In the MMORPG The Elder Scrolls Online, there has been the possibility to travel to guild members or friends since it was released. Two bright minds came up with the idea of using this feature for a handy add-on. We spoke to them about their work and what they like most.
What are addons? Add-ons are extensions for ESO that give players the opportunity to improve their gaming experience. This includes, for example, customization of the user interface, buff and skill trackers or extensions that record data in a clear manner to determine average prices for guild shops, etc.
There is actually no area where add-ons are unthinkable. Existing add-ons also differ massively in terms of complexity. It starts with add-ons that only display a certain font in a different color and ends with add-ons that extract countless amounts of data from the guild records.
However, the add-ons must be subject to certain conditions and rules set by ZeniMax Online Studios. Therefore, these are also checked by the developers to see whether they meet the permitted framework conditions (via the ESO website).
Unlock wayshrines while saving gold
We spoke to the developers of the BeamMeUp - Teleporter add-on about their work and what they like most about it.
What does BeamMeUp - Teleporter do?
In ESO you can travel to another player via the guild or the friends list without gold costs. As soon as the process is started, the appropriate wayshrine is already unlocked for porting. However, you have only discovered him when you complete the process of traveling completely.
BeamMeUp uses this function and puts together a clear list of the places that you can currently visit when you travel to one of your friends or one of your guild members. There are also other functions that read your treasure maps and find reports and then give you the possible travel destinations.
With the wayshrine feature, you can unlock all possible wayshrines by targeting all players in your rosters in the same area. You'll also save yourself a lot of gold by traveling this way, because if you don't travel via a wayshrine yourself, it will cost you.
Who are the developers of BeamMeUp?
These are David (@DeadSoon) and Josef (@Gamer1986PAN), who have divided the work areas for the add-on among themselves. In our community interview with the two of them, we asked what motivated them and which areas they particularly like.
Is it the first time for you to do something like this?
Josef: “I had already created various Excel lists with background calculations for various games myself, but they were distributed at most within the guild in which I was playing the game. The extent of BeamMeUp is something completely different and would never have been possible without David, because after a short time learning to program was too dry for me and the successes didn’t come quickly enough.”
David: “For me, BeamMeUp is my first big leisure development project. I also develop professionally, but of course that's something different. So we both grew into the ESO addon development together.”
You two shared the work on and for the add-on a little bit. Do you have special areas for everyone?
Josef: "Since I have almost no idea about the code itself and can only roughly estimate what the effects are, I prefer to let the professionals do it and I get him information for it. For new DLCs and chapters, the IDs of the zones and what type of area that is. This allows David to focus fully on the changes he needs to make in the code.
Especially at the beginning I was looking for weaknesses in the base game, which we then adjusted together to make it more intuitive and clearer. This also includes the adjustment of individual icons, the graphic editing of the screenshots including short explanations on the ESOUI page.
Nevertheless, you should read the description because BMU offers much more. In addition, I mostly manage 4 guilds each on the EU and NA servers.
But since even these 2000 places per server are usually not enough, we have also asked the community to entrust us with their guilds as partner guilds - these can be accessed with the second icon at the top left - including your community guild "The Magical Mussel" on the EU server.”
David: “I would say we complement each other perfectly. Since communication and interaction with the community (guilds, discord, etc.) takes a lot of time, I'm very happy that Josef takes care of most of it very conscientiously.
In this area he really is a natural talent, as he always communicates in a friendly and constructive manner and also pays great attention to the integrity (e.g. compliance with rules) of our guilds and our discord. Furthermore, having a “non-developer perspective” is very valuable for our discussions.
When we talk about new possible functions, I look at everything from the point of view of programming effort and technical feasibility. Josef then adds a blunt and technically independent perspective as a user. The composition or sometimes the compromise between the two actually always leads to a really good idea.”
For add-ons in ESO there is the Add-On Manager Minion. How exactly does the whole thing work if you want to offer your add-on there?
