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LotRO UI implements Lua, preps for extreme makeover
The upcoming free-to-play conversion isn't the only big change coming to Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online over the next little while. In a new dev diary released yesterday on the European community website, Games System Engineer Narrel provided a glimpse into what began as the "pet project" of three developers and has now morphed into a full-fledged extreme makeover of the game's user interface capabilities. Using the venerable and lightweight Lua scripting language, Narrel, Agiclaw, and ForsakenArcher are closing in on their stated goal of bringing extensive customization possibilities to LotRO's UI. "The future of Lua in LOTRO is a bright one," Narrel writes. "While the current functionality is certainly limited, we fully intend to continue the development of this system so that both existing and new game systems will expose functionality to the user, allowing for a much more personalized user interface."
The Anvil of Crom: Secrets of Hyboria
I thought we'd do a bit of a departure from our usual format for this week's installment of The Anvil of Crom. As the column is a long-term chronicle of my experiences in and out of game, it's occasionally appropriate to throw a guide or two in the mix. Age of Conan is developing into a pretty deep title, and as such it's got plenty of little nooks and crannies that aren't readily apparent to either the veteran skull-splitter or the bright-eyed newb fresh off the boat in Tortage. Luckily for you, I've been making a list of the oddities I've encountered, as well as the various unanswered questions I've had since my return to Hyboria several months ago. By combining a little in-game and wiki research, I've put together this listing of a few of the game's notable quirks. Some of them involve combat, but as I'm really a PvEer at heart, you won't find much in the way of strategy or advice here. Most of this is along the lines of what I lovingly call fluff, i.e., it'll probably make your game experience more enjoyable, but it certainly isn't required reading if you just want to jump in and pwn face.
Second Life script limitations to prejudice against Mono?
In a sense, script memory limitations aren't coming to Second Life; they already exist. What's going on is the process of Linden Lab making those limits predictable, and setting things up in such a way that script memory usage doesn't cause simulator processes to thrash madly (from paging memory to and from disk). There's some interesting side-effects emerging from the overall prototype implementation, however. Mono (and, eventually C# when or if it becomes implemented as a scripting language) look like the losers.
Long-delayed Second Life script-limitations back in the public eye
It's now just over one year since Linden Lab announced that they would be implementing a some manner of script limitations over and above those which are presently a part of Second Life as it stands today. It is just over eleven months since those limitations were rescheduled to go ahead in Q3 2009 – which time has definitely long passed. Nevertheless, the script limitations system is alive and well and coming up, apparently in 2010. This constitutes good news, very good news and not so good news (in roughly that order).
Second Life objects to become HTTP-aware
While Second Life users wait with 'bated breath for the SLS 1.27 deployment that will sort out a large number of crippling group communications failures, there's an extra bonus lurking in the code. SLS1.27 will be adding an HTTP-in feature which will allow HTTP requests to be sent to Second Life objects. At present, Second Life objects can only 'dial out' to external Web-servers and services, but with few practical methods of communicating that external data and resources have changed, many object creators have had to settle for frequent polling of Web-services for data.
Yuma: New scripting tool for web developers
To web developers, scripting is the glue that connects web pages and back-end systems. For example, PHP is a very popular scripting environment that has been used to write web apps like WordPress and phpBB. For those of you who use PHP, you know that it is a dynamic, weakly-typed hypertext preprocessor. In other words, it's a scripting language that is embedded in the HTML code that makes up a web page.Inspiring Applications, Inc. hopes to catch the imagination of web developers with Yuma, their new strongly-typed, object-oriented scripting tool that is being released today. Rather than the confusing syntax of PHP, Yuma uses a simple REALBasic-like syntax. It is natively compiled to machine code on Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows for high speed.Yuma Development Server for Mac OS X is available as a free download, complete with example code, a full developer reference, language definition files for BBEdit, TextMate and Text Wrangler, and more. When you're ready to deploy your Yuma web app, you can purchase and install Yuma Enterprise Server ($149). It's a command-line app and may be set up as a daemon.To run either Yuma Development or Enterprise Server on Mac OS X, you need to be running OS X 10.3 or later on a G4, G5, or Intel-based Mac with at least 1 GB of RAM. Thanks to Brad for the tip.
