Hear Kitty

Hear Kitty, designed for rogues and druids, plays soothing but distinct orchestral sounds when you gain and spend combo points.  It's like having your own theme music!  You won't have to watch for red combo dots; when you hear the final note played, you'll know it's time for a finishing move.

Installing Hear Kitty

Hear Kitty is installed like pretty much every other World of Warcraft mod on the planet.  Extract the contents of the zip file to your Add-ons folder, generally located here:

C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\Addons

Notes

I welcome feedback, suggestions, bug reports, and the like.  The best way to contact me is through the Hear Kitty page on Curse or IncGamers.  You can also contact me via in-game mail: Vger on Azjol-Nerub (US, Horde).  If you contact me via in-game mail, be sure to keep a character on Azjol-Nerub and check your mail!  Also, check out my official site, with links to my other mods.

Hear Kitty Options

To change Hear Kitty options, open Interface Options, click the AddOns tab, and then choose Hear Kitty from the list.

Play sounds

You can disable all Hear Kitty sounds by unchecking this option.

Play multiple tones on a crit

Certain talents can cause you to score two combo points instead of one when you crit with an ability.  By default, Hear Kitty will play both sound effects when this happens.  For example, if you had one combo point already, and then got a crit that scored you two combo points, you'd normally hear the "two combo points" sound quickly followed by the "three combo points" sound.  With this option checked (the default), you'd hear both sounds.  If you uncheck it, you'll only hear the "three combo points" sound in this situation.

Slash commands

Hear Kitty supports a couple slash commands that you can use in macros.

Showing the Hear Kitty configuration UI

/hearkitty

Use /hearkitty to go directly to the Hear Kitty options panel, without having to find it in Interface Options. 

Turning Hear Kitty sounds on or off entirely

/hearkitty on
/hearkitty off

Use /hearkitty off to turn off all Hear Kitty sounds. Use /hearkitty on to turn them back on.

Customizing Hear Kitty

There are a couple things that you can do to customize Hear Kitty to your liking.

Using your own sound effects

The sound effects that are played when you gain and spend combo points are files named 0.mp3 through 5.mp3 in the Hear Kitty mod folder in the WoW Interface Add-ons folder.  1.mp3 is played when you get one combo point, 2.mp3 is played when you get the second one, and so forth.  When you spend your combo points, 0.mp3 is played.  You can replace these sound files with your own MP3s.  I recommend picking sound effects that are no longer than about a second.

Disabling Hear Kitty sounds when you're in a raid

Another one of Vger's mods, "Gyro: Get Your Raid On!", lets you set up macros that are run whenever you join or leave a raid.  If you want to set up Hear Kitty so that sounds don't play when you're in a raid, first download Gyro from your favorite mod site (or vgermods.com).  Then, add /hearkitty off to your GyroStartRaid macro, and /hearkitty on to your GyroEndRaid macro.  For more information, see the readme that comes with the Gyro mod.

Release history

Version 1.1

• Hear Kitty now has a UI for changing options in the AddOns section of Interface Options.  You can also get to it by typing /hearkitty.
• Now supports playing a longer string of sound effects on when gaining more than two combo points.  For example, if you had one combo point and gained three more from one attack, sounds 2, 3, and 4 would be played by default.
• Now supports talents that give you a combo point on a finishing move (Ruthlessness).  For example, if you had two combo points and then did a finishing move that gave you a bonus combo point, sounds 0 and 1 would be played by default.
• Fixed an occasional bug where if you gained two combo points in rapid succession but not at the exact same time, the two sounds would play at the same time and sound like a single chord.

Version 1.0.1

• Now displays a more readable error message when the embedded mod VgerCore is missing or failed to load.

Version 1.0

• Hear Kitty is now version 1.0!  It now includes VgerCore 1.0 embedded within the mod, so you don't need a separate VgerCore folder in your AddOns folder.

Version 0.2.1

• Now checks to make sure that a usable version of VgerCore is installed when Hear Kitty is loaded.
• Localization changes to make it easier to translate Hear Kitty into another language.

Version 0.2

• Added support for playing both sounds when you score two combo points on a critical hit. See /hearkitty double crits under "Slash commands" for more information.

Version 0.1

• Initial released version, compatible with patch 2.0.

Known issues

• On some systems, some of the sounds will fail to play or get cut off at the beginning or end.  This is not directly related to Hear Kitty; you might want to try increasing the number of sound channels available in the Sound options dialog and see if that improves things.

Future version ideas

• I might include both the regular sound effects and the low-volume sound pack (available at IncGamers) in a future version, and then just add an option to switch between the two in-game.
• An option to only play the sound for 5 combo points, not 0-4.
• More sound customization features, such as the ability to use custom WAV files in addition to MP3s.
• Sound effects for certain abilities that only become active in response to combat events, such as the rogue Riposte ability, or warrior abilities Overpower and Revenge.
• Sound effects for critical hits.

The fine print

© 2006-2008 Green Eclipse.  This mod is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license.  In short, this means that you can use it, copy it, and share it, but you can't sell it or distribute your own altered versions without permission. By using the mod you agree to the terms of the license. For more information, click the link.