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    TwinStar team

DPSMate - A combat analyzation tool

The philisophie of the WoW-Addon-Community

  • I think a license system is fair and justified considering the work

    Votes: 5 4.1%
  • Addons have to be free, I will never donate or pay sth, just give it to me

    Votes: 17 13.9%
  • Addons have to be free and I would consider donating for a good project, that I like

    Votes: 83 68.0%
  • Addons have to be free but I'd show my support by sth else than donating

    Votes: 15 12.3%
  • Can't decide but I'd like to contribute towards the goal

    Votes: 2 1.6%

  • Total voters
    122
  • Poll closed .
I would never "buy" an addon with neither in game nor IRL currency.
Donations to support an addon developer who is then supporting the community in turn is a whole other thing and the way to go imo.
 
DPSMate - Closed Beta

Starting today the closed beta of DPSMate will start. I will give out 98 licenses for this addon until the closed beta closes.
Judging by the name "beta" it may cause some issues that need to be reported and troubleshooted. Also new suggestions could come up for future features. A list of future features can be found at the first post of this topic.

So, what are those licenses about, you may ask:

I have been working on this addon since 8 months now, which means that I spend a lot of time developing that addon to bring it to its current state. Therefore I have introduced a license system in order to distribute it to people that don't bother to invest some gold.
There are two options:
  1. Guild option: The price is 50 licenses (10000g). It allows everyone being in the guild to use the addon
  2. Char option: The price is 200g. It allows only the desired character to use the addon.

This system will be permanent and so will be the licenses purchased in the beta phase. Also the beta will be the only time for this addon being available for gold.

Selling addons is that legit?
I talked to Jeniczek and he confirmed it to be legal.

How am I able to get a version?: (Currently only support for english clients)
Send an mail with the title "WTB DPSMate - <YOUR NAME>" to Shino (Alliance) on Kronos I.
Make sure to spell your character name correctly. I will check if this char exists on armory and if it doesn't, I will send back the gold. Even though I will not change it afterwards again.I will send back an mail with the link to download the addon. You have to save the link somewhere since you have to reuse it in order to download newer versions. I will announce in this thread whenever a new version is available.

!! If you don't feel safe about this method, you can also contact me in this forum via PM !!


I will update this thread frequently in order to keep you up to date, how many licenses are still available or if I updated the addon. When I updated the addon, just reuse the download link I gave you.

Cool, I got the addon now, do I have to configure something?:
- If you had a version prior to 1 for some reason, delete DPSMate.lua and DPSMate.lua.bak in this directory: WTF/Account/YOURACCNAME/Kronos/YOURCHARNAME/SavedVariables/
- Increase your addon memory in your addon tab of your character screen to at least 150 mb. You can find the number in the upper right corner of the tab.
- Disable SW_Stats since both addons eat a lot of resources.

If you encounter any other major problem then feel free to PM me in this forum. Together we will solve the problem.

I found a bug, what do I have to do?
Please report the bug in the Bugtracker please.
- Describe what happend
- Where did it happen
- When did it happen
- How did it happen (if you know how to reproduce it)
- And the error message it was reporting to you.

I have an suggestions for an future feature!:
Thats cool, then feel free to write it into this thread and I will add it to the list when I feel that this is a solid addition.
Or put it into the Bugtracker as enhancement.

Misc:
The realmplayer support may delay longer. Dilatazu (the creator of realmplayers) does not want to support DPSMate due to security reasons for his system. A working version of the data collecting addon does exist, however Dilatazu decided for himself that he does not want to support DPSMate and I will respect it.

Also there will be a little secret bonus release with the public release of DPSMate ;)

cheers
Shino
 
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Are you aware of that if you asked 10g for each copy then you would get much more gold, right? With 200g price I won't even think about buying it. Perhaps I would have understood if DPSMate was only combat log parser in the world but DamageMeters is good enough and it's for free. :)

Sorry but I have to support opinion of Vanguard guys.

If you wanted to become rich player you could just farm in-game for 8 months and if your reason of becoming sellout developer is that ppl don't appreciate your work then you might do something wrong. Now you became sellout and hated in the same time and won't get neither 100000000 gold or much more valuable "thanks".
 