Tools of the trade: Scratch for SL
MIT Media Lab's Eric Rosenbaum has produced a wonderful little tool called Scratch for Second Life (S4SL). Available for Mac or Windows (but not Linux at present, alas) S4SL allows you to create scripts by assembling simple colorful shapes (a bit like plastic bricks). S4SL is based on MIT's Scratch, and allows you to put together some useful functionality very simply. S4SL isn't going to make you a star creator of scripts overnight, though -- anyone who knows Second Life's LSL scripting language and has a modicum of programming skill can do much more, but that's not the point here.
AppleScript: Integrating shell scripts
We've talked about AppleScript how-tos before. AppleScript is fun and all, but what if you already know how to write shell scripts? Well, did you know that by integrating shells scripts into AppleScript, you can create simple applications that do useful things? It's true, and I am going to show you how. Continue reading to learn how to integrate shell scripts into AppleScripts.
Speedy creation of rich text links to Mail messages
If you use any applications with Cocoa-based text editors (TextEdit, Mail.app, and many more), you may have noticed that some of them, like Mail.app, recognize URLs and automatically turn them into links. The links are in Rich Text Format (RTF) and can be copied and pasted into other RTF-compatible text fields. To the best of my knowledge, though, there's no easy way to automate the creation of an RTF hyperlink, via AppleScript or other means. In programs that don't detect URLs, or if you want to link text to a URL, you generally have to select text, go to a menu item (Link..., Link Add..., etc.) that's a few submenus down, and then enter the url. Me? I'm always looking for the easy way out...
Macro Anatomy: Walk phase
If you have been following Macro Anatomy, you should be comfortable with macro basics by now. If not, you may want to consider taking a moment to review what we have covered thus far. For the rest of you, welcome to the next installment, where we'll be covering a commonly used, but powerful macro type, the /castsequence command.This slash command will allow the user to specify a given sequence of commands, tied to a single button. As a reminder, this will not facilitate one-click sequences, but will require you to click or press a bound key for each iteration in the sequence. This also means you'll be timing your input in step with the Global Cooldown.The most obvious use of the /castsequence command comes into play when you realize you're casting the same spells in nearly every fight. I use this type of macro for grinding, with one for PvP situations as well. (Curse of Exhaution be praised!)To use this macro, you simply open your macro interface, create a new macro and in the text box, start with /castsequence, then list the spells you want to cast, in order, separated by a comma. It should end up looking something like this:/castsequence Spell 1, Spell 2, Spell 3, Spell 4
Macro Anatomy: Crawl Phase
Welcome, my friends, to the second installment of Macro Anatomy. In this episode we'll be going over some basic macro commands and I'll introduce some simple macros for you to learn and play with.Before we move ahead, I wanted to reiterate an important change to many macros since the release of Patch 2.3 for those of you who are already writing and using macros. The /stopcasting command is no longer necessary between instant-cast, non-GCD spells. An example would be the following macro:/cast Divine Favor/stopcasting/cast Divine Illumination/stopcasting/cast Holy LightTo conserve space, it can be shortened to:/cast Divine Favor/cast Divine Illumination/cast Holy LightPrevious articles found on this site may feature macros that still contain this command. So, feel free to remove it when you copy and paste said macros.Now, let us move onto the "Crawl" portion of our Crawl-Walk-Run approach to macro writing.
