Garan

I finally got around to posting version 1.05 of Alerter. Unfortunately this version does not contain the party member names for pattern matching or for insert into messages. Hopefully I will find time to finish debugging that option for the next release (debugging is painfully slow with my current setup). One requested feature did make it into this build, the ability to log your alerts so that you can review them. The log file will be created in the
"..My Documents\The Lord of the Rings Online\PluginData\username\AllServers" folder with a name like:
Alerter_Log_20120925_152248.plugindata
where 20120925 is the date in YYYYMMDD format and the last number is a time stamp in HHMMSS format. The log file will be created when the plugin is unloaded.

Stever1388

Thank you so much, that is amazing, and is exactly what I am looking for.

<jumps around>

Garan

What you are looking for are called "Captures" in Lua. When providing a search pattern, any values matching patterns inside parentheses will be returned indexed by the order of the parentheses they matched. I expose these values to the Message field using %1, %2, %3, etc. So, if you build a pattern like "This is (.*) a (.*) pattern" and the incomming text is "This is not a test pattern", "not" would match the first parentheses and "test" would match the second parentheses so %1="not" and %2="test" when used in the message. These Patterns closely resemble Regular Expressions but are NOT actually Regular Expressions and do not represent all of the capabilities of RegEx.

In order to suppres the XML code, you would have to specify the XML as part of the search string outside of the Capture. In your example, with incomming text "Arancerthelion applied a <rgb=#FFFF00>benefit</rgb> with Sign of Power: Righteousness on Alvirhelm." you could use the pattern:
"(.*) applied a <rgb=#FFFF00>(.*)</rgb> with (.*) on (.*)%..*"
which would result in
%1="Arancerthelion"
%2="benefit"
%3="Sign of Power: Righteousness"
%4="Alvirhelm"
Note that the "%." matches the period from the original text so that only the name is captured. The last ".*" will take care of any trailing linefeed or carriage return at the end of the text.

This example would match ANY effect (that uses a yellow colored effect label) that you apply to a target since it is an example of how to capture what is inside the XML. To only capture uses of Sign of Power: Righteousness you would have to eliminate the third capture and specify the actual text:
"(.*) applied a <rgb=#FFFF00>(.*)</rgb> with Sign of Power: Righteousness on (.*)%..*"
which would result in
%1="Arancerthelion"
%2="benefit"
%3="Alvirhelm"

You do not have to use all of the captures in the displayed message. For instance you could use the above pattern but then only use %3 in the actual message. If you are sure you will not use the capture, then it is probaby best to leave off the parentheses and adjust your indexes to only capture the parts that you will actually use. So, in the example above if you really only want the target name then you would just use the pattern:
"Arancerthelion applied a <rgb=#FFFF00>benefit</rgb> with Sign of Power: Righteousness on (.*)%..*"
which would result in
%1="Alvirhelm"

Hopefully that helps to clarify things a bit. See the online Lua manual for more details:
http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#5.4.1

Stever1388

Well I was able to make it work the way I wanted to by searching for "Sign of Power: Righteousness on .*" and then making the message "Reapply %1" and it'll read "Reapply Sign of Power: Righteousness on <name>" so that's good. My question still stands though (I'm sure I'll find some way to use it haha)

But I encountered a bug while doing this... If you delay an Alert (in the Response tab, not the In/Out Combat delay), and then use scrolling text, depending on how long you wait to display the text, the text will scroll out of the box you give it to display in, and right off the screen. I prefer White Text because it's the easiest to see/read no matter what the background color(s) are, but I like the scrolling text because it helps catch my eye, but if I put that above Alert on a 30-90 second delay, by the time it is set to display it is way off my screen.

Perhaps another feature you could add in the next version is the ability to put a black (or whatever color someone wants) border around text, because black border+white text = ability to read no matter what. Or a way to put a black background (or again, any color) behind the text. I could see how that might not be possible yet though.

Can't wait for another update.

Stever1388

I tried reading through the comments in this thread but there are a bit too many to really do. So I'll just ask it:

Is there a way to take parts of the original message that fired an Alert, and use only those parts for the message? I see that %1 will take only the part of the message that you search for, and make that the message, and leaving it blank will display the original chat text (using %M seems to do the same thing).

What if the text is "Arancerthelion applied a <rgb=#FFFF00>benefit</rgb> with Sign of Power: Righteousness on Alvirhelm." and you search for "with Sign of Power: Righteousness on", but want the Alert message to display "Reapply SI on <NAME>" where <NAME> is the last name in the original message, in this case "Alvirhelm".

Thanks, and great plugin, makes it much easier to yell at those hunters for breakin my mezzes!

Edit: If you display the actual text from the chat, is there anyway for it to not display the XML codes, but just the text?

illogic

Aha, very good!
I think that should do just fine.

Thanks for helping me out.

Garan

For just yourself, you can use:
.* says, "Shock yourname!"

replacing yourname with your character's actual name. So if your character's name is JoeCrasher then you would use:
.* says, "Shock JoeCrasher!"

If you do use a static name then you would also have to replace the message since there is no capture . So you would use something like:
Message: You are about to be shocked!

illogic

Thanks a lot! I will definitely try that.

So basically, Pattern: .* says, ''Shock (.*)!'' would give me a response every time someone in the raid gets shocked or only for myself? Because i would rather like to get that response only when i get shocked.

