Warning: Wall-o-text incoming....

Greetings,

In the spirit of sharing, I thought I'd add my list of recommendations.

So far, I've been communicating with staff via email, messages and chat-sessions. However, I think it would be helpful to document this information so other folks know what's been reported and allow for open discussion. I've been avoiding "going public" with these because GCP is new and I didn't want to give the general public the impression that GCP is not ready for prime time.

So, for the record, GCP is most definitely ready for prime time, is chocked full of useful features, greatly simplifies the mechanics of multiboxing, demonstrates an immense amount of future potential, and has improved my overall multiboxing experience over tools I've used previously.

I must also state that the GCP staff have been extraordinarily responsive to my bug reports, requests for help, and feature requests. They've spent several hours (not all at once) on several occassions with me in chat sessions and have responded quickly to my emails/messages. In all cases they've been polite, patient, and demonstrated that they do indeed care about my input. Most importantly, their problem resolution timing has been amazing, often within hours, rarely more than a day or two.

That said, because GCP is new, it does have a few issues, is a bit rough around the edges in places, could use a few interface tweaks, and needs to be documented more thoroughly to ease the learning curve/setup and better point out useful features.

Bugs:

1. Need to get a handle on the "stuck keys" issue. Happens with every login and upload /rl, as well as, randomly (haven't been able to identify what causes these). Symptoms include double type (pie becomes ppiiee), gibberish (small rectangles, ^%+'s, random characters), inability to capitalize keys, and random execution of Windows features (hit ESC and my auto-hidden Windows tool bar pops out, hate it when that happens, 'tis embarrasing I tell ya). Can usually (but not always) be resolved by repeatedly hitting shift/ctrl/alt keys. This is my number one issue at this point. What was initially a minor annoyance is now becoming a growing frustration over time.

2. I implemented the newly added commands ExitKey/ExitCommand on my "Return" key for bypass functionality. Good stuff, much better than having to hit ESC all the time (thank you). Unfortunately it prompts Windows to make the GCP utility screen to be the highlighted window, thus popping out my auto-hidden Windows tool bar (*sigh*, so embarrasing) to notify me that something has happened in that window. Thus, I have to click on the GCP utility screen to tell Windows all is well, it's okay to retract the tool bar now (all betterer). Not a big deal, but gets annoying having to do this every time I hit the "Return" key.

3. Occasionally GCP looses contact with its WoW windows. Mousing over the various WoW windows to make them active quits working, GCP bindings quit working, etc. Haven't been able to nail down when this occurs; it seems to be truly random. Can be fixed by killing and restarting GCP. Seems to happen most frequently when dealing with addon configuration windows (but not always, and not persistently/consistently). Not a high priority, only once per every few nights play time kinda thing.

4. The Recount addon and GCP are not playing well together. Works great until I swap main-toon to an alt-toon window. As soon as I get into a fight, the main-toon in the alt-toon window locks up. Have to kill it with Task Manager (or it just abends). Problem is consistent and persistent. See email for details. While I don't expect GCP to deal with the plethora of available addons, this is an important one (required by some raid groups) and I never realized how much I depended on it to tune my toons' DPS until I had to turn it off.

5. I'm not sure if this is a bug or "working as intended", but there are a few keys that seem to be "special" to GCP. For example, I'd like to move my "." (healer count setting) from my keyboard "." to my numpad "." instead. Try as I might, GCP refuses and sets it back to my keyboard ".". Similar (but reversed) issues apply to numpad "/" and "*" (there may be others). If this is "working as intended" then ignore this request, if it's a bug, then need to review.

Feature/Interface Requests:

1. Need a pulldown/list of "Broadcast-Always" keys. Yes, I know I can set up GCP commands to do this using <<All>> press/hit <key>, but it would be much more convenient to have a "master" list. This could (should?) be limited to non-GCP bound keys, thus if a key combo is bound in GCP somewhere, it would refuse to add it to the list. Mostly just want to execute WoW bindings on all the toons, i.e. open bags, talent screen, character screen, BindPad addon keys, etc., without having to manually (nor with a wizard) set each one of them up separately.

2. Add /attack, /petattack, /use 13, /use 14 (and possibly others) to the list-o-spells for each of the toons in the Rotations editor. Or, could just be a single pull down pick-list next to "File" up top that'll insert them into the rotation.

3. I currently have to use a WoW macro to invite my toons into a group because I use a function provided by the ACE lib addon (I think) "/in x /invite toon" and GCP command editor apparently doesn't like the multiple "/"'s. I use this rather than GCP's invite command because I can control the order of my toons in the group rather than WoW's creation date ordering. Yes, I know GCP has an "order" command, but it doesn't help with external addon's like Pitbull. Anyway, it'd be nice if GCP could handle the "/in x" command. Not a big deal though, very low priority.

4. GCP needs to handle pre-existing WoW key-binding integration better. I think Cloud mentioned this as well. I'm not sure how you'd pull this off, but it'd be nice during configuration if GCP could pull in one's existing key binding setup and avoid using and/or correctly apply existing WoW binding modifications. Like Cloud (and I'm sure many/most of us), my key binding setup is anything but standard and having to reset them all and reconfigure GCP's defaults every time I create a new team takes a while.

