Warhammer Online: The basics of macros and scripting

This article was one of the most popular posts on my old site, A Wall of Text.  I’m reposting it here by request as the old site is no longer available.

I recently took a few hours to finally dig into the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning’s macro and scripting system. I had been meaning to do this for a while now, because I have looked long and hard across the great wide internets for a guide, tutorial, or any other tidbit of info about this. I was unable to find anything substantive about it until the API turned up in a mostly documented form over at thewarwiki.com. I had read that Mythic will be fully supporting mods and Lua scripting for War, but I had yet to even see how to make a basic macro. Well, I finally figured it out and have plenty of info to share with you for those curious about macros and scripting in Warhammer Online, complete with another narrated video. Read after the break for I’ve been threatening to get into mod development at some point (I have a background in web development and programming) but I know how time consuming that can get and have decided just to stick to poking around the macros and basic scripts that can be used in most games. I think that trend will continue in War, but its worth mentioning that the objects, properties and methods listed in the API documentation are the same ones used by mod makers. I am just tapping into that in a small way by putting scripts into small macros. Let’s dive into the video and then I’ll do some follow up after:

What I forgot to mention in that video, was that apparently a way to easily open the macro window was added so there’s really no use for the script command that opens the window. Just hit your ESC> key and choose “Macros” from the menu that appears to open the window!

Ok class, lets review, step by step. Here’s how you make a basic macro in War. This is accurate as of the time of this writing: (click an image below for a larger view)

1. Hit the <ESC> key and click the “Macros” option. Your macro window will appear. Alternatively, you can type in the following script to launch the macro window:
   /script WindowSetShowing( “EA_Window_Macro”, true )

   

2. Next, click on a macro slot that is empty. When empty, it will say “NO ICON SET” like in the picture below:
3. Next to where it says, “Macro Name” click the empty icon to pick your icon picture for this new macro. After you select an icon picture it will be shown in the slot:
4. Type in a name for your macro where it says, “Macro Name” and type in the actual macro commands where it says, “Macro Text”. In my example below, I called it “Assist” and the macro text is “/assist”:
5. Finally, click the icon in your macro window and drag it to your hotbar where you can click it or use a keybind to execute it:

And that’s it for making a basic macro!

If you weren’t able to discern what it was that I typed in the videos, here’s a few of the commands:

Target self:
/script TargetPlayer(towstring(GameData.Player.name))

Target player by name:
/script TargetPlayer(towstring(‘playernamehere’))

*note: /target playername works just fine too

Open bags:
/script EA_Window_Backpack.ToggleShowing()

Open Macro Window:
/script WindowSetShowing( “EA_Window_Macro”, true )

As I said before, the full API is documented (mostly) at thewarwiki.com, so go check it out as there are tons of commands there to experiment with. Give me a shout with cool macros you guys find, if I get enough submissions I may start a new macros site or page here for them!

As a reminder, here’s the tips I mentioned in the video:

- To scroll through the previous text you’ve entered into the chat window, press <SHIFT> + <UP ARROW>

- Right click any chat tab and choose Command Lists>Commands or Command Lists>Emotes to see a list of either. /help shows the command list also.