Writing Macros

[Baha]

On a sidenote, if you're going to call me hilarious for my views on pot, please check that your opposition stance is truly popular, i.e., don't claim to take the high ground supporting widespread pot legalization when everyone knows major parts of the world outlaw it, lest you have to explain why that still is! Additionally, realize that it is a "gateway" drug only so long as it's illegal. The analogy appears when you realize that Windower is illegal, too (witness self-GM call), no matter how harmless you claim it to be. The "gateway" argument is separate from the moral argument, and both are separate from the potential-harm argument; do at all times know which argument you're addressing.

The gateway drug/stepping stone theory is a theory for a reason, there's been no proven causal relationship between the two. Living in a country where it's condoned (borderline legal), I haven't seen the masses of junkies that this theory says I ought to be seeing. Neither has Holland, where the policy of condoning cannabis is much more well known.

I did stipulate only changes that many people would consider cheats, not simply something ported from Windower without regard to its harmlessness/resistance to abuse.

You don't get to blanket-call windower and plugins cheating and then call it "intended" or "convenience" when SE implements watered-down versions of some features SEVERAL YEARS LATER.

Auto-sort removed tedium in having to press alt-i, +, {enter}, {up}, {enter} before your bag filled or else losing random drops. Arguably it made things fairer, as it spread treasure around more equitably compared to the previous method of seeing who was less distracted in party to remember to sort inventory.

So going from having to press three buttons (2x6 for equip + one for action) for a spell or a ws, and then another two to go back to your idle/tp gear is not convenience?
Not having to hammer a macro to see recast information isn't?
Not having to spam your alliance with "WARRIOR TP IS 107%" is not convenience?
Seeing your alliance's MP status is cheating?

I could go on forever, windower is pretty much convenience incarnate. These botting or automating scripts you are afraid of are simply not what it does.
There's some obvious gray areas (you and your morals will love not using these!) like fillmode, but they're a tiny chunk of what windower does.
Your 'many people' will agree that most of the unported features are also harmless and simply provide for a better playing experience.

For all you know, I could be interested in my personal capabilities and thus take pride in never having used Windower. I didn't before mention this "pride" to you because it has a purpose beside bragging.

So you press more buttons to do anything ingame than the rest of us? Bravo.

[Wrish]

Fillmode, the feature that lets you see through walls, is in a gray area? You mean to tell me SE has even a remote intention of turning Nyzul from an explore-and-discover random-maze game to a wide-open expanse where you simply dodge translucent-wall obstacles to get at clearly marked targets?

You have a pretty low standard of what constitutes cheating.

I'm not generally here to argue cheat vs. convenience with you. There's enough capability that's clearly cheating to fuel the debate.

Obviously I never said every feature is a cheat - hence my stipulation to start with. It's that for anyone with Windower installed, since they treat it like Fight Club, an observer may have a difficult time knowing the scale of cheating. Since it is practical to cheat with Windower and go undetected by currently available tools, the whole app should be grounds for a ban. A separate app could be created that takes care of the cheating possibilities... and then you could talk with SE some more, but right now SE is simply not going to endorse Windower.

To whomever says FFXI runs in your memory and you have freedom to snoop: It's your RAM, too, so you might as well have freedom to write. And your USB connection to keyboard, so you can fake whatever keypresses to send. And your ISP connection, so you might send whatever packets to masquerade as a real player. Heck, software is sold on disks that you then own, so why not just copy the optical bits and decompile them 1's and 0's to read some other programmer's train of thought?

This isn't the 1950's heyday of punch-card computing. We have a zillion laws pertaining to digital rights, and then FFXI as a game further invokes the ethos of sports - the level playing field & fairness in particular. You don't snoop behind other players in poker; you don't snoop in on the convo detailing the opposing team's plans. Got that?

[Deader2818]

The point is moron, you are claiming WINDOWER and any PLUG IN that comes with WINDOWER is CHEATING, when its already been PROVEN that alot of things YOU THINK is CHEATING is NOT because it has either been ADDED into the GAME by SE or can be DONE in SE WINDOWER as WELL.