5. Somewhat related to #4 above (but on a grander scale), I'd like to see toon/team configuration be a lot more modular. I'm not sure how to explain what I'm after here, but here goes.... Currently, if I want to swap out, say a warlock for a mage in an existing team, I have to start from scratch and create an entirely new team and then recreate all the associated configuration for key binds, "global" user generated commands ( mana, health, eat, drink, bandage, mounts, jump, window switch, etc.), "toon specific" user generated commands (spells, multispells, rotations, etc), and reset "GCP" defaults to "My" defaults (rather redundant and time consuming since most of the info was generated when the first team was created). The newly implemented "import" button greatly helps with this (thank you), but modularization would be *much* better. It'd be great, when creating a new team or simply swapping a new toon for an existing toon in an existing team, if the user created "toon specific" configuration info associated with that toon was attached the toon, the user created "global" commands common across teams, and the user modified "GCP" defaults were contained in a pick-list somewhere. Same applies to creating a new team; it'd be nice if "My" defaults could be integrated into the new team somehow. Btw, I tried copying a existing team's ".GCP_Config", but manually editing/correcting all the names took about as long (and was error prone, result was not pretty) as just starting from scratch. I've 40+ toons which provides the opportunity to create several teams and for the swapping of toons between teams based on what's needed for each situation (or just my current mood). The thought of setting that up with the current tool set is a bit daunting.

6. The GCP addon is great and is a significant contributor to my satisfaction with GCP. That said, it could use a few tweaks (in order of importance):

[a.]It's too B I G (imho). Need to allow for resizing. Both panels.

[b.]It's too clumped together. In the left panel (status/cast bars, buff info, etc.), please break out the buff notifications area, the cast bars (with names) area, and the GCP notifications (healer count, etc.) area into separate panels. The toon status bars, header names, and pet status bars are fine and should stay grouped (imho). The right panel (team/target etc.) is fine (except for sizing, too B I G).

[c.]Buff notifications are *way* too prolific. I'm impressed (seriously) that GCP is able to keep track of so much detail in real time. But wowzers it's a lot of info in a multi-class buff-heavy team. I currently have it turned off because it takes over the chat window (shame, waste of good info). Because I'm (and bet most folks) using SmartBuff/ZOMGbuffs etc., all I really need is one line that says, "Yo, dude, like, you know, hit the buff button already, sheezzz!".

[d.]Related to c. above, in the options menu, please allow a setting to select where GCP sends it's "Yo, Dude!" messages... Just GCP Addon, Just Chat window, or Both.

7. I'd like to see a "Press Now" indicator (light/countdown/bar, take your pick) added to the GCP addon for each user created spell Rotation (with a max limit of rotations course). I used to use the standard /click, /castsequence, bunch-o-commas method to time my DPS button(s) smashing using a 2-mash/sec timing rhythm in a "previous util". Worked moderately well. But finding that "rhytm" is proving difficult in GCP. GCP is incredible at empowering multi-class teams, but this power creates a problem when trying to set up a viable spell casting rhythm. The spell Rotations editor generates the "optimum" time to cast the spells, that info could be used to feed "press now" indicator(s) in the GCP Addon.

8. I'm not sure why they are separate, but it seems to me that the Multispell editor and the Rotation spell editor could be combined. After all, a multispell is a rotation with just a single column of spells (perhaps I'm missing something?). Anyway, it'd be a big chunk of code you wouldn't have to maintain and would simplify the interface a bit. This is not a big one for me, just a thought.

9. Document. You're working on it, appreciate that. But, this is a powerful tool, requiring equally powerful and frequently updated documentation. Yeah, I know, documenting stuff sucks. :) Videos (detailed, GCP overall, per major wizard, setups, rotations, etc). Written (lists, walkthroughs, examples, features, etc.). Great big huge flashing neon arrows saying, "hey you, idiot, yes you, look here!" kinda stuff :) (yes, I'm easily distra... oh look, there's a ceiling up there... what was I talking about?....).

10. Speaking of documenting... until #7 above is implemented (I know you're just gonna hop right on that *grin*), could you drop a post in the forums explaining the mechanics of how GCP executes Rotations in real time. I'm not looking for proprietary info. It's just that I'm having a heck of a time figuring out the timing for DPS button mashing, especially in my multi-class team (Prot Pal, Bal Druid, Demo Lock, Elem Sham, Holy Priest). I get a *lot* of red cast bars, skipped spells, spells being cast long after target is dead, buried, petrified, reincarnated (wait, didn't I just kill that spider?)..... I've tried lots of different rhythms, spr fst, medium, rreeaallyy ssllooww..... My DPS is suffering due to this. I know it's not GCP’s fault, it's the old, codgety, feeble, QQ newb behind the keyboard causing the problem, but maybe if I knew more about how GCP handles rotation execution, I'd be better able to adapt.

11. Speaking of documenting... (didn't someone just say that?). You've already created a forum slot for "Coming soon" with an "Our work list" thread. I know it's a pain, but could you keep that updated please? I'm pretty sure you're already working on some of the above stuff, but it'd be helpful to see a list with things like, "yupper, we've jumped all over that, out soon", "it's on da list, it'll be done when its done" or "nope, you're delusional Zwipple, not gonna happen, evar!".

Ok, gonna stop here. I've probably overstayed my welcome for this post. :)

Thank you again for a great tool, truly wonderful support and your amazing response times!

Zwipple

PS. Sorry for the wall of text.
PSS. GCP v1.2.0.14, Win7 Build 7100 x64, latest WHQL-Cert drivers video, motherboard, etc.