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Some questions:
  • Why it is not "account-bound", i.e., only one license per character?
  • Will a player that buys the addOn and shares with his friends a "cracked" version be punished?
  • The players/guild that got a license will have a different version after the public release, i.e. more features?
  • After the Beta phase, the players that bought a license will get their money back?
  • Is there any ETA for the public release?
 
Are you aware of that if you asked 10g for each copy then you would get much more gold, right? With 200g price I won't even think about buying it. Perhaps I would have understood if DPSMate was only combat log parser in the world but DamageMeters is good enough and it's for free. :)

Sorry but I have to support opinion of Vanguard guys.

If you wanted to become rich player you could just farm in-game for 8 months and if your reason of becoming sellout developer is that ppl don't appreciate your work then you might do something wrong. Now you became sellout and hated in the same time and won't get neither 100000000 gold or much more valuable "thanks".

Sure, I dont force you to buy it, if you don't want it. That is fine.
And @ your second point:
The whole purpose of creating this addon was not money or gold. I started because I wanted to have an good dmg meter and this kinda evolved from it. After about 8 months I realized that this requires and will require a lot of time. I wasn't sure if I wanted to give it out for free after all so I decided to go this way. I am very well aware that most people won't like it since I am kinda breaking the unwritten law of addon makers or something, but people who actually wont to support this project dont mind to invest something. I don't really know why so many try to get around those 200g so much.

However. I respect your opinion and accept it.

Some questions:
  • Why it is not "account-bound", i.e., only one license per character?
  • Will a player that buys the addOn and shares with his friends a "cracked" version be punished?
  • The players/guild that got a license will have a different version after the public release, i.e. more features?
  • After the Beta phase, the players that bought a license will get their money back?
  • Is there any ETA for the public release?

1. There is unfortunately no function that would allow that in vanilla. Also most player have their characters on different accounts for obvious reasons.

2. I can't really find it out if you would, can I? However I (hopefully) made it very hard to crack, and also the decryption system changes with every update, so it is kinda bothersome to crack with every update^^

3. No, the versions will have the same features.

4. The license system will stay. The beta players can just use it earlier and help me to get this version to an release state. Also, the addon will only be available for gold during the beta. After it, it might change.

5. 2 months earliest.
 
This is a very unfortunate turn of events. Typically you offer beta access to players in exchange for their testing and contributing feedback on bugs, UI improvements, features, etc. Charging someone gold to use an addon.. That is just a damn shame. I appreciate the free addons you have already created and I would have donated real life money to you if this addon was free, but requiring that players pay you gold to use this.. That is sad.
 
People will just buy it once and then remove license protection and share for free and everyone will be happy anyways.
 
My take on Licensing:


Don't have any troubles with gold for beta access, beta access to tons of computergames are sold nowadays, as long as the final product delivers (which isn't guaranteed at all, I once bought early access to a game and the devs went MIA...) I am fine with it.


Best way to handle this situation here in my opinion is something which I call "Community Unlock".


Here we have an author of a software project that got bigger than initially intended who is rightfully looking for a compensation model for his invested work. Lets just randomly say roughly 1000 hours of work for the final product. (Sidenote: paid addons were real even in vanilla WoW back in the day, "XRS" was the name iirc)


On the other side we have a community that was looking for this product for a long time. Sure there are alternatives, but I have seen the AddOn and if everything gets polished up and all bugs get fixed I am certain that this is what we want. My random guesstimate would be 5000 players using the addon if Kronos II opens and the addon is openly available. We have to keep in mind that this "market" is volatile, we all hope for the best but we have no idea what Blizzards lawyers are up to.


We can assume that there are players who would just buy a final version for 5-10€/$, that there are players that are put off by the thought of paying for an Addon and that there are players who just want a free copy no matter what.


The sad default practice in software development nowadays is that you start implementing some copy protection mechanisms to make people pay for your software. Only rarely this can be done without interfering with the user experience. As long as demand is high enough there will be a cracked version eventually.



Better Approach: Community Unlock by Donations. The Author sets up a crowdfunding whatnot page with a donation goal and maybe a stretch goal to get full compensation for his invested work. Once the final amount is reached, the software will be released without copy protection / DRM bullshit for everyone free to use.