Get the fuck over yourself.

Anyone who smokes pot is a murder as well yeah?

[Baha]

Fillmode, the feature that lets you see through walls, is in a gray area? You mean to tell me SE has even a remote intention of turning Nyzul from an explore-and-discover random-maze game to a wide-open expanse where you simply dodge translucent-wall obstacles to get at clearly marked targets?

It's probably cheating, I call it gray because someone could argue for it. Don't use it myself, as nyzul is already trivially easy.

I'm not generally here to argue cheat vs. convenience with you. There's enough capability that's clearly cheating to fuel the debate.

Is there? You can't script bots or real automation, and you yourself argue that the features copied from windower are pretty much harmless. What other features or plugins are so clearly cheating according to you?

Obviously I never said every feature is a cheat - hence my stipulation to start with. It's that for anyone with Windower installed, since they treat it like Fight Club, an observer may have a difficult time knowing the scale of cheating. Since it is practical to cheat with Windower and go undetected by currently available tools, the whole app should be grounds for a ban. A separate app could be created that takes care of the cheating possibilities... and then you could talk with SE some more, but right now SE is simply not going to endorse Windower.

Windower is a prerequisite for bots/fleehacks (which isn't true but hey) so it should be grounds for a ban? What?

This isn't the 1950's heyday of punch-card computing. We have a zillion laws pertaining to digital rights, and then FFXI as a game further invokes the ethos of sports - the level playing field & fairness in particular. You don't snoop behind other players in poker; you don't snoop in on the convo detailing the opposing team's plans. Got that?

How do you get sport in this? Outside of ballista, sport is only applicable for certain things, and tools that break that 'sportsmanship' ARE grounds for banning, and rightfully so. Flee/Pos hack, claiming/fishing bots etc.
Most of windower isn't hurting the playerfield because there simply isn't a competition to speak of.

[Faris]

i dont know if this is mentioned before, but we have an agreement with SE, SE makes the rules, and by you paying the bills and using their service you "legally" agree to their laws.

and by that they have the right to label whatever they like cheating.
they can label fraps cheating...im not talking about the logic or the harm in this, but im saying they do have the right to do so. you, the customer on the other hand have the right not to use their service.

if SE says windower/fillmode is cheating then it is, us the customers are not in the position of deciding on such a matter.

[Ksandra]

I am wondering if Wrish uses FFXIAH or Wikipedia cause those both give an advantage over those that can't access the internet while ingame.

Especially since FFXIAH works on a similar principle as windower where it's taking info from FFXI and displaying it an easier way.

[Gethsemane]

Do you really want to know why Square Enix cannot legally ban any Windower users or FRAPs users? They do not have legal grounds at all to do so because these programs are not maliciously doing anything to Square Enix. Windower is a wrapper around POL that just turns certain things off in memory that PlayOnline and FFXI puts there. It does not send information back to Square Enix servers and exploit anything. FRAPs just takes screenshots easier as well as makes gameplay movies.

If Square Enix ever went after Aikar, a Windower user, or a FRAPs user; I would have to say that if Square Enix banned the individual, that person would most likely have a legal leg to stand on despite the Terms of Service. Because in no way does Windower or FRAPs do anything malicious on Square Enix's end. It only affects the end-user's computer and manipulation with memory.

The way that Square Enix could get you is through any means of automation. Such as a macro to always cast refresh, haste on you as soon as it wears off. A macro that most people automate to level summoning magic skill. I honestly believe that triggered events which then a client intercepts and than automates a reaction is cheating. I would never use triggers/reaction macros. That constitutes being malicious since it sends information to Square Enix's server without input from the player. Other than that they got no legal grounds. Would be a fun lawsuit to watch go down if Square Enix did try banning someone for Windower if they weren't using automation. Or FRAPs for that matter.