Garan

This is one of those common uses which I have not had the option of documenting yet since my main game machine died. However, according to Evendale (he is the author of Combat Analysis and most likely a reliable source), for the lightning wing you can use:
Message: SHOCK: %1
Pattern: .* says, ''Shock (.*)!''
Without knowing the correct channel, you can simply select "ALL". It's not as efficient but it will work.

You can determine the actual message and channel for any chat message by using the logger built into LotRO Alerters. To turn on logging, use "/alerter log start". Then run a lightning instance and after recieving the shock message, you can use "/alerter log stop" to turn off logging and wait until the fight is over to review the log. To review the log, use "/alerter log show" to see the actual channel and message text for all of the logged messages. If you stopped the log shortly after getting the shock message, then the entry should be right near the end of the log.

If I ever get a chance to run ToO I will add the appropriate alert setups to the FAQ page.

illogic

Hello,
wonderful plugin!

I have a question about setting up an alert for Kâlbak, when he is about to shock you.

How would i set this up?

Basically the message is something like this:
Kâlbak says, "Shock name!"

Is it just a normal say channel message or something specific i need to be aware of? In other words, is it sufficient to just put that message into the "pattern" field and activate the "say" checkbox in the channels tab.

sry for my english, i hope anyone can understand what i mean.

Thanks in advance

Garan

My inner Warg refuses to let me solve this...

Seriously though, I'm still levelling my burg so I can't actually test this, but you should be able to capture both the channel and message that is being used for the KO message by using the Alerter Chat log. Just use the command "/alerter log start" to start logging messages, then generate the message you are trying to identify, then use "/alerter log show" to view the channel and message information. There may be hidden characters in the message (you can replace them with ".*" in the pattern - if you are not sure how, just post the message from the log, exactly as it is shown in the log and I can set you up with a correct pattern) and many messages come in on channels that don't always make sense to us users.

Jerek

I think I've posted here before. I just updated to 1.04 and since you added delays, it made me think of another alert to try. Often while roaming the moors as a burg, I'll get jumped by a warg. Since wargs were give evade-penetrating attacks, TnG is somewhat useless as a first option, and KO is low effective time. Often I'll remember to hit KO, but I'll forget TnG too long to preserve any health I can. I attempted to make an alert that looks for a "benefit" message in combat from KO, but I discovered that LOTRO makes no mention in any channel whatsoever, of the knives-out benefit. It is as if the skill never happened. This was odd, but my immediate fix was to simply watch combat for "NAME reflected". I tried this, and it appeared to work when I IM myself with the text "NAME reflected"....

HOWEVER... I cannot get it to work with combat. I can't understand this, it makes no sense considering how much else alerter works fine with. For some reason, alerter does not recognize the phrase "NAME reflected" from combat channels.

Anyone have another work around to alert me to when Knives Out is over?

Garan

Thanks for the comments.

You can fairly easily create a separate chat tab and set the filters to Fellowship or Raid or Kinship as appropriate and then drag that tab out of the chat window as a separate window. Alternately, you can use Alerter to set up an alert for any message, select the appropriate channels and then in the State list, select Out of Combat and click Suppress, then select In Combat and click Normal (if it's not already selected). This will create an alert for all messages in that channel only when in combat. There is not yet an option to queue up messages, so they will tend to overwrite each other if too many messages arrive together which is why I suggested the separate chat tab as the preferred solution. I was working on implementing player names as a trigger when Update 6 was released and this project became a lower priority. I will eventually get back to that, but I do not have a time frame.

I noticed you specifically said "will be broadcasted with the alerter".
Note that we can not programmatically send text, only parse incomming messages and perform Lua actions based on those messages. Thus, alerter can not "broadcast" messages to other players, it can only display alerts on its own client. In ver 1.05 (no release date) you will be able to create an alert that generates an alias quickslot which you as the user could click to broadcast the message for you. Currently (ver 1.04) you can create an alias, it just can't automatically contain the message or captures.

As to creating a Stun Break alert, see the FAQ page - http://www.lotrointerface.com/portal.php?id=35&a=faq
I have added an example of a simple Stun Break alert.

SCHawks73

There are a few members of my kin that do not use Vent but type in-game. It is difficult to watch the chat box when I am in the middle of a T2 raid pull but nearly always what they say is worth seeing. Is there a way to use the username as a trigger and everything they say, perferably only in-combat, will be broadcasted with the alerter?

Also, you mention that you can provide "constructive criticism" (hehe) to players that break stuns, how do you set that up? If you just put "freed" as the trigger, will it give me the enitre message like your first example pic?

This is a great plugin! Awesome job!!

Garan

Thanks for the comments.

You're the second person who has requested a queued response. I've been playing with a couple of implementations but since Update 6 there have been so many new toys to play with that this got moved pretty far down on the ToDo list (it actually got bumped below the "All Character" item tracking bug for AltInventory which was so far down the list that it hadn't been looked into for over a year ) So, the good news is that it is on the list , the bad news is that it probably won't be implemented for quite some time. The worse news is that I'm down one dev machine so I'm limited in what I can test - the backup machines are so old that they barely run LotRO and most of their client crashes are due to ancient hardware. I guess it's time to do some real work and buy a new dev machine but who wants to do real work?!