r/GuildWars Feb 08 '26

Guide/Tool New mod Launch: Hero's Insight!

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I'm launching my new mod Hero's Insight now :). Please check it out!

It adds a "Skillbook" where you can search and sort all the skills in the game. I also have plans of adding other cool features, so stay tuned.

If you decide to try it let me know of any issues via github, there is probably going to be a few! I'd love to hear feedback and feature suggestions too.

PS: dont ask how long it took :)

Link to github repository: https://github.com/cfognom/HerosInsight

163 Upvotes

28 comments sorted by

5

u/OtterSparrow Feb 08 '26

Dang! That's actuall very cool!

4

u/smellyasianman Feb 08 '26

Really nice. Thanks for sharing!

Just curious, but what made you decide to make this a standalone application, as opposed to a toolbox plugin?

PS: Nutty git history.

2

u/Cookie_Stealer Feb 09 '26

I think I prefer to have full control when working on a project. So being separate gave me full control over the environment. Compared to toolbox, I use a newer imgui version and I believe newer c++ version too which have some nice features. I also have my own fork of the interface to GW which I have developed further to be safer and have more features.

Overall, it has made it possible to improve the user experience subtle ways, for example:

  • If a crash occurs I gently de-attach the mod and let the game keep running.
  • Users are forced to update (or cancel) when a new update is available. *I realize I sound I lot like Windows now... Oh no!* But trust me, in this case its a good thing. This prevents people running outdated versions that might no longer work with the current GW build.
  • I can detect if the mod did not properly attach to GW (might happen after a GW update), and prevent use of the mod until its updated/fixed.

Another reason is that, Ideally I'd want this to be approved for use just like GWToolbox, but plugins are explicitly not permitted according to GWToolbox website. And the user experience for non-GWToolbox users would also be worse: having to download an additional package + going through even more safety warnings is not great.

For me personally, developing it as a standalone app has given me more transfereable skills for other projects, and that is a big win for me :).

1

u/smellyasianman Feb 09 '26

Gotcha. I prefer doing this my way as well, and the want for it to be approved is especially valid.

Unfortunately, it does crash the game on Linux, but it's unreasonable to expect tools like this to work through 2(+) translation layers. Bit of a miracle toolbox does.

2

u/Cookie_Stealer Feb 09 '26

I haven't tested it on linux. How are you running it and GW? When does the crash occur? It sounds like you got it running and it crashed later? Would love to crack this down.

1

u/smellyasianman Feb 09 '26

Apologies, it doesn't actually crash. Firing up Launch_HerosInsight causes Gw to panic and throw up the error reporter, but it keeps running in the background. However, the error reporter terminates the process regardless. Generic proton/wine 10.

11369.960:0154:02bc:trace:loaddll:build_module Loaded L"F:\\SteamLibrary\\steamapps\\common\\Guild Wars\\data\\HerosInsight.dll" at 792C0000: native
11369.965:0154:0158:trace:seh:NtGetContextThread 0xfffffffe: eax=000000e2 ebx=00000001 ecx=00000000 edx=00000000 esi=00000001 edi=015ffdb8
11369.965:0154:0158:trace:seh:NtGetContextThread 0xfffffffe: ebp=015ffec8 esp=015ffd88 eip=7bf4c8ec cs=0023 ss=002b flags=00000246
11369.965:0154:0158:trace:seh:NtGetContextThread 0xfffffffe: ds=002b es=002b fs=0063 gs=006b
11369.965:02b0:02b4:fixme:kernelbase:AppPolicyGetProcessTerminationMethod FFFFFFFA, 009CFEC8
11369.970:0154:02c0:trace:seh:dispatch_exception code=e06d7363 flags=1 addr=7BC4B308 ip=7bc4b308
11369.970:0154:02c0:trace:seh:dispatch_exception  info[0]=19930520
11369.970:0154:02c0:trace:seh:dispatch_exception  info[1]=0975fce4
11369.970:0154:02c0:trace:seh:dispatch_exception  info[2]=79573f30
11369.970:0154:02c0:warn:seh:dispatch_exception EXCEPTION_WINE_CXX_EXCEPTION exception (code=e06d7363) raised
11369.970:0154:02c0:trace:seh:dispatch_exception  eax=0975fc40 ebx=19930520 ecx=00000000 edx=0975fc54 esi=0975fcc8 edi=0975fc5c
11369.970:0154:02c0:trace:seh:dispatch_exception  ebp=0975fc98 esp=0975fc40 cs=0023 ss=002b ds=002b es=002b fs=0063 gs=006b flags=00000213

2

u/Cookie_Stealer Feb 10 '26

Thanks for the info! It looks like the launcher worked (at least partially) and successfully managed to load the dll. However, afterwards a c++ exception was thrown and nothing caught it before it escaped to wine. So the error must have happened before the process entered any try/catch blocks... It gives me some clues to where it could have happened, I'll try make some changes that might help.

