Requesting explanation of /alert

[Xenophage]

I've looked at the HTML doc that came with MacroQuest and I'm unclear as to how /alert and /doevent are used. The situation I'm looking at is waiting for a ground spawn to pop, then moving to that and picking it up. It's a timed spawn, so I've managed to tinker something together using /delays. However, I'm not clear on whether /alert would be a more efficient way of doing it.

Ok, verbose story short, does anyone have a clear example/explanation of how /alerts and /doevents work?

--Xenophage

[Dirtface]

as I understand it /alert, must be followed by a string,

ex. - /alert 1 "Your invisibility is fading."

basically, that will turn alert 1 to TRUE if that your chat screen reads that your invis is fading.

/doevent, im not exactly sure. I think that just cycles thru the routines.

[L124RD]

Salutations,
You are thinking about events... events you do:

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#event fading_invis "You feel yourself about to appear"

then when your invis is fading (i think the string is wrong) it will call the subroutine event_fading_invis.... now, with alerts... *dun dun duuunnn...*
before you use your alert list for the first time you are going to use

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/alert clear #

This clears the list you specify IE to clear list 1, use

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/alert clear 1

and if you wanna clean list 2, use

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/alert clear 2

If you are adding something to an alert list, you use

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/alert add # [pc|npc|corpse|any] [radius radius] [range min max] spawn

this means that if we are using alert list 1 and are wanting to only target a bat within 100 clicks of you that is between level 0 and 5... use:

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/alert add 1 npc radius 100 range 0 5 bat

but if you want to find a spider that is between level 2 and 5 within 200 clicks on list 2, use

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/alert add 2 npc radius 200 range 2 5 spider

If you want to see what you have on your alerts so far you are going to use

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/alert list #

and so you can therefor see what is on list 1?

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/alert list 1

If you want to now target something on your alert list, you want to use

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/target alert #

IE if you want to target your bat in the above example you're going to want to use

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/target alert 1

If you _don't_ want to target something, use

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/target notalert #

IE if you don't want it to be our above spider, use

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/target notalert 2

If you are wanting to target something near a one of your alerts, you are going to use

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/target nearalert #

IE if you want to target something near a bat, use a

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/target nearalert 1

but if you want to target something no where near a spider, use

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/target notnearalert #

like if you want to target no where near that bat, use

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/target notnearalert 1

All of these things can be used in one, so if you want to target a rat that is not near a spider, but near a bat, use....

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/alert clear 1
/alert clear 2
/alert add 1 npc radius 100 range 0 5 bat
/alert add 2 npc radius 200 range 2 5 spider
/target nearalert 1 notnearalert 2 rat

That, again, will target a rat that is out of a 200 click radius of a spider that is under level 5 but over level 2, but is within 100 clicks of a bat that is under level 5...

I hope this helps you in your quest to use alerts... I may post later on usint the $alert variable... actually I'm just gonna post this and start writing that post since I dunno if i will finish it...

[L124RD]

Salutations,
First of I want to talk about using /who with alerts since I didn't talk about that in the above post...

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/who alert #

so, to see the npcs that are bats from the above post, use

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/who npc alert 1

but if you want to know every other mobs in the zone, but not those on one of your alert list, use

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/who noalert #

IE you want to know all the mobs but the spiders in the above post? use

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/who npc noalert 2

so... now on to variables...
so lets say that you are hate a guy by the name 'macroingbastard' and you're on a PVP server and he wants to kill you, but you are fighting a rat... soo... You want to make a macro to warn the hell out of you... well... its quite simple! yeah! I'm going to write the code out for you then I'll explain what it does, This macro assumes you're doing the fighting since this is mostly on the $alert() variables....

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sub main
  /alert clear 1
  /alert add 1 pc radius 200 range 1 5 macroingbastard
  /echo Here are the things on your alert list so we know it isn't broken:
  /alert list 1
 :loop
   /if $alert(1)==TRUE {
    /beep
    /echo macroingbastard is within 200 clicks of you... just a warning...
   }
  /goto :loop
/return

In order to stop this macro use /endmacro... but anyway... line by line:

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Define your first subroutine which will be called...
clear alert list 1 (see above)
add macroingbastard to the alert list (again, if you don't understand see above)
echo a warning of the list to follow
display the alert list so you know the alert list is correct
define a loop to repeat
check to see if a thing in alert list 1 is true... (if macroingbastard is within 200 clicks)
beep
echo the warning
end your if statement
goto the begining of the loop
end macro, though the macro should never be here...

I dunno if that will help... I don't think I went into enough detail, if you need help here I will try and repost with help...

[Vendor001]

Wow, this is great detail.

Think we could add this to the readme in the package?

[L124RD]

Salutations,
it is in the readme, I just added examples and explained it 3 times over... :p I find that when you are teaching people, you explain it once, if they don't get it, try and explain it again 3 different ways. To someone who learns quickly (myself) it will feel like you're teaching is real slow, but to someone who is real slow at pickign things up (I'm not speaking of the mentally disabled here, I mean people who do not pick up things quickly... No offense to the mentally dissabled though, my neice is such. nor to those people who just learn slowly, one of my best friends is like that) will think you're teaching way to fast. as why I explained it three times (or two or something) in my teachings of it, you seemed to have not gotten it in the explination in the readme, so I tried to go into much more detail... I hope I didn't offend anyone with this post... I really didn't mean to if i did *kneels and bows, kissing the floor with his forehead to those he offended*

[Xenophage]

Thanks for the overview, L124RD. Very informative and clarifies the use of alerts quite well. From what I can see of the information you've given, this is mainly used for NPCs and PCs. Is there any way to use this for a ground spawn, such as iron oxides in Steamfont or evergreen leaves in Gfay? Wasn't sure if the 'any' parameter on /alert covered those or not.

--Xeno

[L124RD]

Salutations,
no. I haven't used item farming much but I would suggets lookign at one (I believe there is one in the Macro Depot...) perhaps I'll figure it out later but right now I actually have a report for english I should be writing :p