Revolutionary: Answering the Call
Every Tuesday, Mike Sylvester brings you REVOLUTIONARY, a look at the wide world of Wii possibilities. Metroid Prime 3 has proven indeed that a Wii Remote and Nunchuk is the next best thing to a keyboard and mouse for first person shooting and action. Although we have few FPS titles being developed and released on the Wii (relative to party games and family-friendly content, or the main attraction of a certain other platform), the genre is among the most popular in the scripting community. This is naturally so with FPS being a favored genre among hardcore PC gamers and hardware enthusiasts. With the recent release of the demo version of Call of Duty 4 and its imminent final release, I felt it was time to pick up arms and serve you a script for this spectacular shooter.
Create your own iPhone remote application
One of the good things about the "very sweet solution" of iPhone development is that you don't need any special tools or too much knowhow to create neat applications-- if you know a little HTML, a little PHP, and have access to a text editor, you can come up with some pretty cool stuff. This tutorial from IBM's DeveloperWorks is about as simple as it gets, and yet it shows you how you can use your iPhone as a remote for iTunes, Keynote, or any other AppleScript-able applications on your Mac, with no jailbreakin' necessary.Of course, as he mentions at the end, Telekinesis did most of this stuff early on, so if you've got something standard that you want to do (like control iTunes), you don't need to write the code yourself any more. But combine the tutorial with any other custom AppleScripts you've written (or might write), and a lot of possibilities open up in terms of what you can do with your computer, straight from your iPhone.[ via MacBytes ]
Trick your iPhone voicemail into using voice recording data
The other day, I discussed how to record audio on your iPhone. Several people wrote in asking whether they could have their recordings show up in voicemail, so I scouted around a bit. I discovered that voicemail is stored in ~/Library/Voicemail and that it uses an sqlite3-compatible database to manage that information. Last night, I put together a shell script that allows you to trick the iPhone into thinking that amr files added to the voicemail folder are actual voicemails. To make this happen, I ported sqlite3 to the iPhone (You can download a copy here). I also wrote a csh script, which you can download here and a time utility, here. The reason I wrote the script in csh rather than bash (both of which appear in the standard binary distribution kit) is just that I'm more familiar with csh. To run the script, supply it with the amr file as its one argument, e.g. copy2vmail foo.amr. The script copies the amr file to the voicemail folder and updates the voicemail database as if the voicemail were received at the current time. To force voicemail to update and re-read the database, enter the phone application and quit it by holding down the home button for 4-8 seconds. Re-enter the phone application and, with luck, you will see the recording as new voice message from "VoiceRecorder". Thanks, Spaced.
Revolutionary: Exploring New Depths
Every Tuesday, Mike Sylvester brings you REVOLUTIONARY, a look at the wide world of Wii possibilities. Going by the company's success of late, neophytes might assume that Nintendo was always looked at as the redemptive innovator of the games industry. But some time around the midpoint of the Super Nintendo's life cycle, the popular sentiment started turning to "a trend isn't cool until Nintendo bucks it." Nintendo fans were two generations behind in getting an optical drive. We played grayscaled, unlit Gameboys for years while our friends dumped battery after battery into their Lynx's, Turbo Express Portables, Neo Geo Pocket Colors, and Game Gears. Even today, we're still ravening for Nintendo-flavored online gaming. Nintendo's first 3D console didn't come out until a year after Sony's, and 18 months after Sega's, so while my SNES delivered 2D nirvana in Donkey Kong Country, Super Castlevania 4, and Super Mario All-Stars, I was getting my 3D fix elsewhere.
Open man pages from Xcode
Toxic Software's posted a useful little script if you spend any amount of time in Xcode-- because manopen is having trouble with Leopard, John punched up a shell/Applescript to open man pages directly from within Xcode's command line. It's tiny (and doesn't really do much-- just opens an Xcode Help menu item), but it seems useful-- straight from the command line, you can break out the man page within a GUI, and just keep right on coding.Because the script uses UI scripting, you've got to enable an option in Universal Access preferences, but then just toss the script in your PATH and you're good to go. I can't imagine it's hugely relevant for everyone out there (I haven't put anything together from the command line in Xcode in a while), but anyone building stuff there will probably appreciate it.And if viewing pretty man pages from the command line is your thing, Atomicbird Software came up with a script that breaks out man pages in PDF form. If you love working from the command line but love reading man pages in something a little easier to browse, today's your lucky day.
