Part 1

I found no mention of macros or scripting in my initial scan of the AoC retail manual. I did not find much in the forums or elsewhere on the web (it may exist but I just haven’t found it) so when I began playing with the chat commands today I began to discover some cool stuff.

First I tried the /script command out of curiosity:

Typing “/script” yielded a chat message that says in red, “Error: too few arguments”.

Ok, well at least I know it does something. To sidetrack for a second, I was talking with a guild mate about how to find a list of emotes, he tells me to do this:

/emote <space> <tab>

Blam! I got a huge list of emotes to pick from in this huge pop up menu:

I immediately began to wonder if this whole thing would bring up menus for other things. Well, if you do this:

/script <space><tab>

You will get a list of all the text files in your scripts folder. I don’t know if everyone has this, but mine had a file in it called ACT.txt and it looked like it was a damage meter kind of script. I’ll elaborate more on that when I figure out if it was standard or if it got there when I installed AoCombatToals. Anyway, the next thing I did was to go into the scripts folder and make a text file called SlitThroat.txt and added an emote and say command to it on separate lines. Then, I typed /script and there it was, a list of files in the scripts folder with my new one there waiting to be clicked on. Click on the image to view the contents of the text file and the path to the scripts folder.

So there it is, you can make your own script files and put them in the scripts folder in the root of your AoC install. These files can contain chat commands and HTML, so you can have colored text. For example, I edited my SlitThroat.txt file from this…

/emote slitthroat
/say You are a dead man.

…to this:

/emote slitthroat
/say You are a <font color=”#ff0000″>dead</font> man.

And the result is what you get below when the script runs by typing /script SlitThroat.txt or by double clicking it in the macro window.
Ok so now on to macros, cause you can tie all this together and call a script from a macro.

So, tried the /macro command to see what would happen:

Typing “/macro” yielded a chat message that says in red, “Usage: /macro <name> <command>

Hrm. Ok, my next thought was to try and find out if there is a macro UI window. /macro open, /macro help, /macro OMGWTF all don’t do anything. So I tried to follow the usage with what I did know was a command, /emote. So I typed, /macro emote foo. Blam! I got a macro window to pop up. As of this post, the only way I know to open that window is to repeat the command. It doesn’t make a new macro every time, so it appears to be a good enough hack to open the window.

The window opened up with a macro called emote and the content window had “foo” in it. No use for that, except its the only way I know to get the damn macro GUI to open. So I take it one step further and create a slitthroat macro and type /script SlitThroat.txt in the content pane. The idea is to have a macro that will execute my SlitThroat.txt file in the scripts folder. Check the image below for the view of the macro window with the slitthroat macro and content:

So there you have it. That’s about what I know right now and should be enough for Part 1. I’ll continue with this series as soon as I soon as I figure out how to do anything beyond these basic scripts and macros. Please feel free to comment if you have any experience with this stuff too.

I’d love to know what commands are available to evoke from these scripts, a list would just be great. I’d also like to know the correct way to open the damn GUI for macros instead of my hack. It would also be fantastic to know how to create a hotbar button to evoke these macros, or how to keybind them. Right now I’m only able to trigger them by double clicking them from the macro window.

Well, happy macroing and scripting. Hope this helps!

Part 2

In part 2 I’d like to share with the AoC community the things I have discovered over the last few days in relation to scripting, macros and such. Much of this builds on part 1 of this series, so if you haven’t read that part yet now might be a good time to catch up, then come back here and read the rest. Back already? Ok, lets see where we are…
Navigating the commands
In part 1 I left off with saying that I’d love to know what the full list of available commands are, so that I’d know what I could experiement with in my scripts and macros. Good news, I did find that out. Bad news, not all of them work right now. But I guess that can be expected with a new game, perhaps all the commands have not been released yet. Hopefully it will open up a bit and more can be done. I discovered this list when playing around with the whole <tab> mechanism to explore possible menus in the game. I found that just typing a forward slash and tabbing, a menu of the core commands became available.

Click here for the complete list of commands. Unfortunately I have not tested them all. I can tell you that things like /delay and /showfile are either disabled or just don’t work right now. I’ll try to update my commands list with explanation and usage info as I have time and remember to do so.

Another thing I picked up relative to script commands is that they can be in a few different formats. In your scripts folder, you can have scripts saved with .txt, html or without an extension at all. Calling scripts with out an extension is convienient in game, but not so much so when working with the script file. The difference is that when you call have a sample file named test.txt vs. a file named just test with no extension, all you have to do is type /test to call the script in game instead of /test.txt. Working with extensionless files is trickier for novice users, since windows may not know what program to open the file with and will require some extra steps.

Like Anarchy Online?
A really big breakthrough came when the AoC UI community members began to give feedback on my first post. One of the forum members posted a link to the old Anarchy Online scripting information. As soon as I saw it, it made complete sense to me that much of it may be relative since Funcom has developed both games. With that said, the following link was used as a starting point to test some of the scripting and macroing capabilties in game:

http://anarchyonline.wikia.com/wiki/Scripts

This AO Wikia site shed some light on things, letting me know what I thought was probably the case in that attacks and combat movements cannot be scripted. This is good, as it should ease some fears of the anti-mod community who feel that mods make the game too easy. Some good info I got right away was that there are variables that can be put into macros/scripts much like other games allow:

• %0 – Replaces with the name of the script you are running.
• %1…%9 – Replaces with parameters you gave to your script.
• %f – Replaces with the target you currently fight.
• %m – Replaces with your own name.
• %t – Replaces with your current primary target.

