Hi TBC Macros Forum readers!
Welcome to my first "developer log" post! I have been encouraged (many times) to share on the Macros forum about my TBC development and TODAY is that day!
I figured starting with a "dev log" style can help keep things informal and conversational and keep us focused on solving problems and learning (i.e. more engineering than sales/marketing). I will try to stay focused on sharing about what's actually available (i.e. public Beta or public Release) to the TBC community (end-users and command developers) and not get lost in dreams/aspirations. This week's post is just an intro, and as you'll see, these things are very early days. This post is just to get things started...
Titles and Tags
To start, I'm going to prefix my posts with square-bracket "tags" so it's easier for you to reference/find posts. I'll also try out the "hashtag" feature at the bottom as well. You'll see some examples.
[Developer] Revenant Solutions
Revenant is a TBC extension development company. More service than product. More engineering than sales or marketing. Private, bootstrapping/moonlighting as a software development contractor. The revenue mix says it's the other way around, but the wheels are turning, time to race. Indie, very indie. Community-focused, perhaps too much. Dev philosophy? In the world of extensions, it's OK to have more than 1 way to do something. Don't copy, make it better (and yes, everyone has their own idea of "better") Ideal measure of success? Working code (i.e. value) in the hands of users. And yes, we are on an F1 (the movie) and racing analogy kick right now... so fire up the Hans Zimmer soundtrack...
[Service] Superuser Program
A niche, boutique mix of service and product - make a paid "priority request", Revenant builds it, and the Beta solution becomes available a-la-carte in modules customized for your team. Does it have an F1 page, a tutorial video, a (fancy) icon, and a training class? No. Does it automate what you wanted and meet your (specific) need? Yes. Good. Let's move on and build another.
[Service] Command Warehouse
Revenant needed a way to check for command licenses and to install commands - so we built one. And yes, rebuilding. It's very (very) early, but it works. Enough. Enough to get working code into user's hands. Online license check, offline installers. If you (developers) need a way too, we can talk.
[Cmd] Go (v0.0.0.3)
The first "extension command". Right now, it kicks off the Command Warehouse online license check. Yes, the version is accurate. It's in "alpha", available to Superusers. Per my introduction, normally I won't share about things in Alpha, but needed to mention that it exists. We consider it in Alpha because the license check is not supposed to be its central value, but the check is needed for the next command, which is in (public) Beta, so here we are.
[Cmd] Add High Point (v0.1)
The first Superuser command, the 2nd "extension command". Specify incoming and outgoing slope. Select 2-pt linestrings. Pow! (Ok, maybe that's marketing) A 3D node is inserted with the incoming slope going up to the node and going down to the end point. User's team doesn't like VPIs for this stuff. Oh, wait, this is a sloped line between two pads, and the high point can't be within a vertical distance to an elevation on either pad, if higher, the high point needs to be moved along the linestring (maintain the incoming slope!) and the endpoint elevation re-calculated to maintain the outgoing slope. Seem super-specific? Remember, Superuser = niche, boutique.
[RevApi] Extension Commands (Revenant.Vce.TbcExtensions v0.1, Revenant.Vce.Core v0.0.0.6)
I appreciate TBC "macros", I really do. Yes, I used quotes. I was a TBC developer for almost 12 years and learned C# by building/testing/fixing features during the "TBC-HCE" era. But now is not story-time. Save that for the in-person meetups. I wanted a way to create macros using C# (and minimal IronPython), like in the old days on the team, let the IDE guide me, let the compiler catch errors instead of everything being a runtime mystery, oh and handle multiple versions of TBC installed (facepalm). So we created a way, a system. No, it's not fully automated. Yes, you can use Visual Studio 2022 (probably 2026 too). AI? Dunno, I'm olde-school. And yes, it's not just for us. [TbcApi] is for posts about the TBC API, [RevApi] is for the Revenant API. So much I could share, but this is just an intro. And yes, training is part of the business plan.
Wow, that was a lot. And not enough. But just an intro, right?
If you like it (or want more?), sign in and hit the funky "Recommend" button, or better yet, Reply. Don't want to go public? That's OK, I was terrified too - send me a message or email :)
#developer #tbcdeveloper #tbc #tbc#tbc #revenant #revenantsolutions
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Quan Mueller
Founder/CEO, Sr. Software Engineer
Revenant Solutions LLC | TBC Extension Developer
Superuser Program |
superuser@revenantsolutions.com------------------------------