Hard to judge but I guess if we ordered this AddOn from the cheapest Indian programmer we could find we would pay like $10 an hour. Lets use the randomly guessed 1000 hours needed to complete the project and we are at $10.000 worth of codework for the final product. This numbers are just here to put this into perspective.


Whatever the final amount is, this way no one has to pay and everyone that wants to pay can a) pay as much as he wants and b) pay not even just for himself, but do something for the community. No one has to put up with limiting DRM bullshit which has to be coded as well, which in the end I as a customer pay for if I buy the product in the end.


So please Shino, consider this route and consider the work backlog you create if you have to do all this personal licensing stuff. (Exception: You are really interested in DRM/copy protection development and want to use this as an excercise project. Not that I would like it, but it would be a valid reason)
 
I luve u Shino but selling something like this for GOLD aint okey brah!
You should know dat! But then again people aint FORCED to use it/buy it, it's just a SHINO super DPSmeter.

I give this addon 4/5 reckbombs, why only 4? cause i give shino too many 5/5.
 
It's the first Bullshitmeter of its kind, I say sell it for 900g for beta access.
I mean what's some measly epic riding skill for the privilege of beta testing.

If I'm not too bored I might spend a couple hours to de-obfuscate it and distribute to the masses, should be fun.

You didn't learn anything from the Carbonite fiasco I guess, but you'll be educated :tongue:
 
- Increase your addon memory in your addon tab of your character screen to at least 150 mb. You can find the number in the upper right corner of the tab.

I may be interested in getting a license, but i can't afford to raise data to 150mb (currently running with 36) just to have one addon running in the background.

I am only interested in a few of the features of the addon anyway, so my question is whether it is possible to disable some of the features if i don't want to run with all of them at once? thereby reducing the amount of data recieved.
 
It's the first Bullshitmeter of its kind, I say sell it for 900g for beta access.
I mean what's some measly epic riding skill for the privilege of beta testing.

If I'm not too bored I might spend a couple hours to de-obfuscate it and distribute to the masses, should be fun.

You didn't learn anything from the Carbonite fiasco I guess, but you'll be educated :tongue:

Ok, you can try it I guess. But if you really want to do that for every update, sounds like a lot of work to me :/
Also you are not only buying the previlege of beta testing, you are buying a permanent license of this addon. When it will be released it won't be without license system.

I may be interested in getting a license, but i can't afford to raise data to 150mb (currently running with 36) just to have one addon running in the background.

I am only interested in a few of the features of the addon anyway, so my question is whether it is possible to disable some of the features if i don't want to run with all of them at once? thereby reducing the amount of data recieved.

Actually, there will be an option later that will work while not being in synced mode but there isn't currently. However, tell me why can't you afford that memory, do you have an very bad computer?
 
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jurassicpark_radargun02.jpg
 
Does look like a stable computer to me :/

@Road, I have googled the whole carbonite, tookui, zykorguides etc. fiasco. Found some interesting policies as well. Guess, I have to rephrase this then. Im thinking about it.
Still, I am interested if you can hack this addon, so Im going to give you an link via PM. Tell me when you were successful please.

cheers!
 
I'm guessing you are trying some authentication method that does some sort of cipher/decipher (maybe a hash) with the player/guild name. If the hash doesn't match, then the addOn won't load.

If the player has access to the code, like any other addOn, then it's pretty much easy to "crack", just remove the authentication.
 
People will just buy it once and then remove license protection and share for free and everyone will be happy anyways.

I respect your work Geigerkind, but that "license" system is just topkek xD

It's the first Bullshitmeter of its kind, I say sell it for 900g for beta access.
I mean what's some measly epic riding skill for the privilege of beta testing.

If I'm not too bored I might spend a couple hours to de-obfuscate it and distribute to the masses, should be fun.

You didn't learn anything from the Carbonite fiasco I guess, but you'll be educated :tongue:

I'm guessing you are trying some authentication method that does some sort of cipher/decipher (maybe a hash) with the player/guild name. If the hash doesn't match, then the addOn won't load.

If the player has access to the code, like any other addOn, then it's pretty much easy to "crack", just remove the authentication.

UUh, I just had an good idea. How about a little challange:
If you manage to complete the challange I will remove the licensing system, give back all the gold I received by the selling until now and make this addon completly public.

