Jagex: Anti-Plugin?


Date	2023-08-08
Type	news-opinion
Video	youtu.be/K-qJCucUk30

Summary

Jagex had RuneLite remove the Visual Sounds and Watchdog Alerts plugins. Gnomonkey explains what each did, argues Visual Sounds only recontextualises an audio cue and acts as an accessibility feature, and points out that Jagex's plugin rules are vague and inconsistently enforced compared with many still-allowed plugins.

Outline

0:00 Overview of the removal of Visual Sounds and Watchdog Alerts
0:28 What the Visual Sounds plugin does and its accessibility purpose
1:04 Using Visual Sounds on stream for Awakened Leviathan attempts
2:05 Watchdog plugin usage
2:34 Accessibility versus cheating; what the plugin can and cannot do
5:01 Possible reasons for the removal
5:57 Inconsistent rule enforcement; Jagex's June 2022 plugin rules
6:55 Ambiguity in the plugin rules and comparison with allowed plugins
8:37 Poor in-game visual design: AoE indicators and Vardorvis
9:54 The need for a better, clearly defined plugin policy

Topics covered

Update: RuneLite Visual Sounds and Watchdog plugin removal

(0:00) In August 2023 Jagex had RuneLite remove the Visual Sounds and Watchdog Alerts plugins.
(0:00) The reason given for removing Visual Sounds was that it effectively allows you to be told what prayer to use based on game sounds, which Jagex called a direct violation of its policy.
(0:26) Gnomonkey could not find a reason on GitHub for the removal of Watchdog Alerts, only that Jagex had requested it be pulled.
(5:01) Gnomonkey speculates possible reasons for the removal: the indicator over the inventory removes the need to look at the boss, it gives a small tactical advantage in niche environments, or because it is specifically a visual indicator that gives an advantage; he notes it is unclear whether custom audio cues are now disallowed and asks about Sound Swapper and similar plugins that remain on the plugin hub.
(9:57) Gnomonkey says removing plugins over a rare niche use case, for the entire community including players with hearing impairment or colourblindness, is wrong, and that preventing accessibility features without carefully considering the consequences is short-sighted and impulsive.
(10:18) Gnomonkey says Jagex should review and clearly define with plugin developers and players what is acceptable, so it is not a guessing game, and plugins should not be cherry-picked based on whims, vague explanations or favouritism.

Visual Sounds

(0:26) Gnomonkey explains that the Visual Sounds RuneLite plugin shows the IDs of sounds the game plays on screen, from hitting a goblin with a scythe to the ambient sound of magic trees.
(0:26) Gnomonkey says the most common use of Visual Sounds was finding unwanted sounds and muting them with the Annoyance Mute plugin or swapping them for something else with the Sound Swapper plugin.
(0:26) Visual Sounds could colour-code specifically filtered sounds as they fire with unique colours; Gnomonkey says its main purpose was to benefit deaf players so they could still see attacks, and the colours were customisable for colourblind players.
(2:26) Gnomonkey compares Visual Sound IDs to subtitle mode in Minecraft, which shows what is happening on screen even for very faint audio cues; he says Minecraft speedrunners use it to locate lava or mobs and it is perfectly legal there.
(2:56) Gnomonkey argues Visual Sounds only tells you when an audio cue begins and can colour-code it; it cannot provide information early, cannot tell you exactly what to pray, and does not predict or catch prayers, so it recontextualises information already shown in a different format.
(3:23) Gnomonkey says Visual Sounds is not equivalent to the Guitar Hero plugin from third-party clients, which showed descending note bars landing on your prayers, nor to the Demonic Gorilla or Zulrah helper plugins that told you what to pray ahead of time.
(3:53) Gnomonkey says that during his Leviathan kills he had the plugin but did not even look at it, because it only says an attack has fired and not what to pray, so blindly clicking prayers would kill him instantly.
(4:20) Gnomonkey says Visual Sounds could not be used at Jad or the Jad challenges because only the magic attack has a sound cue, nor for mobs in the Inferno or at Hunllef, because the sound happens as damage is calculated and prayer must be activated ahead of time.
(4:48) Gnomonkey says the only extra use Visual Sounds had was telling attack type at places like Verzik P3 and the Nightmare, where the boss already has distinct visual and audio cues, so it only confirms with IDs.