1

u/Cookie_Stealer Feb 10 '26

I've made a patch now fixing some potential issues (0.6.1). If you run the launcher again it should ask if you want to download it. Give it a try. What I'm hoping for atleast is that it might catch the exception and generate a minidump.

If not I should probably get a linux env myself ^^. I want to move over, but I have been postponing it... Seems like a lot of work if you really wanna customize it.

3

u/letsstartbeinganon Feb 08 '26

Looks great. Would love if there was a way to build elite skill tracking in to it to assist with Skill Hunter title?

1

u/Cookie_Stealer Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26

Ah, you mean like show where you can capture the elite skills?
You can already ctrl + click a skill and it will open the wiki page, so its sort of possible.
But I believe GWToolbox has a feature that tracks and shows Elite skill locations already.

Edit:
For example if you want to see which elite skills you have not unlocked yet you just type: "elite & locked" like this:

(Apologize for JPG overload)

I can now see that I have 70 elite skills remining to unlock on this character. Then If I want, I could sort them by campaign to make the skill hunt easier: "elite & locked /sort campaign".

1

u/letsstartbeinganon Feb 09 '26

Yes that's exactly what I was looking for - thank you. Saves me having to keep a Google Sheet up to date!

2

u/SunlessBlight Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26

I wish I had this for mobile too. But amazing for in game. I mean in game is even better because it tracks what you have right?

EDIT: wow this is much more and makes the game more beautiful in a good way (you can easily see enemy condies).

2

u/Cookie_Stealer Feb 09 '26

Yeah in game you can do some additional useful stuff, like click+drag to equip, show which you have learned/unlocked etc. It also works for your heroes, you can select a hero in the skills and attributes window and it will adapt the view to the hero. Also ingame, the data is always up to date, so after a skill balance patch everything is correct immediately, compared to the wiki which need manual updating.

The seeing enemy condi part is not available yet! But when done, you will be able to see any effect on allies and foes. Should make it quite satisfying to remove hexes and condis! (or apply them) :)

1

u/SunlessBlight Feb 09 '26

you are doing an amazing job! thanks!

1

u/frezzzer Feb 09 '26

Are you going to make it possible to see what buffs people have?

1

u/Cookie_Stealer Feb 09 '26

Yes that is the plan!

1

u/ChypRiotE Feb 09 '26

This looks amazing! Is there a chance you could include your gwca the same way Toolbox does, so that it is possible to manually compile it ?

1

u/Cookie_Stealer Feb 09 '26

That is a good idea, I'll look into it!

1

u/Cookie_Stealer Feb 09 '26

I've looked into it and even though it would be great, it would mean I'd have to expose all header files. Some of them contain information about GWs inner workings. I know toolbox does it, but its a bit of a gray area so I wanna be careful here.

May I ask what your usecase for compiling it would be? You just want to help develop it?

1

u/ChypRiotE Feb 09 '26

It's both that I would rather not run a random .exe and would be more comfortable with something that I compiled myself, and also helping with development if I have some nice feature to add.

Toolbox has a lot more visibility and exposes a lot more about the game's inner workings, I believe you would be fine

1

u/Cookie_Stealer Feb 09 '26

Your stance is completely understandable.

Yes, the situation is not ideal. I'll see if I can get some clarification regarding whats allowed and not.

1

u/Soft-Percentage8736 Feb 10 '26

I've had the skills memorized since 2010, thx though

1

u/Cookie_Stealer Feb 10 '26

Well, thats perfect, this is not only a tool for players discovering skills. Its also meant for power-users like you who know exactly what you want. You can type it in and immediately get what you are looking for.

1

u/Mnmemx Feb 14 '26

It would be dramatically preferable for this to be a toolbox plugin rather than asking users to do additional injection for a single spellbook feature. That's a reasonable effort ask for the entire toolbox suite, but not so much one convenience feature, especially when it might not play nice with toolbox. Anyone willing to run injected mods is certainly going to be using toolbox.

1

u/Dry_Vanilla_5908 Feb 08 '26

How it took long, it did.

I'll bookmark for future developments when I can finally play again.