And people always keep bringing up that IME youtube video for some reason. Obviously you aren't supposed to be able to use IME on a North American, European client. What a dumbass. And dumbasses for whoever tries to bring that up in an argument. Obviously that's malicious. You're sending a symbol that you aren't allowed to have access to back to Square Enix's servers.

And contrary to popular belief, the terms of service is binding and legal in a way but it is not 100%. People have beaten a terms of service clause many of times in documented court cases. Unless you're sending malicious content, illegal content, exploiting things to their servers; they cannot do shit. End of argument. Their third-party clause has no effect due to the very fact you are running Final Fantasy XI on an operating system such as PS2's hardware or a PC's Microsoft Windows. You are already technically breaking that very rule in their Terms of Service.

Yarnball is god. And so is Spellcast. Being able to save all my macros on my usb flash drive and take them to whatever friend I visit that plays FFXI too has been quite helpful throughout all these years. I can plug and play at any buddies house and be ready to go in 30 seconds. Thank you Aikar. Please continue your rewarding contributions to the Windower community.

[Kohan]

The Knowledge Base is a huge resource. The ToS is comparatively small. They modified the ToS several times, in fact. Each time, they neglected to write anything remotely legitimizing Windower.

SE has programmers, mind you. They added windowed-mode and many other interface adjustments. But they have not once added any of the "cheating" features of Windower. I dare you to come up with an example of an SE-introduced interface feature that could be viewed by many as cheating in a previous time.

I dare you to quote a part of any of my posts where I said I condoned using things like position hacks, claiming tools, and so on, so forth, since I haven't. Why would you try to argue against me with shit I don't care about, and never made a point of? It doesn't challenge my argument in any way.

Right, it has been policy since the beginning, but for months to over a year, shells were exploiting this bug. People must have had your mindset that exploits not promptly banned become legitimate... or at least so many powerful players would not all get banned at once because of the devastation to the economy and EG community, right?

Would you mind quoting where I said I supported abusing exploits? Please, I'd really enjoy that. Or, you couldn't... no, you wouldn't! You wouldn't dare be making an assumption for the millionth time in this thread! Could you?! Would you?! Never, I refuse to believe it!

Well, it's a big site, and I have little time.

You must, considering how much time you spend spewing bullshit you know absolutely nothing about. I mean, it isn't as if that time could be spent doing anything else, like reading and learning, right?

Are you so full of shit that you've some quota to meet about dispensing it on a regular schedule? As I suppose that could explain it, too.

I browsed the very basics, clearly not up to your standards. Most of my knowledge comes from others who use Windower. And their reactions do not comport with your ease-of-use claim. Some have spent hours playing around with Windower.

Not while they're using them in a time-intensive event in game, of course, unless they're idiots. Coincidentally, this brings us back to one of your very first comments about it being impractical to log out of the game -- pointed out twice, and hilarious thrice -- to edit such files, which is completely unnecessary, as proven, and absolutely retarded, as also proven.

What, don't you fine-tune your own macros during downtime? Oh, you do? Yet for some reason, Windower users don't, and instead decide to when they're supposed to be busy doing something else? Okay, sure.

Some chat about macros/scripts for certain situations - both DDs and mages. They even do that on this forum. You don't hear them discussing regular game macros to this level of detail; I conclude there must be extra complexity. Well, of course there is. Even if you exactly replicated your in-game macros, Windower already makes it more complex to set up or edit.

When you get into the deeper details, sure. Does this negatively impact your ability to function in-game? No. Do you really think that if these people lost the ability to use Windower due to an update, they'd think, "OH GOD WHAT DO I DO, WINDOWER IS OBVIOUSLY SO MUCH HARDER TO USE AND EVEN PEOPLE WHO CLAIMED IT RAPED THEIR MOTHERS LIKE WRISH SAY SO, BUT OH GOD I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE REGULAR FFXI MACROS I AM SO FUCKED"?

Because I don't really think that's going to happen.

