Hirion
08 Feb 2010, 00:43
Having asked about putting down a bit on aliases and their use I am here posting an introduction I originally did for the Grand Order of the Lost Mathom - the dear hobbit home of Pellinor and Frekna
What are aliases?
Alias is a system in the game to pre-program chat messages. Basically anything that can be done in the chat window (both general say or chatting and things such as emotes, changing channels, toggling on roleplaying / anonymous / looking for fellowship) can be pre-programmed and given a command so that this can be activated simply by typing a short one-letter command.
As an example I might want to be able to use a certain custom emote fast /e tries to steal the warm rhubar pie on the table while no one is watching so I program an alias so that whenever I want to use that emote I simply have to type ;pie1. Now I can go to all sorts of social functions and I can steal pies faster than ever!
It can be used for all channels as long as it is started with the appropriate /e /say /f /k and so on. And I might like to also add a facial expression to the above example, so just as with custom emotes I might program a /mood_mischiveous tries to steal the warm rhubar pie on the table while no one is watching and link it to a 'trigger' (called an ID) such as ;pie2.
There are absolutely no limits to what alias you can make or what triggers (ID) you link them to - as long as you can remember them!
How to make aliases
Aliases are a nice tool, but it might take a few tries getting a hang of how to use them. My best advice is to just play around with it a little - test out different things and ideas and get some experience with the system. I haven't played other games that have similar systems, so I was comepletely new to this when I started using it some months back - and what I did was to board myself up in my house and give it a go having long alias conversations with my potted plants.
In the following I will give some instructions on the technical side to making aliases, but my best advice is to start out lightly and slowly build more and more to it. You can also fine more technical information on the Lotro-Wiki (http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Alias) and when in-game you can use an emote, /alias, to get a summary of the commands for aliases (just like you can use /help to get a summary of all the emote commands in the game).
How to encode an alias:
/alias <;ID> <TextString>
The above is the code you use to make an emote:
/alias is simply the command for making an alias.
<;ID> is the trigger that you will need to type in the chat to activate the alias. The trigger always starts with ; and can be anything e.g.;hi.
<TextString> is the text you want to be displayed whenever you activate this particular alias e.g. /say Hullo there!
The final encoding of the emote would then look like this /alias ;hi /say Hullo there! and whenever you type ;hi in the chat your character will say Hullo there!
When using encoded aliases they can be combined with free-form text. If for instance you had left out the exclamation mark when the alias was encoded (making it /alias ;hi /say Hullo there) you could now type ;hi missus Patula! in any chat window when using the alias and your character would say Hullo there missus Patula!
How to use the ;target code in an alias:
There is a very useful predefined alias, ;target, that can be used when encoding aliases. This can be used in any alias and what it will do is to exchange the ;target of the alias with the player, monster, NPC or object you have selected whenever you use this alias.
Let me use the example from above and adapt it a little bit /alias ;hi /say Hullo there ;target! If I then see Jiro at the forge in Michel Delving I can simply click on his character and type ;hi and in the say channel I will say Hullo there Jiro!
How to place an alias in a quickslot:
Once an alias has been programmed it is now possible to assign it to a spot on your quickslot bars. This is a nice detail now you can actually see you aliases rather than have to remember them all (the icon of the alias will show the ID trigger letters) and you can access them without the need to type (which is especially useful when walking or when fighting).
/alias shortcut <;ID> <slot#>
/alias shortcut is the command to assign an alias to a quickslot.
<;ID> is the ID of the alias you want to put in the quickslot
<slot#> is the number of the quickslot you want to use they are all numbered from 1 to 72. However, my advice is to remove whatever skill or item you have in the leftmost quickslot icon on the main quickslot bar leaving it empty. This slot is the one numbered 1 now you can place your aliases there one by one and then drag them to other slots, just as you can do with skills, before placing the next one there and so on and so forth.
The final command would then be /alias shortcut ;hi 1 this would place the example alias from earlier on in the leftmost quickslot.
There is more to using alias, but this is really the essential basics play around with these and you should all soon become expert alias-users. I hope it makes sense - I have tried to limit it to the basics to make it less overwhelming. I postponed learning to use aliases for 1½ year because it seemed tricky but when I actually got around to try it, it took less than an hour getting familiar with this. So do not get put off by the coding explaining it, it always seems much more complex than it really is.
