WeakAuras - A Power Auras replacement.

[Axodious]

http://www.wowace.com/addons/weakauras/

WeakAuras is a new WoWAce addon being developed by Mirrormn designed to replace Power Auras. It offers several new features, an easy-to-use UI as well as being extremely CPU and memory effecient.

New Features:
Grouping - Allows the user to group auras together providing the ability to change an option in several auras at the same time. For example: You can resize all auras in a group by setting 1 option instead of going into each aura.
Dynamic Grouping - Allows a group of auras to dynamically update based on various triggers. For example: A group of icon auras can expand/shrink dynamically when one activates or deactivates.
Progressive Textures - A dynamic aura that changes based on the duration of a trigger. For example: A progressive texture for a buff such as Hand of Protection will drain from one color to the background (similar to the spiral effect for buff icons).
Announcements - Allows an aura to make an announcement to various chat frames when it is triggered/fades. Thus allowing the replacement of relative addons.

Upcoming Features:
Import/Export through addons or linking (shows up similarly to an item or spell link).

Two of the largest improvements in efficiency are the WeakAuras scans for auras and the way cached textures work.
For CPU usage instead of scanning all auras and then looking for a match within that scan, WeakAuras searches for auras by name causing a tremendous improvement in CPU usage.
Also for memory (which affects load times) the addon is split into 2 modules, the main module which handles the triggers themselves and the options module, which handles the configuration of the auras. The addon won't cache all of the textures (causing several megabytes of memory usage) unless you enter the configuration GUI, this allows the main module to run with less than 1MB of memory which helps load times significantly.

[Axodious]

Examples from my UI:



1. Dynamic Group for Missing Raid Buffs - This is a dynamic group of auras that shows what raid buffs I am missing while out of combat. They are grouped by shared buffs such as the Blessing of Kings icon means Blessing of Kings or Mark of the Wild, the Power Word: Fortitude icon means Power Word: Fortitude, Blood Pact or Commanding Shout. When I gain or lose one of these buffs the entire set of auras will automatically compress. So if I lost Blessing of Might (which is also Mark of the Wild) all of the icons to the right of it would shift left as it disappeared.

You will also notice that in the configuration UI the group for it (named Buffs) is listed under "Not Loaded". This is because I have the group of auras set to only load when I am in a raid zone. It is showing in the screenshot because you can preview them on and off just like in Power Auras.

2. Regular Group Missing Seal - This is a non-dynamic group of 2 auras which are identical except one is mirrored so that it shows on both sides of my character. I grouped them so I could set the triggers, size, and placement.

3. Hand of Protection Timer - non-dynamic group with 1 text aura and 1 timer aura to show Hand of Protection duration, pretty straight forward, made for TotGC 25.

4. Progressive Texture Guardian Spirit on Target - This is a progressive texture that shows the duration of Guardian Spirit when it is on my target. The yellow color drains downward leaving a grey colored texture, when the yellow reaches the bottom the duration is over and the texture disappears. The box around the aura is a configuration box showing the overall size of the aura. The 2 lock icons stacked on top of each other are the anchor points for the aura. These are showing because I have the aura selected in the configuration.

Other examples in my configuration not being shown in the screenshot are:

Action Usable (Paladin) - This is a non-dynamic group of auras that show a "pulse" (appears for a moment and disappears) of the icon when an ability is usable again. Only loads when on a Paladin.

ICC Debuffs - Another non-dynamic group of auras, I only grouped these auras together for organization. It shows various icons (mainly a giant white skull and bone) for boss fights throughout ICC. For example on Lich King it will put a white skull and bone icon in the middle of my screen which triggers when I gain the disease that needs to be dispelled.

Action Usable (Warlock) - This is another group of auras that do the same thing as the first Action Usable group. However these auras are for Warlock cooldowns (which is my alt) and do not load unless I am on a Warlock.

[Invisusira]

So, it's like PowA but supposed to use less memory.
However...

With both mods loaded PowA uses just under 1MB of memory (and I have many auras set up within it) while WeakAuras uses 3.7MB and the options uses 1MB.

eh?

[Yelena]

It'd be tempting to run a CPU profile against both, as CPU Time is a far more accurate measurement of an addon's efficiency than memory usage. That said, if an addon is going to advertise being memory efficient, it usually does well to be within the same ballpark of its direct competition.

[Belloc]

As long as it doesn't leave certain auras on permanently for no apparent reason, I'd consider using it over power auras. Has anyone experienced that, by the way? I'll have an aura just sitting there and it won't go away... so I'll delete it and another aura will now be on permanently. wtf.