I know it's a text file. But what's it named? You have to remember, or look in your game macro and then search your Windower-associated folder.

Remembering something you named yourself and use regularly is hard. You heard it here folks!

We're not here to discuss my personally not using Windower. We're here to discuss the principles, morals, and ramifications to all. For all you know, I could type 120wpm and be lightning fast with macro set and page switching so that the macro line limit never bothers me. To get any use out of Windower I might need to learn the Spellcast variables and craft custom XML, after all. For all you know, I could be interested in my personal capabilities and thus take pride in never having used Windower. I didn't before mention this "pride" to you because it has a purpose beside bragging.

My pride is what eventually brought me to using Windower text macros. With them, I knew that I could optimize my performance beyond what in-game macros allow, mostly due to space limitations. SE did what they could by adding more books, but for one reason or another, they appear incapable of expanding the macros themselves with more lines. They've said themselves in various interviews that they never intended for so many people to have Relic Weapons and various other items that should've been near-impossible to attain.

I don't use them to automate shit. The vast majority of Windower users don't. Furthermore, you've got a boner over how evidently evil it is to use the "gateway drug" that is Windower, when so many people who utilize the ever-so-useful application don't do any of the shit you despise so much.

I do commend you for the previously pointed out assumptions that we all do, including myself, though. Good work there, bucko.

On a sidenote, if you're going to call me hilarious for my views on pot...

Oh, please. Read on and be absolutely delighted by how misinformed you are on marijuana if you even remotely believe it's a menace to society, and that its illegality is justified.

Don't be a retard and necrobump the thread though, it's pretty fucking old. Thanks.

At first, I didn't know what you wanted me to GM someone over, so I ignored that. Then you specified Distance plugin, which by referring to my previous comment about hypothetically being a GM, proved you were on a different page than I, as my hypothetical was used to explain ease of detection (without being called), not enforcement (after being called).

It wasn't out of context. I was also discussing the supposed ease of detection. If people line up perfectly at a specific distance from an enemy, that don't mean shit, son.

All the apparent inaction toward Windower users stems from lack of detection or detection effort.

Or the fact that the policies strongly refer to their disdain for the automation of actions specifically, and the necessary investigation and determination of an unfair advantage gained -- not the direct discouragement of using something to do what is already possible in-game, only in a smoother and more organized fashion -- before anything whatsoever will be done.

As before, plenty of other people have entered this silly argument to point out how, well, silly it is, and you're not getting any Brownie points for insisting all of us are villains who are bound to go from using a more efficient windower to peddling crack -- oh, sorry, I meant position hacking -- any day now.

SE has bigger fish to fry. Honestly, you're insulting them with your insistence that they give a shit about the people who don't fucking cheat. All you're trumpeting is your own hard-headed belief that the ToS must be literally interpreted -- even though you said earlier that you supposedly believe in following the spirit of things -- when if they gave a damn about it, they'd have done something long, long ago, including perhaps updating the ToS accordingly, since you seem to be so proud of them for doing this frequently. Man oh man, why haven't they gone and outright mentioned it yet, then, if they hate it so much? That is so weird!

Hey, did you notice that most of the officially sanctioned websites, like FFXIclopedia, often make references to using Windower within the descriptions of quests, missions, strategies, and more? Isn't it crazy those sites have official endorsement, but haven't been forbidden from permitting that kind of information?

Whoa! Guess what else?! The critically acclaimed Elmer the Pointy, a most beloved individual who now works for Allakhazam, conducted various surveys over the years on JP Button, another recognized site, which determined that more than half of the FFXI PC users use Windowers! Holy crap, and they didn't consider that a reason to take this shit seriously and get with the banning! Bonkers, man!

Furthermore, as for the FanFest thing, you had to fully register with your personal information ahead of time to purchase tickets, and this included your character information. That's why attendees were able to receive special items in-game. Oh shit, proof!

In other words, take your head out of your ass, you sad freakin' dipshit, and observe the big picture -- the reality of the situation. Unless you obviously fucking cheat, nobody fucking cares.

