The first review I ever did a review on the Plugin Manager that I personally use; however it seems that with Update 5 I will be ditching this manager in favor of the built-in manager that seems to be an (at least so far) undocumented change coming with the update.
There are two ways that you can access the Plugin Manager. You can either do it through a new button on the right-hand side of the character select menu or through the System Menu within the game. There doesn’t seem to be any way to tie the interface to a key-binding that I saw, but it’s possible that I may have missed it. However, if it’s not possible to bind a key to it hopefully there will be an option in the future.
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There are several options from within the Plugin Manager that you can use to manage your plugins. As you can see below, on the left-hand side of the interface is a list of the plugins that you have installed. The unload, refresh and load commands now have a button assigned to them from within the menu; although the commands should still work from the chat menu. Also new to the Lua system is that there is now room for authors to include a 32×32 icon to associate with their plugin as well as an embeddable options menu.
And finally at the bottom there is a dropdown menu that the player can use to choose which characters will load the selected plugin upon their logging in. In the following examples you can see what it looks like when all characters are set to have TonicBars load when the log in (left image) and when only one character is selected to have the plugin load when they log in (right image).
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Note, that this option is the only accessible menu item that is available when accessing the interface from the Character Select screen; the other options will be greyed out unless you are logged in on a character.
For me this is a very welcome change to the Lua system. I am enthusiastic about the direction that Lua is going in LOTRO and I hope that the momentum keeps up. So what about you? Do you think you’ll be using the in-game plugin manager?
November 18, 2011 at 5:04 pm
That is a very sweet addition. I currently use bootstrap manager, but some of the time I forget to load it up. This will help a lot.
November 18, 2011 at 9:02 pm
Agreed, it will be a nice change. I feel a little bad for the authors of the plugin managers that are out there, but I think this kind of solution is much needed.
November 18, 2011 at 5:18 pm
Holy molly, now it can be loaded when you log in with that char, that’s awesome
November 18, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Yes! I use the one you reviewed but this will be sooooooo much easier! I like this and I hope the updates to the Luas will happen fast so they play nice together.
November 18, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Super! I’m going to be testing it today!
November 18, 2011 at 5:41 pm
I haven’t used plugins up to now, mostly because of their beta status and the manual loading required; with this new manager it looks like Turbine is getting an adequate level of support for plugins and I’ll think about using some.
Do you know if the plugin manager settings are server specific? I’m guessing so, being accessed from the character select screen.
November 18, 2011 at 9:00 pm
That would be my guess. I will see what I can find out.
November 18, 2011 at 6:06 pm
Finally! Kudos to Turbine for adding this long-overdue feature.
November 18, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Looks good can’t wait to try it out.
November 18, 2011 at 6:46 pm
If it actually works and Turbine doesn’t bork it up, then yes, I will be using it.
November 18, 2011 at 8:29 pm
Rad
November 18, 2011 at 9:38 pm
It so far works nice on the beta. I’m really looking forward to it on live.
November 19, 2011 at 12:45 am
I wonder if this is why when I logged into Bullroarer the other day that a PluginData folder was placed in my LOTRO folder (in documents). There’s nothing in the folder except some xml document called PluginOptions. I don’t use plugins so I was rather shocked to see that folder appear.
November 19, 2011 at 8:40 am
Yes it is! This folder is where plugins will store their saved options for later use.
November 19, 2011 at 5:04 am
Very good news indeed! A built-in proper plugin manager is something Lotro has desperately needed ever since F2P launch when they released all the lua stuff. The old plugin-manager addon was kinda clunky and awkward to use. Having a built-in manager will increase the usage and interest in plugins, and the plugin community really needs the exposure.
This news, paired with the dungeon-finder news, is seriously making me renew my interest in Lotro and salivate over update 5!
November 19, 2011 at 5:51 am
aww, just after i got used to the /shortcuts for my plugins
November 19, 2011 at 10:52 am
The /shortcut commands will still function and are still needed if you want to unload a single Apartment of plugins instead of unloading all of them – Turbine’s manager does not currently support unloading a single Apartment.
November 19, 2011 at 6:43 am
I am always for improvements in the official client. The only plugin I use is travel, so having that loaded automatically on my hunter will be a bonus.
November 19, 2011 at 8:59 am
According to this post on the forums: http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.php?431642-It-s-a-secret-to-everyone-%28The-Plugin-Manager-amp-Options%29&p=5826851&highlight=#post5826851
it can also be opened by typing /plugins manager, and that can be added to a keybind.
November 19, 2011 at 10:59 am
Plugin authors can also provide a Description which will display in the manager under the Icon & Name.
The only thing the built-in manager does not allow is unloading a single plugin Apartment. This is probably because Apartments can hold more than one plugin and they probably weren’t sure how they wanted to approach determining which Apartment to unload so hopefully this will be addressed in future update.
To see how a plugin looks in the manager, try out version 1.12 of MoorMap on the Bullroarer server.
November 19, 2011 at 9:15 pm
Fantastic news! CSTM got me to use plugins and I always try to guide kinmates to use them but they struggle. This might be the solution.
November 21, 2011 at 4:15 am
Just uploaded yesterday version 1.0 of Raid Assistant to LoTROInterface which has the icon and description for the new plugin manager if you want a demo
November 21, 2011 at 3:45 pm
Awesome, will do!
December 12, 2011 at 9:29 pm
I cannot find the plugin manager ingame.
December 12, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Got it!
January 3, 2012 at 6:52 am
I’ve tried the new in game plugin manager and it seems to trash my settings for my plugins when ever I use it. Extension bars go missing, or inventory items disappear from their slots. MCHA kept resetting the size of the cursor bubble. All sorts of bugs, not alwasy the same bugs either. I’ve gone back to using the plugins manager you reviewed originally. Maybe when they smooth out the issues I’ll give it another go. I know I am not the only one as plenty of folk have posted on the forums about similar issues they are having. COudl be my crappy computer not being able to handle loading them all at once I suppose
January 4, 2012 at 8:06 am
Yeah, it’s not just you. It is a really annoying thing that I hope gets fixed somehow in the future.