Awakened Leviathan

(1:04) Gnomonkey used the Visual Sounds plugin on stream to attempt killing Awakened Leviathan without stunning him with Shadow Barrage, which he calls one of the hardest challenges in all of RuneScape.
(1:04) Gnomonkey explains that Awakened Leviathan's attacks ramp up throughout the fight, getting faster until they reach the point where the engine cannot fire them any faster, at one tick per attack orb.
(1:25) At Awakened Leviathan the prayer must be active on the exact same tick an attack is fired to block it, which Gnomonkey calls zero tick because it effectively gives less than a tick to react.
(1:25) For Leviathan Gnomonkey filtered the unique sound cue for each of the boss's attacks, placed the Visual Sounds ID box directly over his prayers to minimise eye movement, and used Sound Swapper to replace each cue with the sound of the equivalent offensive prayer.
(1:56) After roughly 10 hours of attempts and 16 hours of total practice, Gnomonkey got Awakened Leviathan's health down to 44%, spending roughly 600 million GP on orbs.
(3:53) Gnomonkey says Leviathan is currently the only boss where an attack has to be caught within the same tick, making that the only time Visual Sounds is really useful.

Watchdog Alerts

(1:56) Gnomonkey says the Watchdog plugin plays custom sound alerts when events occur such as an NPC spawning or a message in chat.
(1:56) Gnomonkey tried to use Watchdog to alert him when the tornado at Awakened Leviathan was about to spawn (it spawns at 50% HP), but the plugin could not do this; he only used it for a 'a leech has spawned' alert on stream.
(4:48) Gnomonkey says Watchdog gave him no tactical advantage and was just a funny plugin for his stream.

Opinion: Jagex plugin rules

(5:26) Gnomonkey says Jagex published its plugin rules page on 1 June 2022, coinciding with the banning of all third-party clients.
(5:45) Gnomonkey says the rules are extremely vague and all-encompassing, allowing Jagex to pick and choose which plugins to ban, offering no clarification and using very broad terms.
(5:45) Gnomonkey says the rule Watchdog likely falls under is adding additional visual or audio indicators of a boss mechanic, except for manually triggered external helpers.
(6:11) Gnomonkey says he found 32 RuneLite plugins that blatantly break Jagex's outline of providing audio or visual indicators in boss encounters but are currently allowed, the strongest examples being ToB QoL, CoX Additions and Tombs of Amascut plugins.
(6:42) Gnomonkey says he is not asking for those plugins to be removed, but that Jagex has left the rules purposefully vague to pick and choose offending plugins, and that either all should be allowed or the rules updated with clarification.
(6:42) Gnomonkey says the Visual Sounds rule is 'indicates which prayer to use in any combat situation', and argues that 'indicate' is so vague that it is unclear what counts.
(7:13) Gnomonkey argues that if indicating a sound cue counts as indicating what to pray, then the visual and audio metronome plugins would also violate the rules, since both can be used to solve pillar stacks in Inferno and help in skilling like Sepulchre, woodcutting tick manipulation, Hunter, blackjacking and Construction.
(7:41) Gnomonkey says the ToB QoL plugin can change Sotetseg's prayer orbs to the shape of Inferno blob attacks, and CoX Additions can replace Olm's prayer orbs with Warden P2 special attack shapes and add colour indications for Vanguards, all of which could be argued as rule breaking.
(8:45) Gnomonkey says some of Jagex's other plugin rules seem archaic, such as the one against making it easier to target 3D entities with a spell by removing options, which appears targeted at casting Barrage on other players and makes removing the option outside the Wilderness against the rules.

Opinion: Poor AoE and attack visual indicators

(8:13) Gnomonkey says a common complaint about Awakened Vardorvis in Desert Treasure II is that his mage and ranged head attacks have no clear indication because they are both blue and nearly the same shape, and asks whether a plugin recolouring them green and blue would be a violation.
(9:15) Gnomonkey says he marks the Tombs of Amascut Warden P2 Skull AoE with ground markers because the real indicator is a single small shadow, obscured by thralls, the boss and the obelisk, for an attack that hits a 7x7 grid.
(9:34) Gnomonkey lists poorly indicated AoE attacks, including Lizardman Shaman blobs, Olm crystal bombs and falling crystals, Vasa projectile rock attacks and Grove guardian rocks, where a 1x1 indicator marks a 3x3 or larger area.
(9:45) Gnomonkey says better indicators should be added in general, but allowing RuneLite to customise these visuals until more dev time is available seems more than fair.

Accessibility in OSRS

(0:26) Gnomonkey says the Visual Sounds plugin's colour-coded sounds and customisable colours were intended to help deaf and colourblind players see attack cues.
(9:57) Gnomonkey argues that removing plugins affects everyone, including players with disabilities like lack of hearing and colourblindness, and calls the removal without careful consideration of accessibility incredibly short-sighted.