cactbot (ffxiv raiding overlay)

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1. About
2. Installing
3. Building From Source
4. Overlay Overview
5. Troubleshooting
6. Cactbot Customization
7. Supported Languages

About

cactbot is an ACT overlay that provides raiding tools for Final Fantasy XIV. This project depends on OverlayPlugin and is a plugin for Advanced Combat Tracker.

cactbot provides these overlays:

• raidboss: built-in timelines and triggers:

• oopsyraidsy: mistake and death reporting

• jobs: condensed gauges with resource, cooldowns, buffs, and procs tracking

• eureka: Adventuring Forays (Eureka/Bozja) tracking map

• radar: hunt mob directions, puller notifications

• dps: extra features for dps meters

Installing

Dependencies

Install .NET Framework version 4.6.1 or above.

You must have DirectX 11 enabled for Final Fantasy XIV.

Install the 64-bit version of Advanced Combat Tracker, if you have not already.

Install FFXIV ACT Plugin

If you have just installed ACT, then you will be presented with a startup wizard. To get to the startup wizard otherwise, click on Options and then click on Show Startup Wizard.

In the startup wizard, select FFXIV Parsing Plugin and then click the Download/Enable Plugin button. This will download %APPDATA%\Advanced Combat Tracker\Plugins\FFXIV_ACT_Plugin.dll and enable it in the list of plugins.

Alternative FFXIV Plugin Guides:

• fflogs video guide
• TomRichter guide

Install OverlayPlugin

At this point, if you select the Plugins tab and go to the Plugin Listing, your list of plugins should look something like this:

Click on Get Plugins to open up the ACT plugin installer.

Select Overlay Plugin and then click Download and Enable.

This will download OverlayPlugin into %APPDATA%\Advanced Combat Tracker\Plugins\OverlayPlugin and enable OverlayPlugin.dll in the list of plugins.

As a note, you must use the most current fork of OverlayPlugin and not the original RainbowMage version or the hibiyasleep fork or the ngld fork.

Installing cactbot

Again, go to the Plugins tab and go to the Plugin Listing, and then select Get Plugins.

Select Cactbot and then click Download and Enable.

This will download the cactbot into %APPDATA%\Advanced Combat Tracker\Plugins\cactbot-version\cactbot and enable CactbotOverlay.dll in the list of plugins.

Plugin Load Order

Because of cactbot’s dependencies, cactbot must be loaded after both OverlayPlugin and the FFXIV ACT plugin. Verify that your plugins are in this order:

• FFIXV_ACT_Plugin.dll
• OverlayPlugin.dll
• CactbotOverlay.dll

Finally, restart ACT.

Adding overlays

Here's an example of how to set up the raidboss overlay. Setting up other cactbot overlays works identically.

1. Open ACT.

2. Make sure you've restarted ACT after adding the cactbot plugin.

3. Navigate to the Plugins tab of ACT and then the OverlayPlugin.dll tab inside it.

4. Click the "New" button and then pick Cactbot Raidboss in the Preset list.

   

5. At this point, you should see some test UI appear on screen. cactbot provides default test UI, a large dashed red border, and a blue background to help with resizing and placing overlays on screen. These all go away when the overlay is locked in the config panel for the overlay. You should always lock your overlay once you are done resizing and placing it.

   

6. Type in any name you'd like as the name of this overlay, e.g. raidbossy.

7. Click the OK button to add this as an Overlay. It will now appear in the list of overlays in the Plugins -> OverlayPlugin.dll tab.

8. Drag and resize the overlay to the location that you want it in.

9. In the General tab of the Raidboss overlay, click the Lock Overlay and Enable Clickthrough checkboxes. The test bars, debug text, dashed red border, and shaded blue background will disappear once the overlay has been locked.

