ShakeIt

A lightweight World of Warcraft Classic Era addon that adds a screen shake effect when you land critical hits or critical heals.

For Players: What to Expect

ShakeIt adds visceral feedback to your combat — every time you crit (damage or healing), your UI elements shake briefly. This creates a satisfying "impact" feeling that makes combat feel more responsive without being distracting.

What Shakes?

The effect moves "safe" UI elements like:

• Action bars
• Minimap
• Buff/Debuff frames
• Casting bar
• Quest tracker
• Most third-party addon frames

What Stays Put?

Important elements remain untouched:

• Chat frames (so you can still read)
• Player/Target/Pet unit frames (they use special animations)
• Enemy nameplates/raid frames

Performance

ShakeIt is designed to be lightweight:

• No noticeable FPS impact
• Scans once at startup (or on your first crit)
• Uses only native WoW API calls
• Less than 300 lines of code

Features

• Automatic Detection: Detects all your critical hits and critical heals (melee, ranged, spells, HoTs)
• Combat-Safe: Only shakes non-protected UI elements that can be moved during combat
• Zero Configuration: Works out of the box, no settings needed
• Minimal Impact: Uses efficient frame scanning and smooth animations
• Addon-Friendly: Handles frames from third-party addons gracefully

Commands

Command	Description
/shakeit	Show help
/shakeit shake	Trigger a manual shake
/shakeit scan	Rescan all UI frames (prints count to chat)
/shakeit test <framename>	Shake a specific frame by name

Installation

1. Download ShakeIt
2. Extract to Interface/AddOns/ShakeIt
3. Restart WoW
4. Enable the addon in character select

Configuration

No configuration needed. The addon uses these defaults:

Setting	Value
Intensity	5
Duration	200ms
Cooldown	300ms

Technical Details

Frame Scanning

ShakeIt recursively scans the UI frame tree starting from UIParent. Scanning is triggered by the first critical hit or heal (with a 15-second fallback if no crit occurs), ensuring that third-party addon frames are fully loaded.

A frame is considered shakeable when:

1. It has a protected parent OR is anchored directly to UIParent - this ensures we only shake "safe" frames
2. It has at least one anchor point - frames without positioning are skipped
3. It passes the filter checks below

Excluded Frame Types

The following frames are explicitly excluded from shaking (along with their children):

Frame Type	Detection	Reason
ChatFrames	ScrollingMessageFrame type	Has mouse-over fade and dock positioning
EditBoxes	EditBox type	Input fields with special handling
CompactRaidFrameManager	dynamicContainerPosition property	Dynamically recalculates bounds
UnitFrames	unit property exists	Player/Target/Pet frames use animation systems
AddOn-created frames	Hex suffix in name (e.g., Minimap.24e7df2ce30)	Dynamically created frames often have absolute positioning

Why These Frames Are Excluded

Some UI elements have complex internal positioning systems that break when externally manipulated:

• ChatFrames: Maintain dock positions and have mouse-over fade logic
• UnitFrames: Use animation systems for entering/leaving combat and health updates
• Raid Frames: Dynamically resize based on raid size and screen position
• AddOn-created frames: Often use absolute coordinates independent of their parent

Attempting to shake these frames would cause them to "disappear" or behave incorrectly.

Anchored Frame Deduplication

Frames that are anchored to another shakeable frame are automatically excluded - they move with their parent and don't need separate shaking. This prevents issues with chained elements like micro-buttons.

Combat Log Events

ShakeIt listens to the following combat log events:

Event Type	SubEvent	Description
Melee	SWING_DAMAGE	Auto-attack crits
Ranged	RANGE_DAMAGE	Ranged attack crits
Spell Damage	SPELL_DAMAGE	Direct damage spell crits
DoT	SPELL_PERIODIC_DAMAGE	Damage over time crits
Heal	SPELL_HEAL	Direct heal crits
HoT	SPELL_PERIODIC_HEAL	Heal over time crits

Only events from the player (sourceGUID == UnitGUID("player")) are processed to avoid responding to other players' combat events.

Compatibility

• World of Warcraft: Classic Era (Interface 11504)
• No external dependencies

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! The codebase is small and well-commented. Areas for improvement:

• Additional frame type detection
• Configurable intensity/duration via UI
• Support for other WoW versions

License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.