Hi. I used to enjoy writing macros in ACTool, and would like to get back into it. However, both ACTool and Skunkworks seem to be in disrepair. Is there anything similar around these days, or am I wrong about those two being unmaintained/unusable?

You can still use them, the last I heard. I prefer coding my own plugins, though so I really don't follow ACTool and Skunkworks that closely. I'm fairly certain that as of last summer, they were both functional with ToD.

 

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Sweet, I'll give them a try.


Thanks for the quick response.


Starting from scratch, how difficult would it be to get started writing plug-ins? I have about 10 hours a week to devote to this, and I'm just doing it for experience.


Also, would plugins be relatively similar for efficiency? I'm really more interested in learning the problem solving skills than anything else, and don't want to get too bogged down in the technical side of things.

Well, it depends on how familiar you are with programming languages in general. I started playing with Decal after one year of college with about 3 years of "professional" (defined as a paying job involving some code of some sort, not counting HTML/JavaScript/etc.) experience and picked it up just fine. I'd say if you're familiar with C++, Java, C#, or another .NET language, you should be able to pick it up easily.


Personally, I prefer using C# and Decal Adapter as it's easy to use and very quick to get something up and running. I'm sure that creates some overhead though, but I haven't seen any practical difference in speed between VB6, C# (Adapter), and C++ plugins. So I would say use whatever you're most familiar and comfortable with, especially if you just want to problem solve.


I'd check out the forums (http://forums.acdev.org) as well.

 

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alright, I'll check the forums out.


Thanks again.

I strongly recommend doing new development in C#. A lot of the future of Decal itself will be based on managed code, as it is simply more productive for us when creating new features. Though they will be usable in C++, they will be easier to use from managed code.

AC Tool is still alive, although the forums are full of trash.

 

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ACTool is alive and well. I use It for both of my portal/information bots. Though as Chazcon said the ACTool Forums are full of trash and spam.

 

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