   

10. If you want to test the raidboss plugin, see the Installation Testing guide]

11. Adding other cactbot overlays is a similar process. Follow the same process but select a different cactbot preset.

Building from source

Follow all the steps above for installing cactbot first. To install dependencies there are 2 methods: per script and manually

Dependencies: Script Method

1. curl MUST be installed (this is used to download dependencies)
2. Execute node --loader=ts-node/esm util/fetch_deps.ts script
3. Continue with Steps to build

Dependencies: Manual Method

1. Please download the latest Zip file from https://github.com/EQAditu/AdvancedCombatTracker/releases/
2. Extract the Advanced Combat Tracker.exe to cactbot/plugin/ThirdParty/ACT/
3. Please download the latest SDK Zip file from https://github.com/ravahn/FFXIV_ACT_Plugin/ (make sure the file says SDK in its name)
4. Extract the SDK folder as well as the FFXIV_ACT_Plugin.dll to cactbot/plugin/ThirdParty/FFXIV_ACT/
5. Please download the latest Zip file from https://github.com/OverlayPlugin/OverlayPlugin/releases/
6. Extract the libs folder as well as the OverlayPlugin.dll to cactbot/plugin/ThirdParty/OverlayPlugin/
7. Continue with Steps to build

The folder should look something like this (keep in mind files can change with updates in the future):

ThirdParty
|- ACT
|  |- Advanced Combat Tracker.exe
|- FFXIV_ACT
|  |- SDK
|  |  |- FFXIV_ACT_Plugin.Common.dll
|  |  |- FFXIV_ACT_Plugin.Config.dll
|  |  |- FFXIV_ACT_Plugin.LogFile.dll
|  |  |- FFXIV_ACT_Plugin.Memory.dll
|  |  |- FFXIV_ACT_Plugin.Network.dll
|  |  |- FFXIV_ACT_Plugin.Overlay.dll
|  |  |- FFXIV_ACT_Plugin.Parse.dll
|  |  |- FFXIV_ACT_Plugin.Resource.dll
|  |- FFXIV_ACT_Plugin.dll
|- OverlayPlugin
   |- libs
   |  |- HtmlRenderer.dll
   |  |- Markdig.Signed.dll
   |  |- Newtonsoft.Json.dll
   |  |- OverlayPlugin.Common.dll
   |  |- OverlayPlugin.Core.dll
   |  |- OverlayPlugin.Updater.dll
   |  |- SharpCompress.dll
   |  |- System.ValueTuple.dll
   |  |- websocket-sharp.dll
   |- OverlayPlugin.dll

Steps to build plugin

1. Open the solution in Visual Studio (tested with Visual Studio 2017).
2. Build for "Release" and "x64".
3. The plugin will be built as bin/x64/Release/CactbotOverlay.dll.
4. Add the built plugin directly as an ACT plugin. In the ACT -> Plugins -> Plugin Listing tab, click the Browse button and find the bin/x64/Release/CactbotOverlay.dll where this file was built. Then click Add/Enable Plugin.

npm and webpack

If you are not a cactbot developer and are trying to modify cactbot for your own personal triggers, you should instead refer to the customization documentation instead of changing your local cactbot files.

To install npm and start Webpack, follow these steps:

1. Install nodejs LTS and npm
2. Run npm install in the root of the cactbot directory.
3. Run npm run build or npm start.

Cactbot should always work with the latest LTS release. If this is not the case, file an issue.

See the contributing documentation for more details about using Webpack.

Overlay Overview

The ui/ directory contains cactbot's overlays. If you installed cactbot following the instructions above, this will most likely be %APPDATA%\Advanced Combat Tracker\Plugins\cactbot-version\cactbot\ui\.

Each cactbot overlay should be added as a separate overlay. See the Adding Overlays section for more details about setup.

raidboss overlay

To use this overlay, point cactbot at ui/raidboss/raidboss.html or use the Cactbot Raidboss preset.

This overlay provides a visual timeline of upcoming events in a fight, as well as text and audio notifications to help increase raid awareness. Text and sound alerts can be based on the fight timeline, or come from log messages that occur in the game, similar to ACT's "Custom Triggers". The overlay is designed to look and feel similar to the BigWigs Bossmods addon for World of Warcraft.

This page lists the currently supported set of content in cactbot. Support is continually added over time (patches welcome!) but a lot of old content may not be supported yet.

Fight timelines are provided in files designed for the ACT Timeline plugin, documented here with some extensions.

There are three levels of text alerts, in order of escalating importance: info, alert, and alarm. Text messages will be in one of these, and more important levels are larger and more eye grabbing colors. Text-to-speech can be configured if you prefer that over on screen text.