Revolutionary: Beware! de Blob
Every Tuesday, Mike Sylvester brings you REVOLUTIONARY, a look at the wide world of Wii possibilities. de Blob has been getting a lot of coverage here lately because it's been announced that the freeware PC game will be making its way to our favorite console. I first heard of the game a few months ago, and it seemed like it could make for an interesting bit of roll-up gaming for my Wiimote in the absence of Katamari. I figured this week would be an opportune time to finish the scripting project I'd started back then and present a script for this gelatinous ball of Technicolor fun.
Revolutionary: Going Through the Motions
Every Tuesday, Mike Sylvester brings you REVOLUTIONARY, a look at the wide world of Wii possibilities. I was going to jump right into writing another script with you this week, but as development progressed, I remembered how much time I wasted on my first scripts because I didn't have a handle on exactly what motions were triggering the responses I was after. I figured I'd be doing you a disservice if I didn't take time out to get you primed on the nomenclature of all the motions and get you started in thinking in 3 dimensions. Last week we wrote a simple script that didn't use the Wiimote's motion detecting functionality. Some might say that defeats the purpose of using the Wiimote, but is that really what the Wiimote is about? The different input options are there to give the developer choices. Sometimes the developer will throw in lots of alternatives and pass the choice on to the gamer. Taking every feature of the controller and slapping it onto a game isn't going to assure a fun time. More than likely, you'll wind up making something repellent that people will call "gimmicky." It's best to have an understanding of the control options available, and be selective in applying or omitting ones from your project.
PackRat 1.1 adds AppleScript and Automator support
Someone must have answered Rod Schmidt's call for AppleScripters, as he has just released PackRat 1.1, a major update to his offline Backpack syncing app that brings double-whammy support for both AppleScript and Automator. You can now get almost all your Backpack data via script, which means power users can do all sorts of extra-cool nerdy things now. A 'Synchronize with Backpack' Automator action is also included, offering easy access for the rest of us to set up auto-downloads in the morning or before we leave for a trip (hint: run the action as an app attached to an iCal event).Check out Rod's announcement post for more details and to download a copy of the new PackRat version. As usual, PackRat will function as a non-expiring demo that allows working with 4 pages, while a license costs $24.95.
Terminal Tip: "Now Playing" info from the command line
Have you ever wondered whether there was a command line way to check iTunes and determine which song is currently playing. The command-line osascript utility makes this an easy problem to solve. Osascript executes AppleScript commands from Terminal's command line and can run many of the same kinds of simple scripts you'd normally run in Script Editor. Here's a quick how-to to build a Now Playing command line utility. Launch Terminal. In Terminal, enter: touch nowplaying In Terminal, enter: open -e nowplaying In TextEdit, paste the following into nowplaying. The second line wraps here but should copy and paste correctly--at least it did when I tried it out.#! /bin/bashosascript -e 'tell application "iTunes" to if player state is playing then "Now Playing: " & name of current track & " - " & artist of current track' Save the file in TextEdit and close it. In Terminal, enter: chmod 755 nowplaying Open iTunes and start playing a song. In Terminal, enter: ./nowplaying The script, when run, outputs the track name and artist. % ./nowplayingNow Playing: Everything I've Got - Iain Archer%Thanks Dave M %Gallery-2397% Update: For those of you who don't want to keep iTunes open:#! /bin/bashosascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to if ((name of processes) contains "iTunes") then do shell script ("osascript -e " & quoted form of ("tell application \"iTunes\" to if player state is playing then \"Now Playing: \" & name of current track & \" - \" & artist of current track" & ""))'