Get it? Got it? Probably not, but there's no point in arguing with you further. Get the fuck out and take a long walk off a short pier.

[Hanyoko]

To whomever says FFXI runs in your memory and you have freedom to snoop: It's your RAM, too, so you might as well have freedom to write. And your USB connection to keyboard, so you can fake whatever keypresses to send.

SE fully supports players using a G15 (it was bundled with some prizes early on) and that keyboard fully supports "fake keypresses"

SE's "windowed mode" was just so they could put that "runs on windows" sticker for vista/7

SE's interface is painfully stagnant (and slow); The technology is there for updates to improve ease of use and performance is there, their development team is just not focused on it. I'll use the example of the icons for the barspells. Why is that same damn icon used for all of them when there is a seperate "file" assigned to all of them.

SE once again is their own enemy when it comes to the playerbase.
Example : SE makes trial accounts, trial accounts spew spam, Chatmon developed to block spam and only spam (and possibly legit tells containing to blacklisted words)
6 months later SE makes a "filter" that tries to do the same thing; less they a day later RMT bypass it meanwhile chatmon receives continued updates and performs better. Lets not forget to mention all the false positives that SE's filter does.

Example 2: Autosort! LL would sort items in their place ; the autosort just "auto" hits the sort->yes button; except during certain items like crafting. It doesnt sound like a big thing, but when your moving 60-70 items around and its moving them all over the place its infuriating whereas LL would only mess with stackables.

Example 3: target distance, mob hp%, party/alliance TP, alliance mp values..... after HOW many years did it take for ranger to get a good indicator of them vs mob placement? Look at how many games these days show a hp bar WITH % of current target; it just makes logical sence. The TP and MP thing never made sence to me; if the data packet is there (which it is) why not display it; or make it a toggle to show or hide.

What all these do is set a trend for the way SE handles things. Now what does this have to do with SE hurting themselves? Simple: A new player comes to FF and compares the interface to current game X. Look and feel is a HUGE part software and its hard to get a user to pickup your application if it doesnt look like it was written this century.

Doubt me? Fire up one of those blocky win98 applications side by side a modernized application.

[Hanyoko]

I am wondering if Wrish uses FFXIAH or Wikipedia cause those both give an advantage over those that can't access the internet while ingame.

Especially since FFXIAH works on a similar principle as windower where it's taking info from FFXI and displaying it an easier way.

I could be incorrect, but isnt FFXIAH spoofing client data to retreive sale history from the AH servers. The only other way would be to have an automated toon there just constantly browsing the AH.

Guess everyone that has been to that site should be banned. Probabaly the wiki too; it provides an unfair advantage. It has step by step instructions on how to do things! Oh and spoilers!

[psubond]

i can't understand the constant debate over this on the various forums.

to windower users: TECHNICALLY it's against the tos and is a cheat

to windower haters: we like the program and your "moral highground" isn't going to get us to stop using it so get a straw and suck it up.

[Xaru]

i can't understand the constant debate over this on the various forums.

to windower users: TECHNICALLY it's against the tos and is a cheat

to windower haters: we like the program and your "moral highground" isn't going to get us to stop using it so get a straw and suck it up.

^ this

[Faris]

exactly. i know its cheating, but i still use it, hehe.

[Ksandra]

I could be incorrect, but isnt FFXIAH spoofing client data to retreive sale history from the AH servers. The only other way would be to have an automated toon there just constantly browsing the AH.

Guess everyone that has been to that site should be banned. Probabaly the wiki too; it provides an unfair advantage. It has step by step instructions on how to do things! Oh and spoilers!

exactly. I bet wrish uses either or both of them but I guess they're ok because there's nothing to install?

Interested to his thoughts on them.

[Mojo]

It's already a wash. You might as well stop playing the game as there are differences between the PC/PS2/Xbox 360 versions that can result in advantages for one player over another. While I won't go into the specifics, I was able to claim Lord of Onzozo a good 20~30 times in a row (while often competing against 15+ other people) due to these differences. I wasn't on the PC version for this.