Timeline files and triggers for text and sound alerts are found in ui/raidboss/data, timeline files with .txt extension and trigger files with .ts extension.

In this screenshot, the raidboss overlay is highlighted, with the timeline circled in red, and the text alerts circled in yellow, with an alert-level text message visible.

raidboss emulator

If you are writing triggers or timelines and want to test them, you can use the raidboss emulator: ui/raidboss/raidemulator.html.

This currently can only be loaded in a browser and not as an overlay. This will work in current version of Chrome, and should work in other browsers as well but this is less tested.

If you want the emulator to use your ACT settings and user triggers, you will need to enable the OverlayPlugin WS Server via the following instructions:

1. Start ACT.
2. Start the WS Server via Plugins -> OverlayPlugin WSServer -> Stream/Local Overlay.

If you're developing triggers for the cactbot repository, you can start a local development server via npm run start and load the overlay in Chrome via http://127.0.0.1:8080/ui/raidboss/raidemulator.html?OVERLAY_WS=ws://127.0.0.1:10501/ws

If you're developing user triggers, you can load the overlay in Chrome via https://overlayplugin.github.io/cactbot/ui/raidboss/raidemulator.html?OVERLAY_WS=ws://127.0.0.1:10501/ws

If you're trying to reproduce an issue, you can load the overlay in Chrome via https://overlayplugin.github.io/cactbot/ui/raidboss/raidemulator.html. You don't need the WS Server running in this case.

Once you've got the overlay loaded, you can follow these instructions to use the emulator.

1. Drag and drop a network log onto the page.
2. Select the zone and encounter, and then click Load Encounter.

If the emulator is not working, check the console log in the inspector for errors.

oopsyraidsy overlay

To use this overlay, point cactbot at ui/oopsyraidsy/oopsyraidsy.html or use the Cactbot OopsyRaidsy preset.

This overlay provides mistake tracking and death reporting. Oopsy raidsy is meant to reduce the time wasted understanding what went wrong on fights and how people died. During the fight, only a limited number of mistakes are shown (to avoid clutter), but afterwards a full scrollable list is displayed.

When somebody dies, the last thing they took damage from is listed in the log. For example, if the log specifies: ":skull: Poutine: Iron Chariot (82173/23703)" this means that Poutine most likely died to Iron Chariot, taking 82173 damage and having 23703 health at the time. The health value itself is not perfect and may be slightly out of date by a ~second due to a hot tick or multiple simultaneous damage sources.

When mistakes are made that are avoidable, oopsy logs warning (:warning:) and failure (:no_entry_sign:) messages, explaining what went wrong.

Mistake triggers are specified for individual fights in the ui/oopsyraidsy/data folder.

You can copy oopsy lines to the clipboard by clicking them. (You may need to uncheck Enable Clickthrough checkbox from the OverlayPlugin option.)

jobs overlay

To use this overlay, point cactbot at ui/jobs/jobs.html or use the Cactbot Jobs preset.

This overlay includes 3 parts: a resource zone at top middle, a raidbuff zone at top right, and a tracking zone at bottom.

• resource zone: HP bars and job-specific resource, along with some special counters for some jobs.
• tracking zone: job-specific important buff/debuff duration, cooldowns and procs.
• raidbuff zone: important raidbuffs duration and coming cooldowns.

You can change some of the behavior or appearance via the user panel, e.g. only show the raidbuff zone, or enable compact view.

However, customization of some behavior like cooldown alert thresholds and element order is not available for now.

In this screenshot, the RDM jobs UI is shown as an example. The in-game UI is shown at top and the jobs overlay is shown at bottom. HP & MP bar, White Mana and Black Mana are shown in purple. The right yellow is raidbuff icon. Verstone Ready duration, Verfire Ready duration, Fleche cooldown, Contre Sixte cooldown are shown in red.

