EpicPlan.com Technology Demo
Here at EpicAdvice.com we decided it was time to leap forward with a new style of planning technology. We identified a need for graphical planning within the WoW universe and created EpicPlan.com; a graphical planning tool for WoW Quests/Encounters.
This brief technology demo (as seen below) is a very early alpha version of our product. We are working diligently on the "Plan Editor" to bring it to you. We wanted to make a tool that any WoW player could use to graphically express and show the steps involved in a Quest or Encounter. Not only on our website, but YOUR website; embedding our plans into your blog/news/forum/whatever. No more YouTube videos which you have to watch and rewind to TRY to figure out what they are doing. A simple Icon Animation with a text description of each step in the process.
Keep in mind, this is NOT a finished product, everything you see if subject to change and probably will (with your feedback!). The "Plan" we are showing you probably has some problems with it also, so please critique the concept as an engine, and not the actual strategy. This strategy was specifically written to answer one specific question, in which the raid matrix was predetermined. You can find the question here.
We have pretty big plans for the EpicPlan engine, which we hope to roll out and elaborate on in the near future. This is yet a glimpse of what is to come.
With that being said, please submit any feedback to team@epicadvice.com.
How to Use "Plans"
Loading Screen
Each plan has a loading screen when it is loaded from a website besides Epicplan.com. The plans when viewed directly on Epicplan.com will not have these screens. You can view the plan below directly from our website without the loading screen at http://epicplan.com/plan/4/index. It is one of the features we are going to use for embedding plans into YOUR website.
Player Interface
Right off the bat, you should notice a familiar interface on the bottom of the screen. You are given the following controls: (in order from left to right)
- Restart - Restarts everything.
- Previous Frame - Goes back one frame, hold down to rewind.
- Play/Pause - Stops and Starts the animation on your current frame.
- Next Frame - Goes forward one frame, hold down to fast-forward.
When you click the "Play" button on the loading screen, the "Plan" starts off playing automatically, which you can pause if you choose to do so.
I personally recommend "Pausing" the "Plan" and then stepping forward with the "Forward" button each frame individually.
At the TOP of the interface you will also notice two arrows, forward and back.
- Frame Forward (Right) - Will advance to the next frame with a text description, and repeat the frames related to that block of text.
- Frame Back (Left) - Take you back to the last frame that had a text description, repeating that section of the plan over and over.
We felt this was a great way to go through the plan, repeat the actions of the Units in the frame, while giving you time to read the description. This feature is pretty experimental, so your feedback is more than welcome!
You also can hover over a unit to get its name, we are working on increasing the amount of data you can get from a Unit's hover, just not implemented yet.
We also plan on adding different ways to view the data of the plan, so you can be very specific as to which portions you want highlighted or emphasized. There will be more on this later, just not in this technology demo.
EpicPlan Demo
With that being said, enjoy the demo!