Josef: “The Esoui website actually guides you through very well. Since everyone who can program actually speaks English, there shouldn't be any problems here. Ultimately, you have to fill out as detailed a description as possible so that the operators can check it. If you want to post updates about each change, you should briefly describe them with appropriate change logs.
The operators of ESOUI then check whether there are any illegal files in the download in order to rule out viruses or malware or that the author does not automatically have gold sent to him by every user.
This means that if someone wants to play tricks with it, ESOUI and Minion prevent it, but I can't judge how well other sources do it. Minion and ESOUI are definitely the most up to date sources for addons.”
David: “ESOUI is the only official add-on platform for ESO, powered by ZOS developers and the developer community. Minion then only uses the interface to the ESOUI platform to bring simplified browsing, installation and automatic updates of ESO add-ons to the user's PC."
A well-functioning add-on requires continuous effort
This is what BeamMeUp looks like in-game:
Programming and maintenance is always associated with a corresponding amount of effort. When and why did you make the decision "we'll do that"?
Josef: “There are several reasons for this – to name just 2 of them:
- We are our biggest customers ourselves: I have e.g. B. already saved over 4.5 million gold since our first beta. We benefit ourselves if the add-on offers as many yet clear functions as possible
- You want to do something for the game you love to play, or at least for your fellow players."
David: “I can only agree with Josef there. I couldn't imagine life without our add-on and our download figures (already over a million, thank you dear community) show that this also applies to many other users worldwide. Also, the fact that our add-on has now been translated into 8 languages by users from all over the world is proof that it's a tool for everyone.
Of course we don't want to pride ourselves on that, but then you're a bit proud. Especially the feedback from the users in the early development phase (be it positive or negative) has spurred us on and motivates us to continue to invest our free time in the project.”
Where we are already on the subject of effort. Approximately how much time do you put into the add-on and everything around it per week?
Josef: “To manage the guilds, I need about 10-30 minutes a day. I invested an additional hour for the upcoming update - which should only represent a fraction of David's contribution."
David: “Where Josef has a very regular, almost daily effort, it is more concentrated for me. Of course, I also check my in-game mails and the Discord almost every day to answer direct questions. But these don't arrive every day. It gets really time-consuming when we want to implement a new function or when a complex bug needs to be fixed.
Whenever we want to add something new, I usually get ambitious, which often means I get lost in the code for 10 hours a week. But when the update is out, I need another 1-3 week break, where I then invest significantly less time.”
Have there been any changes in the base game that affected your add-on?
Josef: “Oh yes, just as things were really picking up steam, the map progression/area guide came shortly after. Luckily David quickly found a way to switch between this and BeamMeUp.”
David: “Other than map progression, the changes to the map and travel system that come with an update to the base game are mostly minimal. The API functions we use are very rarely modified by ZOS. From time to time, however, new possibilities arise, which we then want to exploit.
For example, not long ago, ZOS introduced the functionality of being able to travel in front of one's house (i.e. to the front door instead of into the house). Since we are already displaying all of the player's houses in a clear list, it made sense to use the new functionality of the base game in our add-on interface."
What aspects have you really had to grind your teeth on?
Joseph: “Subzones, such as B. the brass fortress in the clockwork city or the combination of Arteum/Summerset or Totenland/Ferngrab/Bruchgassen are always a challenge, because ESO keeps coming up with new hurdles that David then has to react to. But the interaction with other add-ons is always a tough nut to crack.”
David: “We are basically very agile. We want to respond to the wishes of the users and also have to take changing technical aspects (including performance and changes in the base game) into account. Implemented functionalities are therefore constantly being rebuilt or expanded.
And with one or the other problem you can pretty much break your teeth. Be it because you made a typo somewhere (your own fault) or because an API function or an element in the game does not behave as expected. Something like that happens again and again and fortunately there are only very few problems where you eventually give up and look for an alternative or a workaround.”