Features for Each Job

Job Features Table (Click to expand)

Job	Feature (left to right, top to bottom)
Paladin	Resource zone: Oath Gauge, combo timer, Requiescat stacks (if under Requiescat). Tracking zone: Expiacion cooldown, Circle of Scorn cooldown, Requiescat cooldown, Fight or Flight duration & cooldown.
Warrior	Resource zone: Beast Gauge, combo timer. Tracking zone: Surging Tempest buff duration, Upheaval/Orogeny cooldown, Inner Release cooldown.
Dark Knight	Resource zone: Blood Gauge, combo timer. Tracking zone: Darkside duration, Delirium cooldown, Salted Earth cooldown, Living Shadow cooldown.
Gunbreaker	Resource zone: Cartridge amount, combo timer. Tracking zone: Gnashing Fang cooldown, No Mercy duration & cooldown, Bloodfest cooldown.
White Mage	Resource zone: Lily timer, Lily & Blood Lily amount. Tracking zone: Dia/Aero DoT duration, Assize cooldown, Presence Of Mind cooldown, Lucid Dreaming cooldown.
Scholar	Resource zone: Aetherflow stack, Faerie Gauge/Seraph duration. Tracking zone: Bio DoT duration, Aetherflow cooldown, Lucid Dreaming cooldown.
Astrologian	Resource zone: Held Card. Tracking zone: Combust DoT duration, Draw cooldown, Lucid Dreaming cooldown.
Sage	Resource zone: Addersgall timer, Addersgall & Addersting amount. Tracking zone: Eukrasian Dosis DoT duration, Phlegma cooldown, Psyche cooldown, Lucid Dreaming cooldown.
Monk	Resource zone: chakra stack, form timer, Master's Gauge (Fury stack, Nadi & Beast Chakra). Tracking zone: Perfect Balance cooldown, Riddle Of Fire cooldown, Riddle of Wind cooldown, Brotherhood cooldown.
Dragoon	Resource zone: Firstminds' Focus stack, combo timer. Tracking zone: Power Surge buff duration, Jump cooldown, Lance Charge duration & cooldown, Geirskogul duration & cooldown.
Ninja	Resource zone: Ninki amount, Kazematoi stack, combo timer. Tracking zone: Trick Attack duration & cooldown, Bunshin cooldown, Mudra cooldown.
Samurai	Resource zone: Kenki amount, Meditation stack, combo timer, held Sen. Tracking zone: Fugetsu buff duration, Fuka buff duration, Higanbana DoT duration, Ikishoten cooldown.
Reaper	Resource zone: Soul amount, Shroud amount, combo timer, Lemure Shroud/Void Shroud stack (under Enshroud). Tracking zone: Death's Design duration, Soul Slice/Soul Scythe cooldown, Gluttony cooldown, Arcane Circle duration & cooldown.
Viper	Resource zone: Rattling Coil Stack, Serpent Offerings amount, combo timer, ViperSight gauge. Tracking zone: Hunter's Instinct duration, Swiftscaled duration, Vice Combo cooldown.
Bard	Resource zone: Repertoire stack, Soul Voice amount, Repertoire tick timer, held Coda. Tracking zone: Windbite/Venomous Bite DoT duration, Song duration, Empyreal Arrow cooldown, Hawk's Eyes/Barrage proc duration.
Machinist	Resource zone: Heat/Overheated stack, Battery/Automaton Queen duration, combo timer, Wildfire GCD counter (if Wildfire active). Tracking zone: Drill/Bioblaster cooldown, Air Anchor cooldown, Chain Saw cooldown, Wildfire duration & cooldown.
Dancer	Resource zone: Fourfold Feather amount, Esprit amount, combo timer. Tracking zone: Standard Step cooldown, Technical Step duration & cooldown, Flourish duration & cooldown.
Black Mage	Resource zone: Umbral Ice/Astral Fire duration, Polyglot timer, MP tick timer, Umbral Hearts stack & Polyglot stack, Astral Soul stack. Tracking zone: Firestarter proc duration, Thunderhead proc duration, Thunder DoT duration, Manafont cooldown.
Summoner	Resource zone: Trance/Attunement duration, Aetherflow stack, Arcanum held and Attunement stored in. Tracking zone: Energy Drain/Energy Siphon cooldown, Summon Bahamut/Phoenix cooldown, Lucid Dreaming cooldown.
Red Mage	Resource zone: White Mana and Black Mana amount, Mana Stack (if any). Tracking zone: Verstone Ready duration, Verfire Ready duration, Fleche cooldown, Contre Sixte cooldown.
Pictomancer	Resource zone: Palette gauge, White/Black Paint Stack, Hammer Time timer, Living Canvas, Portrait. Tracking zone: Living Muse cooldown, Steel Muse cooldown, Scenic Muse cooldown.
Blue Mage	Resource zone: none. Tracking zone: Off-guard/Peculiar Light cooldown, Song of Torment/Nightbloom/Aetherial Spark DoT duration, Lucid Dreaming cooldown.

eureka overlay

To use this overlay, point cactbot at ui/eureka/eureka.html or use the Cactbot Eureka preset.