Either way, rooting the morals on grounds of absolute fairness is simply stupidity. It's highly unrealistic, although you'll always have people like Wrish coming along. He's like Gelwain 2.0.

[Omniyoji]

Hmmm I wonder if unofficial windower was some how banned would people still play the game...

[urat]

Gaiz I used a really really long macro to cap my singing skill after getting out of a smn burn for my bard, now I have a guilty conscience.

I'm thinking I should stop using windower cause Se might ban me cause I know how many units I am away from that colibri I just pulled and my inventory gets auto sorted and 'cause I can macro swap more than 5 pieces of gear at once.

I feel dirty, what do?

[Gethsemane]

I could be incorrect, but isnt FFXIAH spoofing client data to retreive sale history from the AH servers. The only other way would be to have an automated toon there just constantly browsing the AH.

Guess everyone that has been to that site should be banned. Probabaly the wiki too; it provides an unfair advantage. It has step by step instructions on how to do things! Oh and spoilers!

FFXIAH.com is a very good argument to get into really when it comes to if it's cheating or not. If I were a game company and some site wanted to pay for 32 accounts, 1 per server and provide a free public service to the entire game community that really gives no one an advantage but keeps things in check in the end meh. I would honestly probably let it slide. It's not like the site is malicious while retrieving any of the data.

FFXIAH.com was basically a bandaid and end of price gouging for the most part. It definitely keeps prices in check but it could be argued that it also hurts crafters but eh. Looking at all the crafts and then a lot of the popular recipes; there's still money in crafting just not the price gouging profit that it was back before the site went live.

Since FFXIAH.com uses automation it is cheating to me. But that's arguable by a lot of people since it's not malicious to any degree. I think Square Enix will never go after this site because of how helpful it has been curbing the ingame economy. Square Enix rids the game of RMT and FFXIAH rids the game of price gougers. I wouldn't be surprised if Square Enix uses the site themselves to research people.

[BunkMonk]

I figured I shouldn't start a new thread for this, but I need help with windower macros. D: Evidently I'm a bloomin' idiot because I can't figure this crap out even after looking at a ton of guides.

As of now, I do a mix of ffxi & windower macros. Some samples from the WHM:

/console exec whmHMP.txt
/item "wizard cookie"
/wait 2
/heal
/wait 18
/item body "errant houppelande"

and a simple one

/ma "stoneskin" <me>
/console exec whmstoneskin.txt

I've figured out how to bind the bottom example, but am having a hell of a time getting the first to work.

At one point, I managed to get the first "/wait" to work, but the second wouldn't do anything. But then I changed something, and now the first one is ignored also.

This is what I was playing with last night.

alias WhmCure exec whmcure.txt
alias WhmHMP exec WhmHMP.txt
alias WhmDivine exec whmdivine.txt

keyboard_bind ^1 input /ma "Cure II" <t>;WhmCure;
keyboard_bind ^2 input /ma "Cure III" <t>;
keyboard_bind ^3 input /ma "Cure IV" <t>;
keyboard_bind ^4 input /ma "Cure V" <t>;
keyboard_bind ^5 input /ma "Repose" <t>;WhMDivine;
keyboard_bind ^6 input /ma "Stoneskin" <me>;WhmStoneskin;
keyboard_bind ^7 input /ma "
keyboard_bind ^8 input
keyboard_bind ^9
keyboard_bind ^0 input /p Protect & Shell in 3;input /ma "Protectra iv" <me>;wait 8;input /ma "Shellra V" <me>;
keyboard_bind ^h input /item "Wizard Cookie" <me>;wait 3;input /heal;whmHMP;


Fine copy-pasta job there. I obviously still have a lot of work before it's usable, but I can't figure out how to do macros with two "/wait"s in it.

Help anyone? ._.

[Hakamaru]

Help anyone? ._.

wait = pause