Gratitude and user feedback is worth the effort
Every activity has both positive and negative aspects. What about working on add-ons? What are negative or frustrating aspects and which aspects give the whole thing its value and motivate you to keep going?
Josef: “Especially some dungeons that ESO somehow doesn't allow travel into, like e.g. B. the open dungeons in Blackwood or the branding reformatory in the dead lands, always bother us personally because we can't do anything other than hope that ZOS will take care of it itself. In addition to personal motivation, technology itself more pleasant - during my training the saying "Technology is the effort to save effort" hung in our classroom, which still drives me today. That means you put work into something to optimize it and can save yourself a lot of time and nerves afterwards. And the players keep showing us how grateful they are for our work - whether through donations, effusive thanks in application texts our guilds, which have already made me smile, or YouTube videos from our users in which they praise the add-on in the highest tones.”
David: “I don't have much to add. If I had to make a prioritized list...
These are the aspects that motivate me the most:
- User feedback and gratitude
- Finding algorithmic solutions for technically demanding problems
- The feeling of having created something for the community that will endure
These aspects sometimes frustrate me:
- If I can't find a solution to a technical problem.
- When I look at some old blocks of code and think that I should actually write it all again.
Programming language for add-ons is even beginner-friendly
What are the requirements for programming such add-ons? Do YouTube tutorials suffice or do you have to delve deeper into the subject?
Josef: “With enough time and the will to learn it would be a good start and a large part of the author community is available with useful tips. For us, it was mainly Baertram, who is known from FCO ItemSaver, among other things, and who wrote LibZone for us, which relieves us of a lot of work - a big thank you again if he reads this. But for complete newcomers, this will probably be difficult with an addon in the scope of BeamMeUp. You should build small add-ons first – maybe just for yourself at first – and grow with these successes.”
David: “I can only agree with Josef there. You grow with the challenges that arise from the development of the desired functionalities. You should already have a little understanding of programming. The script language LUA that is used is very grateful and, like Python, for example, very beginner-friendly.”
If you're interested in more about ESO, you might also like this:
Programming will certainly not be all that goes with it? What other soft skills do you need to have?
Josef: “In my case, it was above all persuasion and perseverance, so that I could convince David to adapt the add-on on which BeamMeUp is based (Luminary Teleporter) to the then current game version and to further improve it. Once I got him that far, all I had to do was feed him new ideas of what we could improve and help him find bugs."
David: “In addition to a good dose of ambition, communication is the key to success here too. Of course, the following very much depends on the purpose of the add-on, but basically communication with the user base as well as with other developers is extremely helpful and valuable for all sides.
On the one hand, the ESOUI forums or the grid (chat platform) offer all developers the opportunity to exchange ideas, help each other and get in touch with the developers of the game (ZOS). On the other hand, there are no limits to communication and interaction with the users of your own add-on.
The possible channels range from the forums to Discord to your own guilds in the game, as in our case. The gratitude and feedback from the community is the greatest reward and motivates us to continue investing our free time in the project.”
Do you have any tips for prospective add-on programmers? What should you definitely consider or plan for?
Josef: “Keep at it with ambition, if the idea comes from you and you hope for a certain relief from it, from which you can benefit later, the effort is definitely worth it. Just make sure to put as many comments as possible in your code so that you can think your way through it more quickly or others who later adopt your addon can find their way around more easily.
And look for a few people who deal a lot with add-ons and try to win them over as beta testers. The fewer bugs that make it into the Minion version, the better it will be accepted by players."
David: “Josef has already summed it up. I would only add:
By the way, if you want to support the two, you are cordially invited to join their BeamMeUp guilds or especially the partner guilds, as they have even more places available.
Do you use some addons? Feel free to tell us what your favorite add-on is and whether you have already heard of BeamMeUp or first became aware of it through our article. For my part, I (MiezeMelli) am an absolute fan of add-ons. You can read about that in my article about my 195 add-ons in ESO.
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