Random Question Thread (FFXI Related)

Atom0s;
Ashita lead dev here.

First and foremost, I want to say I disagree with your last comment saying that Ashita is better or that Windower is inferior. Both projects exist because they both have their own separate goals and objectives. They both have different points of view towards certain aspects of things with plugins/addons as well. Neither project is 'better' just because you (or anyone) likes one more than the other.

In terms of better, the only things I'd say Ashita has over Windower is stability and an open source plugin SDK. Outside of that, both projects are fairly equal. In terms of stability, I do not blame the current Windower dev team for that issue with Windower either. They are working with a code base (Windower 4 that is) that has been slopped together over many years. They had so many dumb enforcements and restrictions put on the code base from previous team members that its basically impossible for them to fix it without a full rewrite (hence why Windower 5 is a thing). I used to be a Windower dev. I know what the code base they work on looks like and completely understand why it's unstable.

Both projects have their own sets of goals and points of view. Ashita was made simply to be a more open platform removing the limitations of who could be a plugin developer by having a fully open source plugin SDK. Ashita also removed the 'back-seat' restrictions on who was allowed to develop what, in terms of using memory vs. packets or allowing packets to be accessed at all in general. (Some of Windowers original team members had a habbit of babysitting the project after they left and dictating what was/wasn't allowed to happen with it pretty much holding the project back in whole for a while.)

At this point in time though, Windower has managed to get away from those old members and become more open. While their plugin SDK is still closed source, both projects have introduced addons via Lua and offer (pretty much) everything needed to do anything from an addon instead of needing plugins. (Windower has even opt'd to remove plugins altogether in v5 due to this.)

Windower has been around a lot longer than Ashita which is also another reason why most go with it first. That is also due to a lot of people already using Windower recommending it to their friends that are just joining the game, coming back after a long break, etc. which is great. No one should ever feel forced to use one or the other, because neither project is here to compete or act like its better than the other.

As for the AshitaCast vs. GearSwap debates and stuff. That's kind of a stale argument because at this point they are not the same thing. AshitaCast would be more comparable to Windowers original SpellCast plugin. It's intention is solely to swap gear. GearSwap, being coded in Lua, has no 'restriction' on what it can do, and thus people have basically turned it into a full botting addon where it'll basically play the entire game for you. The same can be done on Ashita, but you'd have to write your own additions to AshitaCast in Lua. Both projects can accomplish the same things. Both have access to all the same functionality, data, etc. it's solely up to the users to create things beyond the base layers that are there. (In this case, Windower has the larger community, so they have a larger public contribution to their addon repo than Ashita does.)

For people to say 'x' is better than 'y', it's simply user opinion and entirely based on what your use-case is.

Other than that, Ashita is also less known because we don't advertise. We are also not linked on the major third-party sites like Windower is. (Windower uses FFXIAH's forums directly for their support outside of Discord, Windower is advertised and integrated into Guildwork as well. Ashita has a Guildwork plugin too, but Stan never added it to the plugin page for whatever reason.) The only bit of advertisement we have done is making a post on BG's forums. I'm not someone that bothers with the forum/reddit side of the game though since it generally turns into ego wars and I'm not interested in the drama. So I don't regularly visit any of those sites personally.

For us, it's generally word of mouth that gets people to our project and to check it out.

tldr; Use whichever project you want, and works best for your setup/use case. We are not here to compete with each other, we just offer a different point of view and direction.