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TextualConfigurationInterface.wiki
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The textual configuration interface (TCI) is a set of textual options or commands one can use in Simulationcraft. The TCI can be fully and extensively used in anyone of those contexts:
- The overrides tab within the graphical user interface (GUI), Simulationcraft.exe.
- Text files (usually named with the .simc extension) which can be used either by the GUI or the command-line client.
- Directly as arguments for the command-line clients.
Simc files are parsed in a sequential way and as soon as you declare an option, it takes effect. For some of them, it does not matter: whether they're at the beginning or the end of file, it makes no difference. For some others, however, order matters.
Options can have different kind of scopes. The most common are:
- global: the option can be declared anywhere in the file, its location does not matter (unless redundant or conflicting declarations are made: most of the time, the last one will prevail). Example: optimal_raid.
- current character: the option affects the current character (the last declared one). Example: level.
- ulterior characters: the option affects the characters declared later in the file, excluding the current character. Example: ptr.
Characters declaration can be manual (through warlock, warrior, ...) or automatic (through armory, wowhead, ...). See Characters declaration.
Simulationcraft work with an UTF-8 encoding (basically, a text file is just a sequence of numbers, the encoding is the convention used to translate numbers to characters; a convention has to be chosen to know which character is represented by a given number). Latin1 works also since the common characters are encoded in the same way they are in UTF-8. UTF-8 is universal and the modern standard but older, region-specific, encodings are still very common.
Simple text editors such as Microsoft Notepad typically encode your files with your operating system's default encoding, which depends on your regional settings. With western regional settings (US, Canada, Australia, Western Europe, etc) it will be latin1 and you will have no problem. With different regional settings, the file will have an encoding incompatible with Simulationcraft.
There are many good, free and open-source, text editors such as Notepad++ for Windows. Those softwares will allow you to choose an UTF8-encoding and use Simulationcraft with any alphabet and all regional armory or battle.net websites.
Comments can be made through the # symbol, as shown below:
#This is a comment
Some options, such as path or raid_events, are very long strings which can be written on a single line or on many lines. Here is the rule to follow:
The "=" operator replaces the string with the new content you provided. The "+=" operator appends the new content at the end of the existing string. You can use the "+=" operator at the very beginning but it will append your content to the default string, make sure it is empty by default. For example:
# Of course, you can write it on a single line or on many lines.
path="c:|profiles"
# This is equivalent to:
path="c:|"
path+="profiles"
Some options, such as actions or raid_events, are very long strings containing sequences of commands. By default, those string are empty. You can either write them on a single line or on multiple lines (see the previous section). There is one additional rule regarding the chaining of commands:
All commands need to be separated with an operator, typically it will be "/". You can use it at the very beginning but it is optional.
#This is licit
raid_events+=/event1,option1,option2
raid_events+=/event2,option1,option2
#This is too
raid_events=/event1,option1,option2
raid_events+=/event2,option1,option2
#This is too
raid_events=event1,option1,option2
raid_events+=/event2,option1,option2
#This is too
raid_events=event1,option1,option2/event2,option1,option2
#This is too
raid_events=/event1,option1,option2/event2,option1,option2
White spaces and tabs act as line breaks in any circumstances. You can add as much blank lines or spaces as you want but all of them are treated as blank lines. As a result, do not insert white spaces on the middle of options declaration, only at the very beginning or the very end.
#This work:
iterations=10
iterations=10
#This does not work:
iterations = 10
iterations= 10
iterations =10
Sometimes, you need to translate a string into an identifier. For example, "nature's majesty" will become natures_majesty. The rules are simple:
- White spaces are replaced with underscores (
_). - Other non-alphanumeric characters are just ignored.
Simulationcraft provides a templating mechanism to declare and reuse pieces of text.
- Templates are declared with the syntax:
$(variable)=content - Templates are referred and used with the syntax:
$(variable)
For example, the following file:
# Declare a new template named light_the_fire
$(light_the_fire)=!ticking&buff.t11_4pc_caster.down
# The references to light_the_fire will be replaced with its content
armory=us,illidan,some_balance_druid
actions+=/sunfire,if=$(light_the_fire)&!dot.moonfire.remains>0
actions+=/moonfire,if=$(light_the_fire)&!dot.sunfire.remains>0
Is equivalent to:
armory=us,illidan,some_balance_druid
actions+=/sunfire,if=!ticking&buff.t11_4pc_caster.down&!dot.moonfire.remains>0
actions+=/moonfire,if=!ticking&buff.t11_4pc_caster.down&!dot.sunfire.remains>0
As you can see the
$(light_the_fire)reference has been replaced with the content assigned to it.
You can easily include external TCI files (usually named with the .simc extension) in your current TCI stream/file: either explicitly, through the input=<filename> syntax, or implicitly by just writing the file name. The application will look up for an existing file with this name within the directories specified in path list (see below). Including a file means that all its content will be included at the very point you referenced it within the parent file or stream.
# The following line will include the "global-config.simc" file, which must be located in the current working directory (see the relevant section)
global-config.simc
# Or we can use this syntax:
input=global-config.simc
# We can also specify a path (remember, through: white spaces are not allowed)
c:\global-config.simc
- path (scope: global; default: ".|profiles|profiles_heal|../profiles|../profiles_heal") specifies the directories where the application should search for the files to include. The list of directories have to separated with "|", "," or ";". This option can be written on many lines, see the long strings section.
# The following will make the application look for includes in c:\includes, .\profiles and ..\simc_scripts
path="c:\includes|.\profiles|..\simc_scripts"