What Everybody Wants: Shorter, Simpler Macros

[Momohko]

If they gave more lines I would be so thankful and happy... the additional books was nice... and the /wait is nice as well and appreciated but to me its MORE LINES that the people really want! the problem may be ps2 limitations... >.> upgrade to ps3! lol @.@;; but in all srsness it is very frustrating to have a macro change half of my gear and go to another set to change the rest of it and cast the spell it slows down things and at times is very frustrating. That second counts that it takes to get to the other macro set it can be the difference between life and death lol

[Nickdogg]

Now see this thread is a great "I want change" thread. Delete all the "I want higher drop rates" threads and focus on threads like this. ^^

Bump

[ffxkenshin]

Yes, this is much more "useful" thread to really enhance the gaming experience, delete all the "I want lower drop rate" abyssea is "too easy" thread and we have more productive discussion =)

[LeChuck]

I do see your point Tamarsamar, something I didn't thought of, the recursiveness of the system. I consider your idea an excellent one but, if for any reason it's not possible, i.e. for memory reasons, mine's is definitely not memory consuming. Sure, it's explitable, but at least it's technically possible, no doubt on it. Then again, the macro limits had been risen countless and countless times again and SE never even agreed to them being a problem to be addressed so, I won't bet a single penny this time it will be any different, not even if we come with a perfect code to implement that works great on PS2 too

[Pyrsos]

wow the /equipset command is a great idea! and doesn't seem too hard to implement (not knowing the internals). if it is not possible, then calling macros within macros would be a decent hack, and it could probably be limited somehow to avoid abuse.

another clumsy but usable option would be to put more than one command in one line, using some kind of separator (";" from c-derived languajes would be a good choice).

[Jenenibui]

Yes to /equipset or something like it! or let us equip multiple pieces of equipment in one macro line. or could maybe get rid of the whole command "/equip XXXX"(XXXX is armor slot), since the game knows what type of armor a certain equip is, and be able to do "/equip "Optical Hat";"Wahlara Turban"" in one line to the character limit. Something like that alone would make like way easier.

[Arcon]

I think this is a really excellent idea. FFXI macros have been bugging me for a really long time, the <wait #> thing was a great addition, and if something like /equipset is implemented, I would finally start using them again.

As for the memory thing... I don't think it would be an issue. There's a certain memory space allocated for macros right now, and it's rather big.. 20x10x2x10x(6x60+8) = 147200 characters. A gear set could be stored very efficiently.. there's 3000 different weapons in the game right now (distinct weapon names) and 5257 pieces of armor, meaning 8257 pieces of equippable items. Stored numerically, this could be done by easily a 16bit value for each item (and would still leave tons of space for future items), storing one gear set would require 256bit, which (pessimistically speaking, since I'm not sure how characters are stored) would equal 32 characters. And that's for a whole set, 16 items worth, in about half a macro line.

So even if we stored a set for every single macro button, it would still probably be less memory than we currently use for macros. So if we cut macro lines by half (which shouldn't be a problem, since most macros are gear swaps anyway), we'd still actually saved some space. Thinking about it, SE could even store the items in the set by 16 character names, like it does in the inventory list, it would still be enough to store one set per macro line, although it would take up ~71% of the current macro space, but if they limit the maximum number of available gear sets to, say, 2000, which is more than enough for every spell in the game (1542 and some other actions like healing, ranged attack, tp, eva, etc.), and still an unrealistically high number, it would only exhaust ~36% of the whole current macro memory.

All in all, great idea and sounds viable (feel free to point out errors in my math), let's only hope SE implements something like this, I'm sure it would be greatly appreciated.

[Xilk]

This is a fantastic solution.
I would go 1 step further in suggesting how it is implemented. When you are at your Equip screen, Have another button or category so you can simply asign your currently equiped gear to a slot for an equip set.
This way, players are not endlessly going through names and text. You equip it like you normally would, then you pretty much say "save as... set01" or something like that.

any blank slots in the saved set, simply will not be switched (this allows for swapping or not swapping tp affecting slots)

[Rambus]

I have a lot of macros that uses 3 buttions of gear, sometimes I do not hit them all if I am in a tight spot.

SE needs to make more Universal gear or make macros long enough to hold 15 lines ( since mages dont care about mp)
If PS2 stops this for some reason can we drop the ps2 already? is in it hard to buy PS2s with harddrives at this point? or even getting those ps2s serviced?

If SE can do saved gear sets that would be helpful too. I would love the game not need windor scripts. I am tried of people talking to me like im gimp for not using them

[Shibaa]

LeChuck, the problem with that that I think the devs would be a little wary about implementing is that it would allow people to set up infinite macro loops. To give just one example of how this can not be a good thing, consider that /shout can be put in to macros, as well, and then a problem becomes obvious.

Anyway, we already have Grand Greedaloxes clamoring for yet more inventory, and I think that what I am asking for is slightly more reasonable (and, to be blunt, much more necessary) than that, don't you?

People always mention this, saying it will not be done because of possible infinite loops, the solution to which has already been established which is that when 1 macro calls the next, the next macro can only return back to the first after execution, and it will return back at the line it left off, So you have a 6 line macro each line can call another macro of 6 lines, and that is it. So for example:

in a macro:

/call macro1
/call macro 2
/call macro 3
/call macro 4
/call macro 5
/call macro 6

Then in macro 1 you have that do whatever with the 6 lines available and after that is done, it will come back and execute the /call macro 2, then do those 6 lines and come back and execute /call macro 3. In this way the most you will get is 6 macros of 6 lines each (36 lines total) before completion and it will not automatically repeat in an endless cycle. The requirements are that a called macro can only return back to the macro that called it, and upon return will continue in execution of original macro from where it left off.

I would also like to be able to put multiple /equips on a same line, separated by a ; or a , some /equips are so short that you can do multiple on a line.