I’ve always loved the mod Speakinspell, even if its basic functionality did get hindered by one of the BFA patches outside of dungeons.
For those unfamiliar, it’s one of those automated chat mods, lets you set what triggers it, what the % chance of that trigger setting it off is, set individual and global cooldowns to reduce spam, and even set a list of chat messages for it to choose from. I’ve always used it to provide in-combat in-character chatter for my characters. (I mute it in dungeons if asked to. I’m not out to annoy people.)
But it’s been abandoned for years. Until now, it’s been holding together with Duct Tape and Prayers thanks to its fanbase, but now in 9.0 it gets UI errors and can’t even open the window to edit things anymore. I can still flick it on and off, and anything I already have set still works, but I can’t change anything with it, now.
Is there any hope for this mod?
I doubt that much - it’s only “permanent” if no one steps up with how to fix it. The only thing actively stopping it from being used right now is not being able to open the window to customize it. It still functions fine, otherwise, even the button to mute/unmute it works.
It would be far from the first time the fans have fixed it, though I do wish there was a way for someone to just officially pick it up to maintain it somehow. Relying on people in the comments of its curseforge page to post fixes on github gets old. After a certain amount of time, I feel like if the Author has just vanished off the face of the Internet, the need to ask their permission to take over is unreasonable.
A quick look and it appears that the licence is “Public Domain” so I’m not sure what permission you mean.
Whenever I see talk of people taking over a popular but abandoned mod, I often see talk of asking the creator’s permission, or generally being reluctant to take the initiative without said creator’s go-ahead for fear of them getting offended or something.
I’ll be honest, if I had any idea how to code stuff (and had the attention span required to learn), I would absolutely be trying to fix this myself.
Did you try the version from the link in the Comments section? I tried and can open the user interface. I don’t know the addon at all so I have no idea what problems you might be experiencing:
https://github.com/Nodd/SpeakinSpell/tree/retail
A suggestion would be to move your SnS Saved variables file from the WTF folder to somewhere else (maybe copy to several somewhere elses) as there might be something in there that needs updating rather than the addon itself.
If there was no specific licence mentioned in the work then by default it is “All Rights Reserved” and only the original author can (legally) grant people permission to copy/distribute. SnS specifically states on CurseForge that its licence is Public Domain
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/speakinspell
Unfortunately, that doesn’t work. I’m fairly certain I had that version already, as that was the fix to get it working in BFA. The error I get when I attempt to open the interface is as such:
SpeakinSpell\Libs\AceGUI-3.0\widgets\AceGUIContainer-Frame.lua:189: attempt to call method ‘SetBackdrop’ (a nil value)
(I can post more of the full thing if needed)
Download https://www.wowace.com/projects/ace3
Replace all the files and any SnS \lib sub-folders with corresponding folders from the Ace package.
That should give you the latest Ace fixes including the backdrop change.
That did it! Duct tape and prayers win out! Thanks a bunch.
I’m gonna go ahead and post that to the speakinspell page, for now. If anyone else is having the same issue, they’ll have an easier time finding the solution than I did.
Speakinspell lives another day. Battered and bruised, but it lives on.
You need to make sure people start by downloading the version linked in the comments section, not the actual page download. For those that aren’t already using it.
I really do wish this addon would come back. I can only imagine the amount of effort that would take, though, since it is pretty old and the code must be very spaghetti by now.
Blizz ruined this addon by making a keypress be required for it to actually say anything.
Oh, well. #FunDetected