There are two goals:
  1. 500 participants in the poll
  2. Someone has to completly remove the license system from my addon
You already told me that it is just a few hours work and easy to do, so it shouldn't be a problem, right?
The first one that manages to completly remove the system until the 29th 11:59 PM will get 200g from me on Kronos I. (Oh well, thats just peanuts, but for some here it seems to be the world)

I'd like everyone who is taking the challange to make a short post in this thread.
Also I'd like you to make a post here about the choice you made in the poll, it is ofcourse optional but let's have a little discussion here.

So Addon-Community, this is your chance to make me realize how important it is to follow this philosophie. Don't disappoint me after all this complaining here.

Challange

cheers!

Edit: Did someone guess the reference?
[video=youtube;MLTlH7KB0Xk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLTlH7KB0Xk[/video]
 
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Nice turn of events.

About the challenge: I'm currently downloading a 1.12 client (maybe tomorrow will be 100%), but from what I've seen, color might be the answer.

I'll confirm tomorrow.

About the poll: I chose the 3rd option. Even though we are playing on a private server, the majority of the community is very helpful and they always help the ones that help them. Due to that, it's not rare to see people asking for backports or for new addOns (some even make an offer, gold/real money).
Also, there are very few addOn developers in the private server community, so almost all of them are treated like "kings" by players.
And to be honest, a dev that creates addOns for older expansions is a really great guy because he's creating addOns that no one ever thought about it (or had the skills to create it) - a great achievement when WoW had millions of players throughout the expansions.


Edit: I waited for the download to do some tests and here are results: http://i.imgur.com/DbeQG5l.png

I hope you keep your promise.
 
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if you want to save some disc space, i recommend to convert the pictures to blp :)

6HrcmRf.png
 
Nice turn of events.

About the challenge: I'm currently downloading a 1.12 client (maybe tomorrow will be 100%), but from what I've seen, color might be the answer.

I'll confirm tomorrow.

About the poll: I chose the 3rd option. Even though we are playing on a private server, the majority of the community is very helpful and they always help the ones that help them. Due to that, it's not rare to see people asking for backports or for new addOns (some even make an offer, gold/real money).
Also, there are very few addOn developers in the private server community, so almost all of them are treated like "kings" by players.
And to be honest, a dev that creates addOns for older expansions is a really great guy because he's creating addOns that no one ever thought about it (or had the skills to create it) - a great achievement when WoW had millions of players throughout the expansions.


Edit: I waited for the download to do some tests and here are results: http://i.imgur.com/DbeQG5l.png

I hope you keep your promise.

Congrats for breaking the addon, but it's not hard to remove it from there on, I'm sure someone will be able to

Edit: (Now Im on the computer)
What you did was to break the TableContains function. Therefore the whole evaluation, sync, parsing and menu system will be broken, even though the output seems to work now.
Sorry, but that wasnt the license system, but there is still lots of time remaining.
 
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how about that macro?

Code:
/run tinsert(DPSMate.localization.p,tonumber(6811210997116101))
?

Dpmate is my chars name

Code:
68 112 109 97 116 101
D  p   m    a  t   e

Y9TEE5b.png


edit: @AfterAfterlife: if you insert items into this table every call, your table gets very big in short time -> slower/unstable addon :)
 
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Congrats for breaking the addon, but it's not hard to remove it from there on, I'm sure someone will be able to

Edit: (Now Im on the computer)
What you did was to break the TableContains function. Therefore the whole evaluation, sync, parsing and menu system will be broken, even though the output seems to work now.
Sorry, but that wasnt the license system, but there is still lots of time remaining.

My bad. I did more searches and it seems you check the player hash in some modules (Interrupts, Damage, Sync, etc...).

So, to remove all the "authentications" would take a little more time. Here is a quick solution that should work for anyone: http://i.imgur.com/vLbJizA.png

Edit: @up (Renew): it was a quick hack-fix before removing all authentications.
Since the deal was to remove the "license system", here is the addOn without it (I left the "authentication" functions for "historical purposes"): http://expirebox.com/download/583a2ad07c77813d70ef23ff5731d1a6.html
 
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I don't see anything wrong with your looking to be compensated in some way but I just don't think code obfuscation is the way to go here. Especially since I'm sure you've profited a lot from looking at the code of other people's addOns yourself like I have too.

You should simply state a price for the addOn and let the honest people pay.
 
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