MacroQuest64

Greetings all.

I am new to the boards, recently compiled after reading the manual (printed all 93? pages of it).

I dig that quite a few people post code that they have written. It is inspiring to see how many great ideas are out there. I have a few ideas of my own that I would love to develope.

Sadly, I have not coded anything since high school computer math crap, which was in basic more than a few years ago. Rather than being one of the dumb asses that asks dumb questions and gets flamed on their way to loafing their asses through EQ, I would actually like to grow into being a halfway decent coder.

That being said, other than learning VS6 extremely well (will be purchasing VS manuals so I will know my tool inside out), what coding language would it be best for me to start picking up so that I might get a better understanding of the scripting that is used for MQ2.

I am not untechnical - my knowledge is mostly in hardware, platforms (some unix, linux and all winblowz), lan and wan stuff. I have no doubt I can be good at coding/scripting now that I actually have a real modivation to learn it. (people ruined the joy of computing when they found ways to "work" using them.)

Any legit advice is welcome. Trolls, mah nutz on yo chin.

The absolute best advice I can give is to come up with some sort of a goal.

IE: I want to automate keeping Burnout on my mage pet.

A nice simple goal that can be a little difficult for somebody difficult, but not too hard. Once you have that solved, move onto your next goal. Just pick something small that is applicable to your class and run with it. Remember that small is key; baby steps.

There are many people around here who try to accomplish 75 things in their first day but haven't accomplished pulling their head out of their ass first. Starting with the little things will help you tremendously.

Glacier wrote:That being said, other than learning VS6 extremely well (will be purchasing VS manuals so I will know my tool inside out), what coding language would it be best for me to start picking up so that I might get a better understanding of the scripting that is used for MQ2.

Just start with the MQ2 scripting language right away. Do what fearless says, set a simple goal and work towards that. Something like what he suggested, or perhaps a spell trainer (ie keep casting a spell to get skillups). That can start really simple, just cast a spell as soon as it refreshs and when you manage that it can be expanded in absurdum (sitting down to med when mana runs out, keeping a mana regen buff on yourself, training several skills until they are all maxed, defining these spells in an ini-file, etc etc..).

Look at other people's macros in the depot for inspiration and read about the various TLO's, types and commands in the manual so you get an understanding of what is availiable to you. Read up on custom events too, they are very useful.

I am no programer by any stretch of the imagination but I have, through reading the documentation and disecting other people's macro's learned a great deal in that last 2 months (that's how long I've been using MQ). I have written many macro's for my own personal use that apply to my class and playstyle. This stuff isn't hard but just like the guys above said, start small and work your way up.

i've probably been using MQ2 as ong as neolesh

I've gotten more used to making macros by starting with something simple, and improving that macro to be more robust and crash/bug resistant. Looking through the macro depot and using themacro help or macro request forum I've learned how to make some simple macros (that usually work too!)

Even if the macro has been done already, you can look through it closely, or start another and compare the logic of both and see how you could improve your own.
ironically my first macro to work WAS a burnout macro for mage pet

something easy to start with is doing a simple tradeskill combine. god knows theres a ton of good examples out there.

I learn better from examples than from starting with a manual and a blank sheet. I am still more comfortable with plugin coding than macros due to my background but there are a LOT of things for which macros are the most convenient solution.

Take something that is annoying to have to do like bash or kick (depending on class). There is probably examples here for it, USE SEARCH, Search = god. Then start modifying and expanding it to further simplify your life.

Just read:
http://www.macroquest2.com/includes/manual.php#intro

Particularly the part about EULA violations and risks over and over and over.

RMC

Another little tidbit of advice is that once you have written your first (no matter how small or insignificant) macro, the next thing you should do is take someone else's macro and get it working for you. Obviously some of the macros out there are easier to do this with than others, and some work right "out of the box". So, once you get one macro working for you, take another that maybe wasn't written for exactly the purpose you had in mind, but the basic routine is the same, and modify it to fit your personal needs. Now you should have a fairly good idea of what is going on when a macro is running and you can really start to build your own macros.

Oh, and not very many people can sit down and write their own macros from scratch until they've been doing this for a while. It is perfectly fine to cut and paste code from multiple different macros to get a desired effect provided you give credit and ask permission before posting for public use. There's no need to reinvent the wheel, so if someone has a macro that will do what you need to then by all means make it work :).

I'm a noob too, just been getting every plugin I could find and reading it untill I understood it. Then attempting to do things on my own. Google is nice too for compile errors, syntax 'n whatnot.

http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/index.html

I took something really simple and useful and learned from that.

The yafm.mac was a GREAT example. 9Yet another forage macro).

Useful, does something complex (uses and ini file to check for destroy/save) and works well.