This is all for now. I hope I have managed to make this useful and that more will dare take on aliases. Comments and suggestions to this introductionary guide is welcome as are questions on the subject. You are also welcome to contact me ingame for any advice or help I might be able to give.
What are aliases?
Alias is a system in the game to pre-program chat messages. Basically anything that can be done in the chat window (both general say or chatting and things such as emotes, changing channels, toggling on roleplaying / anonymous / looking for fellowship) can be pre-programmed and given a command so that this can be activated simply by typing a short one-letter command.
As an example I might want to be able to use a certain custom emote fast /e tries to steal the warm rhubar pie on the table while no one is watching so I program an alias so that whenever I want to use that emote I simply have to type ;pie1. Now I can go to all sorts of social functions and I can steal pies faster than ever!
It can be used for all channels as long as it is started with the appropriate /e /say /f /k and so on. And I might like to also add a facial expression to the above example, so just as with custom emotes I might program a /mood_mischiveous tries to steal the warm rhubar pie on the table while no one is watching and link it to a 'trigger' (called an ID) such as ;pie2.
There are absolutely no limits to what alias you can make or what triggers (ID) you link them to - as long as you can remember them!
How to make aliases
Aliases are a nice tool, but it might take a few tries getting a hang of how to use them. My best advice is to just play around with it a little - test out different things and ideas and get some experience with the system. I haven't played other games that have similar systems, so I was comepletely new to this when I started using it some months back - and what I did was to board myself up in my house and give it a go having long alias conversations with my potted plants.
In the following I will give some instructions on the technical side to making aliases, but my best advice is to start out lightly and slowly build more and more to it. You can also fine more technical information on the Lotro-Wiki (http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Alias) and when in-game you can use an emote, /alias, to get a summary of the commands for aliases (just like you can use /help to get a summary of all the emote commands in the game).
How to encode an alias:
/alias <;ID> <TextString>
The above is the code you use to make an emote:
/alias is simply the command for making an alias.
<;ID> is the trigger that you will need to type in the chat to activate the alias. The trigger always starts with ; and can be anything e.g.;hi.
<TextString> is the text you want to be displayed whenever you activate this particular alias e.g. /say Hullo there!
The final encoding of the emote would then look like this /alias ;hi /say Hullo there! and whenever you type ;hi in the chat your character will say Hullo there!
When using encoded aliases they can be combined with free-form text. If for instance you had left out the exclamation mark when the alias was encoded (making it /alias ;hi /say Hullo there) you could now type ;hi missus Patula! in any chat window when using the alias and your character would say Hullo there missus Patula!
How to use the ;target code in an alias:
There is a very useful predefined alias, ;target, that can be used when encoding aliases. This can be used in any alias and what it will do is to exchange the ;target of the alias with the player, monster, NPC or object you have selected whenever you use this alias.
Let me use the example from above and adapt it a little bit /alias ;hi /say Hullo there ;target! If I then see Jiro at the forge in Michel Delving I can simply click on his character and type ;hi and in the say channel I will say Hullo there Jiro!
How to place an alias in a quickslot:
Once an alias has been programmed it is now possible to assign it to a spot on your quickslot bars. This is a nice detail now you can actually see you aliases rather than have to remember them all (the icon of the alias will show the ID trigger letters) and you can access them without the need to type (which is especially useful when walking or when fighting).
/alias shortcut <;ID> <slot#>
/alias shortcut is the command to assign an alias to a quickslot.
<;ID> is the ID of the alias you want to put in the quickslot
<slot#> is the number of the quickslot you want to use they are all numbered from 1 to 72. However, my advice is to remove whatever skill or item you have in the leftmost quickslot icon on the main quickslot bar leaving it empty. This slot is the one numbered 1 now you can place your aliases there one by one and then drag them to other slots, just as you can do with skills, before placing the next one there and so on and so forth.
The final command would then be /alias shortcut ;hi 1 this would place the example alias from earlier on in the leftmost quickslot.
There is more to using alias, but this is really the essential basics play around with these and you should all soon become expert alias-users. I hope it makes sense - I have tried to limit it to the basics to make it less overwhelming. I postponed learning to use aliases for 1½ year because it seemed tricky but when I actually got around to try it, it took less than an hour getting familiar with this. So do not get put off by the coding explaining it, it always seems much more complex than it really is.
This is all for now. I hope I have managed to make this useful and that more will dare take on aliases. Comments and suggestions to this introductionary guide is welcome as are questions on the subject. You are also welcome to contact me ingame for any advice or help I might be able to give.