Difference between revisions of "Macro Item Link"

Revision as of 14:02, 23 August 2023

This page is pulled from several comments in a discussion you can find here: https://www.project1999.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-248562.html

Finding Your Character's ini File

You're going to be editing your character's config file in the root directory of your eq install.

The config file is named "<character name>_project1999.ini"

So if your character's name is say "Fippy" the file will be named "Fippy_project1999.ini" (windows does not show file extensions by default, so it might just look like "Fippy_project1999").

Editing the ini File

Open the file in your text editor of choice. Notepad on windows works well enough for this.

Scroll down in the file until you see a line that says "[Socials]".

If you've already made one or more custom socials in the UI inside the actions box under the socials, you'll see lines after the [Socials] that look like this:

Page2Button1Name=friends Page2Button1Color=0 Page2Button1Line1=/who friends all Page2Button7Name=time Page2Button7Color=0 Page2Button7Line1=/time

This tutorial assumes you don't already have a macro in the 3rd page, 8th button, but you can put it on any page, any button that doesn't already have a macro defined. Avoid Page1 - it is the pre-populated macros that ship with the game and not specified in the ini file. Pages 2-10 are fair game though.

To fully specify a Social Macro Definition (SMD) requires 3 lines: line 1: macro name (what shows up on the button you'll click in the UI to trigger the macro) line 2: text color (what color the name will appear in on the button) line 3: the custom macro

Copy 3 lines of a pre-existing SMD in your ini file and paste it back into the ini file directly under the "[Socials]" line (if you had no pre-existing SMD's) or logically within the list of existing SMD's.

Page2Button7Name=time
Page2Button7Color=0
Page2Button7Line1=/time

and edit it to specify your desired (and UNIQUE) page and button.

Page3Button8Name=time
Page3Button8Color=0
Page3Button8Line1=/time

and then edit it to specify the name and the macro with the link you want to embed. You'll need to follow the instructions below to generate the special character and the 45 character item id number, but the end result will look something like this...

Page3Button8Name=selStuf
Page3Button8Color=0
Page3Button8Line1=/auc WTS SpecialCharacter007559000000000000000000000000000000000000000 Ice Forged ShacklesSpecialCharacter MQ

Determining the Item's Identifier

1. Search for the item you want to link in your macro on mqemulator.net. Eg, for blue diamond see this page: http://mqemulator.net/item.php?id=22503
2. Note the ID. You can see the ID in the URL and also in parentheses on that page. In this case, the ID is 22503
3. Convert the ID to hexadecimal. You can use a site like http://www.binaryhexconverter.com/decimal-to-hex-converter to do this. In this case, the hexadecimal number is 57E7.
4. 4 digit hex numbers should have two 0s before them, 3 digit hex numbers should have 3. (left padded 0s to 6 digits) and should be padded with 0s at the end so that it's 45 characters total. In this case, the number would be 0057E7000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Generating the Special Control Character

The first link you make will be the most difficult. From my experience, generating the special ctrl-R character was the worst of it. After that you can just copy/paste/edit the existing one into new SMDs.

Find/type a hidden/unprinted character called control-R, octal 22, hex 12 (you will need to be able to input unicode hex).

In certain text editors, when typed this will appear as a simple rectangle, other times it will not appear at all. It shows up in notepad and text edit.

* Here (http://www.poynton.com/notes/misc/mac-unicode-hex-input.html) is how to switch to unicode hex on a mac - switch to the unicode hex input keyboard and type option-1-2)

• Here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input#In_Microsoft_Windows) is how to do it in Windows)

NOTE: on a windows laptop with no dedicated numpad, you'll need to download a numpad app (I found one in the windows app store, not linking b/c no idea if it's a particularly good one/not riddled with malware)