, Configuration: Default Any CPU ------
Error: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
========== Build: 1 succeeded or up-to-date, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========


I get an error message and i can't figure out how to deploy this could someone pls help me thanks

MastaSquidge wrote  Apr 29 at 5:13 PM 
Ok, I honestly have ZERO idea how to show simple HTML inside any frame or anything.
Can someone please post a step by step on showing SIMPLE HTML within this program? I imagine I have to link the "simple HTML" frame to an html file right? But how do I do that, how do I get it to show up.... this is confusing as hell. I cannot find any possible way to add ANY content to ANY frame using this tool. Making the frame is easy though.

I just want to be able to show "Hello" and a linebreak and then "Goodbye" Inside a simplehtml frame, and I will go from there in learning this. What I would be using is (html)(body)Hello(br)Goodbye(/body)(/html) of course using carrots instead of () and all. (Unsure of how this website will handle html formatted text). If I can figure out how to get THAT to display....

Azrael wrote  Apr 29 at 10:34 PM 
can't get the program to install. First there was problems with the shell component, now after it did install...the program itself says that a component failed to install properly and wipes the installation...??? Any help on this???

Azrael wrote  Apr 30 at 12:05 AM 
Fixed! Thanx to TrentSkunk! Found relevant solution in the "Issue Tracker" tab.

Scrow wrote  Apr 30 at 5:06 PM 
is there a way to make this app auto-indent the lua code? I've tried what i thought might work in the Options, but it's still not properly indenting logical blocks of code.

Thorsten007 wrote  May 21 at 9:27 PM 
Sounds like a very cool program - i'll download it later and try it out.

But I'm curious - Am I right when I think this is basically an 'advanced' automatic distionary which write the codes into the compiler on the demand of the user? I.E if I would want the addOn to start when I go afk, this program would know the command and write it into the compiler? Am I right?

sikend wrote  May 26 at 7:31 PM 
Ok this tool wuz introduced to me by a friend who is about as unknowing of xml as i am we both know basically that it exists and not any of its workings and yet when we were introduced to the program we were told by many ppl that the xml was written for you as you designed the addon and yet as i got more in depth into the program i discovered that you still had to write the xml yourself unless i missed something. I feel like in a way the program wuz a jip because it does not do wut several websites promised can neone point me straight or give me some help on understanding the program more in depth?

drayla wrote  May 28 at 6:16 AM 
Just downloaded this as i am going to try my hand at some addons for wow, have a good base of VB and C++ knowledge so hopefully it will be painless... yea right... anyway to SIKEND: what your friends probably mean when they said that it writes the code for you was that the code for the interface is created for you. At least i know when creating visual basic or VBA apps you can visually (drag and drop) create your interface and all the code for that is created. Then you plug your code into it. Hope this makes sense...

sikend wrote  Jun 2 at 8:05 PM 
ty drayla that helped me out alot it cleared things up for me ty

DragonShaolin wrote  Jul 1 at 2:36 PM 
the builded addons are incompatible with wow. I can't load them. Why? I allready changed the versionsnumber to 20400.

Thanks for help.

Morkatog wrote  Jul 9 at 11:50 PM 
The program is awesome ! But there is very less tutorials :p

Morkatog wrote  Jul 10 at 2:52 AM 
Oh please gief more tutorials :(

Finnbogg wrote  Aug 9 at 4:39 PM 
I started the Download of the netframework. ........1 hour ago..... and the progression bar is still at 0%. I have tried this twice with no luck. So exactly how long do i have to wait?

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