I was immediately able to take a macro I made in Part 1, and extend it to use this macro. I took my SlitThroat.txt script and changed it from this:

/emote slitthroat
/say You are a <font color=”#ff0000″>dead</font> man.

to this:

/emote slitthroat
/say You are a <font color=”#ff0000″>dead</font> man, %t.

The end result puts my target’s name into the macro for extra effect. Not a big deal, just adds a bit more flavor to this particular macro.

Making Info Panels
The other significant thing I discovered was the use of the info panel. With scripting, you can invoke a window panel in game that can display text, HTML and other commands. This is done by using the HTML anchor tab, and substituting text:// where the http:// would normally go. For example, I placed the following code into a script file:

<a href=”text://Visit the Age of Conan forums at http:// forums-us.ageofconan.com.”>Aoc Forums Info</a>

Calling that script sends a link to the chat window called “Aoc Forums Info” that can be sent to any chat channel. When people click on that link they will see an Info window open up with your content contained it it. Click the image to the right for a larger image so you can see an example of this.

Now take this a step further and you can make something useful, like an info window that displays your guild information. There should be an image to the left that you can see an example of this. The script I made gives people a link called “Guild Info” to click on, and they can see our guild web site, guild ventrilo server, officers, and other info. Click the image to the right for a larger image so you can see an example of this.

Bringing it all together
Where this starts to get really powerful is the use of the chatcmd:// protocol. This allows you to create a link in chat that will open an info panel when clicked. But this time, the info panel can contain links that will invoke other chat commands. As an example, I took the AO assist macro and tweaked it to work in AoC. I created an auto assist macro maker script. When used it will help to automate making an /assist macro when you are playing in groups or raiding. You can also click the image for an example of what my Auto Assist Maker Macro looks like.

Well, I haven’t made the big scripting breakthroughs I’d hoped for in Age of Conan. Time will tell if I can come up with something really cool or useful, chances are that the community will be cranking out really cool stuff soon enough. Below are the links to the few scripts I’ve made if you want to play with them yourself. You should just be able to dump them in your /scripts folder and be ready to go.

Happy hunting.

© Posted by br3ntbr0 for Im Talkin Games with One comment on 06/13/2010.
Posted in: Advice, Analysis, Misc, Tips Tags: Age of Conan, FunCom

Then

When AoC was first released in 2008, it had promise of being one of the top PvP games to date, some of the best graphics in the MMO scene, and a combat system that peaked the masses interest.

Although very promising and good game in it’s own right, AoC’s release wasn’t flawless. Many gamers couldn’t handle the high demand graphics that Funcom had so diligently worked on. The forums started to get littered with computer hardware questions and “what specs” are you running on your comp.

A lot of AoC’s down fall was, I think, due to the amount of instanced zones. Everything is instanced, and you can even go from one instanced zone to another instance of the same zone. The problem with this style of game play is there is no freedom, or feeling of freedom to the player. Game play is bogged down by loading screens and wait times. From a PVP perspective, this causes a real lack of any type of “world” style PVP. All of these can be a real hassle to anyone just wanting to log in and play.

Another reason why the game didn’t “take off” as well as it was hoped, can be found in small key decisions to appease a good amount of PVE players by increasing and making the raid/PVE gear on par and even better in some cases then the PVP gear after the patch 1.5 was released. This is commonly referred to as the game changing patch for most players. A game that was heavily marketed for a PVP crowd just scooped out the PVPers advantage by boosting gear that could only be attained via PVE.

Some times when we can’t balance and properly manage two teams we end up losing on both accounts. Thus we find AoC’s numbers in subscriptions steadily falling for the last year or so.

Now

From my play time, it would seem that the recent influx of “new” players could be attributed to the down tide of any new MMO in the current market, and the recent fail of games like Aion and Champions Online.

Low level players being griefed by more heavily geared and lower level toons, suggesting that they are either alts from a cap level 80, or twinks running the Whitesands bracket.  This presents a few problems from anyone “trying” to come in fresh to the game. Even with a big clan/guild, you can’t nag them to watch your back all the time, or call for help periodically.

Although not game breaking, the griefers can be overcome if you are willing to invest the time and effort that it takes to compete and level to end game. As far as I know the end game could be more broken, have more of a treadmill then World of Warcraft or others (WAR), or just plain not be enjoyable, which could be the reason we see so much “mini-game” activity.

From the technical perspective as gaming and hardware in general have become more readily available to the masses, AoC system demands aren’t quite as game breaking as they used to be. My new machine runs the game in “PVP/RAID” video setting mode with a constant 28.0-30.0 FPS. I am currently running this off an Asus G60 laptop, so its by no means “great” but will do the trick for times to come. I haven’t noticed any real game breaking technical issues while playing. A few odd combat bugs and some LOS issues but over all it has been a seamless experience.

My ONE gripe is when I’d like to switch characters, the log out option always brings me to the user name/password screen, and not the character selection screen. Other then that I’d have to give AoC an over all positive score. With hopes that Funcom will take more direction from its community and less from other games that are failing, when they go to release “Rise of the God Slayer”.

P.S. Bad move Funcom, just bad.

~Game on

Kaldeem

© Posted by Kaldeem for Im Talkin Games with 2 comments on 01/13/2010.
Posted in: Analysis, Featured, Opinion Tags: Age of Conan, AoC