[Nikachelle]

As long as it doesn't leave certain auras on permanently for no apparent reason, I'd consider using it over power auras. Has anyone experienced that, by the way? I'll have an aura just sitting there and it won't go away... so I'll delete it and another aura will now be on permanently. wtf.

...no. Never. Makes me think you have a setting wrong.

[KysenMurrin]

I thought I had a problem like that on my Holy Power indicator until I finally read the tooltip on the "reverse" button and realised it was working backwards (tracking below threshold by default, not above).

[Axodious]

So, it's like PowA but supposed to use less memory.
However...

With both mods loaded PowA uses just under 1MB of memory (and I have many auras set up within it) while WeakAuras uses 3.7MB and the options uses 1MB.

eh?

It'd be tempting to run a CPU profile against both, as CPU Time is a far more accurate measurement of an addon's efficiency than memory usage. That said, if an addon is going to advertise being memory efficient, it usually does well to be within the same ballpark of its direct competition.

Here are some screenshots of Broker_CPU in CPU profiling mode (as far as I can tell it's being sorted by "latency" I honestly don't know what that is):
The first number is "Latency", second is "Usage", third is "Memory" and I'm not sure what the fourth is.

Initial login, no interaction and waited ~2 minutes for everything to load:


After that I loaded the configurations for both addons and turned off all aura previews:


Then I turned on all aura previews:


Then I created a new aura making sure to browse all textures available:


Then I went and beat on a target dummy for a moment:


Finally I went to AV to intensify the amount of data being scanned:

[Yelena]

The first number is how much total processing time the CPU has devoted toward a given line item since the CPU profile mode was turned on. Because the actual CPU time needed to process most addons (at a given point in time) is very little, most profiling software will measure it in milliseconds. Total CPU time is not an accurate representation of what kind of performance impact one may see from an addon.

To get a more accurate representation, you need to monitor the CPU utilization in real time (which would be the second column), not just look at how much total time they used after the fact. Some addons will spike in utilization more often than others, but show less total CPU time used over a period of time. Utilization spikes are what tend to have a noticeable impact on game performance.

[Axodious]

Thank you for the explanation.

As you can see through the screenshots Power Auras has a higher CPU utilization no matter what it was doing. These aren't random spikes either, I could fraps it and for the most part it will stay at these numbers. I believe 2 large reasons for the differences are that WeakAuras has been written from scratch and that it utilizes WoWAce libraries.

[Nikachelle]

BTW, none of your screenshots work for me. On three computers I've tried. (All using Chrome.)

[knaughty]

BTW, none of your screenshots work for me. On three computers I've tried. (All using Chrome.)

All work fine for me in Chrome and Safari.

They're PNGs - are you running Windows 3.11 or something? PNG was released in '96 and has been an IEC standard since '03....

[_Chloe]

First a few notes. Addon efficiency is general measured by CPU time, not generally its memory usage although it can get out of hand sometimes (ie: Gatherer, Auctioneer, etc). Also, AceLibs can offset memory usage into other addons that include the same library files. Run your tests again without any other addons present and you will get your "true usage" for your addon. Yelena is right:

To get a more accurate representation, you need to monitor the CPU utilization in real time (which would be the second column), not just look at how much total time they used after the fact. Some addons will spike in utilization more often than others, but show less total CPU time used over a period of time. Utilization spikes are what tend to have a noticeable impact on game performance.

TL;DR: Just because you use Ace and someone else doesn't, doesn't make it amazing within the addon space of WoW.

Edit: Your options/setup menu makes me want to take a bullet to the head. Try putting the name into the tooltip of the texture icon. It should free up more space on the aura selection, or even the reverse, tooltip the texture to the button.

[Axodious]

My bad, it went completely over my head that another addon with the same libraries would be taking some of the load off of WeakAuras because it loaded the libs first.
Turning off everything that wasn't needed for testing showed some different results for memory, however for the most part CPU was the same. There were some areas where the CPU utilization was higher, however these were only while the options menu was open which usually won't be open when efficiency is really needed.

I wasn't trying to say that the addon was great simply because it uses Ace libraries, it does help though.

Here's a new set of screenshots I took after 30 seconds of a UI reload, addons running are WeakAuras, PowerAuras, SharedMedia (because WeakAuras utilizes it and it's disembed), SharedMediaFonts and Broker_CPU:

Initial Load:


Configuration with no displays showing:


Configuration with all displays showing:


Configuration for a new display (after browsing all textures):


Combat on a target dummy:


Combat in a raid for intense scanning (Isle of Conquest):

[Maelsstrom]

As a result of this thread, I installed WA and I love them. I personally find them more intuitive and easier to set up and adjust than PowerAuras. Great mod!