I tried typing in all the orders again right before joining. It fixed all the bars disappearing, but when battlegrounds started my toons were split up into different groups, and my framerate still dropped to 1 frame per second, even though my computer is not under any stress, CPU usage looks perfectly normal around 50%. Only my main WOW window is running at 1 frame per second, the others are running well over 30 frames per second.

It also seems that if anyone in my party disconnects, it drops my fps of my main window back to 1. This is not a performance issue, there is something strange going on with the party system.

Also why do I need to re-type the order every time I am about to go into battlegrounds?

Nevermind its not working at all. I am losing my bars, losing my framerate and I dont know what I am typing wrong to cause all this? I guess I am going to need to schedule a live support connection. I just dont understand what is so different about my configuration that causes it to crash like that. That is 4 battlegrounds in a row I had to quit.

Sorry to hear about your woes.

The problem in battle grounds is caused by the following:

The GCP mod uses the party change event.
When it sees a new party member, it adds them to its party list (not the same as the in game party list, it's a separate structure).
It attempts to connect to all in the party list by sending out "are you there" messages. These are sent once every tick (about once a second), up to 10 times. For 40 people thats 400 messages over 10 seconds. This invokes a Bliz "anti spam" mechanism, which throttles down the number of messages to about 1 a second. Thus it takes 400 seconds before the system starts responding to messages. Add to this that all 5 of your clients are doing this, and the problem is multiplied.

The solution is to use the order command.
What this does is to override the automatic detection of party members, and only add members who's name matches the name specified in the order command. It also sets the order that the characters are listed in GCP mod.

This means that only characters running the mod are contacted. These will respond on the first request, so now we have only 4 message pairs rather than 100's.

The order command will need to be used on all characters.

One problem with mods is that they can't read / write files. The only way we can store information is to make persistent variables. These are saved at UI unload and loaded at UI load. This means that you must log off (not quit) or reload the UI (using the /rl command). If this mechanism failed, that would explain why it worked, then it didn't.

You can check if it worked by finding the file
{Wow folder}\WTF\Account\{account name}\{realm}\{Character Name}\SavedVariables\GameCommandPro.lua
and opening it with notepad.

There is a section called GameCommandProSortOrder which should contain your information.

Let me know what you find.

Thanks
Phil

Ok, so I do a broadcast, then type the order, then do a /rl and do this everytime I log into the game?

When my toons end up split into different parties in battlegrounds, does GCP know to settle down about trying to contact the other toons?

I am going to try this when I get home. I was not broadcasting because I was not having any problems on the alt screens, they were always running full FPS.

Also, is there a way to disable this part of the addon in a pinch but still allow me to cast my spell rotations and all the commands I have setup? Just kill the party features to fix framerate?

To turn the features on/off

/gcp off turns off the party processing
/gcp on turns them back on

I just thought that I could do a /gcp lockparty command - this would keep the existing party information.

You would use it like this:

Build your party as normal.
type /GCP lockparty (on all characters).

At this point you could disband the party but GCP would ignore the party change so it would still remember the current group.

I added the command - if you want to try it download from http://gamecommanderpro.com/FromPhil/GameCommandPro.lua

Phil

What, this is amazing! I saw your post and downloaded the update when I got home and tried it out. Not only did it fix the disappearing problem, and the framerate problem, but when my toons got split into different parties it still allowed me to work as if in one party, because the mod keeps the health bars and spell info up.

This should go into your main application, along with a battlegrounds section of the Wiki explaining how this works.

When I logged in I did this.

Broadcast mode
/gcp order Seenoevill,1
/gcp order Hearnoeviil,2
/gcp order Speaknoeviil,3
/rl
Exit Broadcast
I
I

Broadcast
/gcp lockparty

Do I still need to do all that first part, or just invite and broadcast the lock party command?

The first part should stick, so you only need to do the 2nd part.

Phil

It's now in the main software.

It's also on the wiki.

GCP will auto update when anyone next runs it.

Phil

Thanks for programming that in, it made such a huge difference for me as battlegrounds is where I find multi-boxing most challenging!

v