Macro name is Quick Target and it is 95% complete. It is a simple addon, but i haven't seen another that does the same thing, so i may wind up submitting it for inclusion on the Curse site.

you enter /qt <targetname> and it will update the macro with the new target, or create it if it doesn't already existing. You just keep the same icon on the addon and it is all good to go.

Enter the marrowgar fight.

/qt bone spike.

Win

I still need to research some of the odd quirks of LUA. syntax is slightly off from languages i am familiar with. It seems like a combination of C#/javascript and VB. I built this addon by copying my other existing addon and removing the pieces i didn't need. Might have been better to start from scratch because i removed more than i added and it was buggier to boot. pretty stable now though and i learned a lot.

Debugging the addons can be a pain. It has to be done in game and if you want to quickly fix something you have to exit the character or the game and re-enter. There is a useful tool for helping with this though. http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/acp.aspx. Addon Control Panel allows you to turn on and off addons in the game whereever you are. it even allows you to reload the gui. This helped me a lot as i was able to switch to the desktop to fix the issue and reload it without having to log out each time.

Playing World of Warcraft will eventually lead you to using addons and macros to enchance the gameplay and help you out. I have tried out several dozen addons since I started and I am down to about 10 that i rely on when playing. Macros have built-in API commands as well as the ability to use the scripting language to get some more out of them. Both Macros and Addons use the LUA scripting language. Since i am programmer i was drawn to the idea of learning a new language, so even though i didn't have any ideas for a new addon i wanted to learn it for learnings sake. I found that the sample addon from the WOW site didn't work, and even worse it didn't do a good enough job of describing what and why it was doing some things. So i turned to books and found a great resource that not only taught me how to create an addon, but gave me a great addon to use from the examples in the book. It is called Hacking the World of Warcraft. By the end of the exercises i had a complete addon that displays the current coordinates on the main screen as well as the map, great for when you are tracking down a hard to find NPC. Now that I finished the book, I wanted to find something else i could write, something that would be helpful and hopefully something that hasn't been done already. I decided to go with something simple, a targetting addon. Right now i use an addon called bloodyrare for targeting rare spawns in Northrend and Outland. BloodyRare creates a macro depending on the zone you are currently in and when you click it, if it finds the object you are looking for it will select the target, flash a message and play a sound to alert you. I love this macro, but it only works for the known targets that it has stored in the addon. I wanted to have an addon that would allow me to set a target and act the same way. So my hunter looking for old cliffjumper in the hinderlands could target the beast if he was in the area without having to open the macro menu and set it up from there.

So I took what i learned from the book and what I learned from analzysing the code for Bloodyrare and created Tag. By entering \tag old cliffjumper from the command line in WOW i can create a macro to target and alert me when old cliff jumper is around. or I can enter /tag bone spike when fighting marrowgar. The macro is always on my toolbar, but as i update it through /tag it will change the macro to whatever i want to target now. no more need to open the macro menu. simple, but useful for me. I will possibly release it in the near future after working with it for awhile. More details to come

Started World of Warcraft back in August 2009. Haven't missed a day playing yet, but now that i am freeing up a little time i wanted to restart the site and maybe do something with it for once.