goatcorp/faq

FAQ and Knowledgebase for XIVLauncher

faq

This is the FAQ for XIVLauncher/Dalamud. The published version can be found here: https://goatcorp.github.io/faq/

Contributing

Please make sure to lint your changes with markdownlint. PRs welcome!

faq's Issues

How to use Lumina

How to use Lumina to get information from the game, what kind of information you can get, etc

How do I arrange my SamplePlugin and configure my Dev Plugin Locations to load my plugin without using DevPlugins?

There's a bit of confusion over how to handle this, especially with the json. Might link into goatcorp/SamplePlugin#9.

How to use IPC to talk to other plugins

What IPC is, why it's useful, plugins that support it, etc

Why should I contribute the findings of my own reverse engineering to Dalamud/ClientStructs?

• because we'll love you if you do
• less maintenance burden for you in the long run if it's part of the Dalamud API
• everyone else can benefit from it
• code in one place instead of a dozen

What is the object table? How do I find all the entities on-screen?

Seems like there's some nuance around this that would be good to capture.

https://discord.com/channels/581875019861328007/653504487352303619/988392746131800084

Is there somewhere I can look at ImGui elements easily?

Yes: https://pthom.github.io/imgui_manual_online/manual/imgui_manual.html

What are the specifications for plugin icons?

512x512 png, preferably transparent, preferably looks good when rendered at 64x64

Adjust wording on ClientStructs FAQ to deprioritise bundling your own

The FAQ was written when Dalamud's ClientStructs were behind upstream. They're now relatively up to date, and being kept as such, so we should encourage people to use them and only use their own version if they need to.

How do I actually use DalamudPackager to package up my plugin?

this is pretty straightforward, but worth capturing some of the nuances, especially around the json fields that DP will fill in for you

Why do we use dependency injection instead of singletons?

https://discord.com/channels/581875019861328007/860813266468732938/969325149134397470

Error in migration path in the xl_troubleshooting faq

Hello!

There is a typo in the (Proton) path in the migration faq:
Current is "(Proton) ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/steamapps/common/FINAL FANTASY XIV Online", correct one would be "(Proton) ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/FINAL FANTASY XIV Online".

You can find the relevant code here.

Thanks for all the work!

Ensure all the dependency injection methods are accurately represented

There are now three, if my understanding serves me correctly:

1. accepting the services as parameters in your constructor
2. accepting the services as fields of your primary Plugin class (it is automatically initialised)
3. initialising another class with pluginInterface.Create to populate its static fields

Optimised settings for attaching the debugger in VS

By default, VS will try to load the symbols for everything in the process you attach to, which means you will spend a lot of time waiting when you attach for the first time on a cold boot.

This is avoidable: https://discord.com/channels/581875019861328007/653504487352303619/1015298522599391242

discord help

hey, i lost access to my old account AmenneHolelane#0069 email. i don't think the discord account was compromised but i can't get to the email to get the login code.... used a local provider which had a data breach and apparently they stored passwords in plaintext. could you pull the mod permissions off it? i'm not sure how i can prove it's me other than a github comment somewhere. the new account is AmemeHolelane#0069

How do I interact with the game's UI?

• How to use the UI inspector
• How to get UI state from Dalamud
• maaaaybe how to do manipulation of your own, but I'd like a UI library before putting that in the faq

What is the etiquette around forking existing plugins?

We have a few people attempting to fork plugins that currently exist or have been abandoned. We should clarify what our position on this is, and what we're willing to help out with.

How do I import *.fea hotbar/settings backups from the official client?

As the title says, how do I import *.fea hotbar/settings backups from the official client? I seem to be struggling to find any mention of this in the FAQ.

How to add a GitHub action to automatically build your code

Decided it'd be a good idea to start putting down ideas for things to put in the dev FAQ that someone (probably me) can action when we have the free time.

People are currently manually building and submitting their plugins to the plugins repo. It'd be awesome if we could encourage them to do that through a GH Action or similar CI setup so that it removes a step for them and helps us be a bit more sure that what we're reviewing is what's in the repo.

Relevant links:

• https://github.com/Caraxi/SimpleTweaksPlugin/blob/main/.github/workflows/build.yml
• https://github.com/daemitus/DalamudPluginPR

How do I efficiently search the Dalamud docs?

Google search with site:https://goatcorp.github.io/Dalamud/. Can create a keyword-search bookmark for it in your browser, if supported:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fgoatcorp.github.io%2FDalamud%20%s

Where do I find all of the events I can subscribe to?

Include a link to the log location

People who only look at the dev FAQ will not know where to look for the logs. Should be easy enough to add a note there about them.

How do I use the WindowSystem?

The WindowSystem exists, but there's no real visibility into it in the FAQ or SamplePlugin. Would be nice to have an entry in the FAQ and to explain why it exists.

What is the best way to handle configuration migration?

Sometimes, you just gotta change how your config's being stored / what's being stored, but you want to make sure that you aren't going to lose user data while doing so. What's the cleanest way of doing this, preferably while remaining a nice and clean separation between versions?

This seems like it might be a bit complicated because the Configuration is automatically de/serialised - how do you gracefully choose to deserialise with a ConfigurationV1, convert to a ConfigurationV2, and serialise with the ConfigurationV2?

update available services in plugin dev section

DalamudPluginInterface is missing from list (although in example) and SeStringManager has been deprecated.

What's the cool [Signature] annotation everyone's using?

explain Dalamud's Siggingway integration and how it can help you find and hook functions

Reorganisation of existing FAQ entries

The current non-dev-FAQ entries are a bit of a mess because they've organically grown. We should spend some time reorganising them so that they're easier for people to approach and find information within; the addition of categories should be a useful first step.

@ArcaneDisgea mentioned some interest in approaching this.

Update reference to TargetModuleScanner to use SigScanner service

The DI update replaced DalamudPluginInterface.TargetModuleScanner with a global SigScanner service. Need to update https://goatcorp.github.io/faq/development#q-how-do-i-hook-a-game-function to reflect that.

"Discover Store" Is an unexplained thing in the FAQ (Moved from FFXIVQuickLauncher #1156)

I went to the FAQ and dug through issues, and cannot find any explanation of what a "Discover Store" is. I cannot find a direct link to the Linux Binary either as all the FAQs just say 'search the discover store'.

From what I can tell "Discover Store" is a KDE thing. As a Linux User running a Ubuntu Gnome desktop - I do not want to pollute my ecosystem with KDE libs.

The FAQ needs to cover that this is a KDE/SteamOS only thing and provide a link to directly download the binary for other flavours of Linux.

As mentioned in #1156 in FFXIVQuickLauncher, I've moved this here for tracking.