This overlay provides automatic tracking of NMs that are popped or have been killed. It shows gales/night timers and any local tracker link that has been pasted in chat. Any flags in chat are also temporarily included on the map.

It currently does not read the tracker information directly. However, if you click on the left/red "Copy killed NMs" button in the tracker to copy the list of currently dead NMs, you can paste it in game, e.g. /echo NMs on cooldown: Serket (7m) → Julika (24m) → Poly (54m)

If you do not see the emoji, make sure you have installed this Windows update.

radar overlay

To use this overlay, point cactbot at ui/radar/radar.html or use the Cactbot Radar preset.

This overlay lets you know about nearby hunt mobs (S-rank, A-rank, etc). When one pops, it gives you an arrow (based on your character's heading) and a distance to the mob.

There are options to show who pulled the mob, as well as to configure the display of the radar. You can also set up custom options for different ranks (e.g. make noises for S rank, but be silent for B ranks), or set up custom triggers for any mob name you would like.

See the cactbot/user/radar-example.js for more options.

dps meter overlays

cactbot has a couple of dps meters as well with a few extra features. They hide when you change zones, so it's not something you need to manually hide or show.

The xephero dps meter is based on the same dps meter built for miniparse.

The rdmty dps meter is based on the same dps meter for miniparse, and recolored to match fflogs.

pull counter overlay

This small overlay sticks the current pull count for raiding bosses on screen. This is primarily for folks who stream a lot and want to review video footage. Having a number on screen makes it easy to scrub through video and find particular pulls to review.

In most cases, you can reset the count for the current boss/zone by typing /echo pullcounter reset. You can also edit the counts directly in your %APPDATA%\Advanced Combat Tracker\Config\RainbowMage.OverlayPlugin.config.json file.

test overlay

To use this overlay, point cactbot at ui/test/test.html or use the Cactbot Test preset.

This overlay is just an onscreen test of cactbot variables and is not meant to be used while playing. It can be useful to try out to make sure everything is working as expected or to use to help debug overlay issues.

Troubleshooting

A general FAQ can be found here containing solutions to common Cactbot issues.

Cactbot Customization

Most common cactbot configuration can be done via the control panel, inside of ACT.

This can be found by going to Plugins -> OverlayPlugin.dll -> Cactbot Event Source, and then clicking on options there.

In particular, if you want to use text to speech for raidboss alerts, you can change the "Default alert output" to be "TTS Only" or "Text and TTS". You can also change this on a per trigger basis.

Or, if for some reason (???) you don't want the ready check sound alert, you can disable this via the same options panel. Go to Raidboss -> General Triggers -> General -> General Ready Check, and set it to Disabled instead of Defaults.

These options are stored in your %APPDATA%\Advanced Combat Tracker\Config\RainbowMage.OverlayPlugin.config.json file. It is not recommended to edit this file directly, as it must be strict json and ACT might fail to load if the file is written incorrectly.

It is recommended that you do most of your configuration via this control panel rather than with user files. Files in cactbot/user/ are more powerful and can override anything from the control panel. However, this can also be confusing when the control panel doesn't adjust something properly that a cactbot/user/ file is overriding silently.

See this documentation for more details about user javascript and css files.

Supported Languages

cactbot is tested and works with the current international (English, German, French, Japanese) version, the current Chinese version, and the current Korean version. Some translations are still a work in progress. See the cactbot coverage page for more details.

Licensing, Trademarks, Copyright

cactbot is open source under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

FINAL FANTASY is a registered trademark of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd.

Final Fantasy art and icons reused non-commercially under the FINAL FANTASY® XIV Materials Usage License.

See the LICENSE file for more details about other bundled projects.