As one of the new features in the 2.8 update, we are introducing a system that will enable you to be notified, via an alert, of in-game events occurring when your DOFUS window is not in the foreground of your screen. Here is a detailed presentation of this tool.

But before we get into it, I will introduce myself a bit first! I'm Brice and I have recently joined the development team on DOFUS client side. As my first devblog article, it is with pleasure that I present to you the alert system! I believe as a client developer (and also as a DOFUS player) that this new feature can be very useful and I hope you will enjoy it too.

Now let’s see what it’s about!

Why the alerts?

For some DOFUS players, there might be instances where they are busy on multiple fronts while playing the game and end up missing out on important events in-game. Let’s consider the following scenario: you sit down on a map and, at some point, you decide to go read the forums. During that time one of your guild’s perceptors is attacked without you even realizing it.

We have implemented this alert system to allow players to be as responsive as possible to this kind of events, but the example above is only the tip of the iceberg.

Complexity of the system

There are several issues that we have taken into account during the development of this system. The first is the position of the alerts when they appear: they should not interfere with other application pop-ups, which is why we have presented you with several options that will enable you to decide in which corners of screen you would like the alerts to be displayed in.
In addition, still on the same topic, multi-accounting meant we had to manage alerts so they would not conflict with each other.

In addition to those issues, another difficulty was the ability to manage sending an inactive player an alert with multiple accounts in order to avoid being warned several times by the same alert. We therefore implemented an option to solve this problem.

Let's take a closer look at how the alerts work.

Finding Focus
To better understand the alert system, let’s talk about focus first. This word that at first glance seems alien in this context hides something very simple. Focus is actually the activity state of an object. In our case, when we say that the DOFUS window has focus, it means that you can interact with it (via the mouse and / or keyboard), it is active and is in the foreground (that is to say, in front of all other windows). Conversely, we say that it doesn’t have focus when you can no longer control what happens in it (when the window is, for example, minimized to the taskbar or hidden behind other windows).

Behaviour of alerts

Alerts are associated with a character and only appear when the corresponding DOFUS window is not active (we’ll come back to the different alert triggers in a bit). Once an alert is visible, you can:
- Close the alert by clicking directly on the "X" in the upper right corner of the alert window.
- Click on the alert, which returns focus to the DOFUS window affected by the event.

It should be noted that without any interaction from the player, the alerts will automatically close after a certain period of time (which can be set in the Options menu). Similarly, alerts appear in their order of arrival: depending on the order set in the Options, they will disappear from your screen either from the bottom to the top, or vice versa.
You have the ability to customize the behavior of the alerts as you want! But where? We'll take a look at that now!

Configuration

Your alert settings can be configured through the interface options.

Events options:
In the first section of options on this screen, you can select the events for which you want to be notified, if a sound should be played at the same time as the alert, and if the alert should be active for all characters if you are multiaccounting.

Here’s the complete list of events for which you could be notified:

• A friend logs in
• A guild member logs in
• Group invite
• Kolossium group invite
• Proposed exchange
• Proposed challenged
• Workshop invitation
• Finished crafting session
• Registration for Kolossium search
• Unregistration from the Kolossium
• Kolossium fight has been found
• Aggressed by a character
• Start of a fight
• Beginning of turn
• Character’s death in fight
• End of fight
• Private message
• General chat message
• Team chat message
• Guild chat message
• Alignment chat message
• Group chat message
• Trade chat message
• Recruitment chat message
• Admin chat message
• Information chat message
• Promotional chat message
• Kolossium chat message
• Receipt of new Ankabox message
• Upcoming disconnection due to inactivity
• Perceptor attack

General alert system options

In this section you will be able to adjust the general options for alerts. There is first the activation mode for alerts, where 4 modes are available:

• None: no alerts will be displayed
• Focus taken off a DOFUS client: an alert won’t be displayed if the DOFUS window in question does not have focus.
• DOFUS client window minimized: alerts for a character will only be displayed if the associated Dofus window has been minimized to the taskbar.
• Focus taken by another application besides DOFUS: the alerts will only be displayed if no DOFUS window is active.

You can then set the maximum number of alerts that are displayed simultaneously (for all accounts). The time limit for the automatic disappearance of alerts is configurable as well as the positioning on your screen on which they will appear. The last option is rather an aesthetic option and it enables you to adjust the transparency of the alert windows.

That's the end of this presentation, we hope that this tool will improve your gaming experience.