How to fix the Parrot Scrolling Combat Text Addon
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Apr 8th 2008 at 11:00AM
If you're an Ace mod fanatic like I am, you may use Parrot for your scrolling combat text needs. If you've used Parrot since 2.4, you've noticed, like I have, that the dang thing just plain doesn't work. Even though the ever handy WoWAceUpdater continues to update it, there's some block of data it's missing. And that means that when I get into combat and look for my scrolling information... nothing happens. There's no pretty numbers to the side of my characters. Hey, that's fair enough. 2.4 was the patch of the great combat log change, and it's understandable that not every addon is quite caught up.
That said, I like how I have Parrot set up, and I didn't really want to try to find and install a new mod, or heaven forbid, use Blizzard's base system. So, I went searching, hoping to find some way to bring back my beloved Parrot.
I found salvation in KarganMGE of the WowAce forums. In this post, he posts a copy of a CombatEvents.lua file. When put in the Interface\Addons\Parrot\Code folder in your base WoW directory (make sure it overwrites the old one there), it seems to put Parrot back to mostly working order again. All that scrolling information is at my fingertips again. It's a bit of a pain to update an addon manually again, especially since it resets to the old file when a Parrot update gets pushed through WoWAceUpdater, and some options don't seem to be all there, and it's still having trouble with classifying self-heals, but it's nice to have the thing working, at least.
Hopefully, original Parrot addon author ckknight can find some time to get Parrot completely and officially back up and running (although apparently that may take a while, as in, when ckknight decides to write Parrot 2.0), but it is nice to have this much Parrot goodness, and I find myself greatly appreciative of KarganMGE for getting it out to us.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Farrell Apr 8th 2008 11:09AM
it may be a while before ckknight gets round to updating parrot, mainly because it's not a priority mod for most. He's mainly been working on pitbull, etc.
As for it being updated almost constantly? Nope. That's the libraries it uses. I'm showing it not updated in over 30 days.
If you use WAU without externals, it'll only update when parrot itself is updated.
hinu Apr 8th 2008 7:26PM
If people start using svn, they can easily load up the change logs to see when it was last updated.
brittwilson Apr 8th 2008 11:33AM
Ive always been a fan of ScrollingCombatText and the damage sideon. It hasnt let me down so far, and they had a working version up the day 2.4 came out.
Khanmora Apr 8th 2008 10:09PM
The problem with switching is that you then have to reset all the stuff you loved about your old addon and some features might not be available. I tried Mik's and SCTd after Parrot went kablooey but just ended up manually updating Parrot b/c I felt like I was slogging through a swamp trying to get the other two to work the way I wanted.
OutlandishTrendz Apr 8th 2008 11:39AM
That would irritate me if I had to do that.
I use http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/111/ so whats really the difference? It no being Ace2?
tripdream Apr 8th 2008 11:55AM
I, too, was destitute and heartbroken upon learning that Parrot stopped working due to the many changes in patch 2.4, so I resolved to find an addon that did something just as well as Parrot did. Before I discovered Parrot, I had been using SCT and its various mods almost from the day I started using mods two years ago. It was easy for me to switch back as it was something that I was familiar with and it wasn't hard to set up. Do I have a preference? Sure, I would love to have Parrot back on its feet in an official way, but we know that it'll take some time for that to happen.
Foo Apr 8th 2008 4:13PM
Uhh OutlandishTrendz, SCT is Ace2.
Grishnuk Apr 8th 2008 1:12PM
Can someone post the link to the file mentioned in this post? For the life of me I can't find it.
Daniel Whitcomb Apr 8th 2008 1:37PM
Hi Grishnuk,
http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php?topic=12512.0
is the link you'll need. I did insert it the post a few times. For future reference, if an article refers to a certain link or webpage, generally you will find a link to it attached both to the article's picture, and to the "Read" link just below the article itself.
Daniel
Farrell Apr 8th 2008 1:42PM
you need to register on the WoWAce forums before you can see attachment links
Grishnuk Apr 8th 2008 2:06PM
Thanks - WoWAce isn't accepting new registrations at the moment. Taking foreva (> 1 hr) to get my registration e-mail confirm. :(
phx1253 Apr 8th 2008 1:49PM
Just use SCT/SCTD. It just works, updates automatically with WAU, and has more options/hooks.
PeeWee Apr 8th 2008 1:56PM
...and also lacks a lot of the customization you find in MSBT, such as creating new scroll areas and linking events to them.
Jack Apr 8th 2008 3:11PM
I switched to Mik's Scrolling Battle Text and have been pretty happy with it.
Eleazar Apr 8th 2008 6:18PM
I'm echoing this as well, it's much better, quicker
ranova Apr 8th 2008 5:12PM
use Mik's Scrolling Battle Text, its so much better than parrot and SCT
Zazu Apr 8th 2008 7:34PM
The author ckknight has now updated Parrot to merge in the hack to get it up and working again for 2.4 (r68641):
"
68641
ckknight
merge in the hacks from http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php?topic=12512 to get Parrot working on 2.4. Yes, there will be bugs. No, this is not Parrot 2.0.
"
revent Apr 8th 2008 8:05PM
Actually i was using Parrot until it stopped working in 2.4.
I always noticed, that i had a quite low frame rates in regards to my system spec.
When i disabled Parrot and made the step back to SCT/SCTD which i was using before i made the switch to Parrot some months ago, i actually noticed increased FPS in many situations. For example the Hyjal trash AE situations tended to slow down my frame rate to an unplayable level with Parrot. I actually gained up to 10 FPS, when i switched to SCT. I never thought, this otherwise great AddOn could have such a big negative impact on my performance...
Matt B Apr 9th 2008 5:23AM
So what's the issue with the default Blizzard text? Though I have a totally customized UI that took me hours to piece togather, I've honestly never bothered with a SCT addon since Blizz implemented theirs. Is it so bad? I play a mage by the way, are there some features other classes feel are invaluable?
Calminaion Apr 9th 2008 5:19AM
A few issues ... no real problems. Firstly, it's pretty handy to see what ability aflicted that particular big number. As a warrior, when I land 2 normal hits that crit, together with a Bloodthirst and 2 whirlwind hits, that all crit .. it can easily become a sea of unrecognisable numbers .. the addons allow you to identify which ability produced which number.
Secondly, I prefer the number scrolling to the left and right, instead of up and down (or only up in the case of the standard UI .. can't remember).
You can also define triggers in most addons ... notifying you wehn certain abilities become available, or when certain buffs wear off, etc (yes, I know there are other mods out there that do this, but being able to incorporate 3 or 4 different mods into one cuts down on loading all those other mods). For example, in Parrot, I set it up to remind me to cast battle shout, but only if I was in combat, had enough rage, and Battle shout was not already up ... very handy.
I also generally change the font to something different for different types of messages, I also make it slightly smaller than normal so my screen isn't spammed with big yellow numbers permanently.
There are many other benefits, but those are the main ones.
One drawback of the mod based SCT is that the standard UI combat text scrolls above the mob that takes the damage, so if you're AOE'ing, or even Thunderclapping (8 targets), Whirlwinding (4 targets) or cleaving (2 targets), you see the damage over the head of the affected mob.
I don't know if it's a limitation of the API, but all combat text mods I've tried, can only scroll damage above your character's head.
So yeah, not essential, but handy to have (as is the case with most mods tbh)