Aliases

Fun with Aliases

Article by Hasukhe

Posted October 9, 2002

Last October 9, 2002

Original work done by Hasukhe and posted with permission from Clan Prosper. The original Document can be found here.

Aliases can be a poweful ally in the fight to reclaim and restore Dereth, but can also be powefully intimidating to the uninitiated. Fear not, aliases are a snap and this handy guide will help you get yours working!

An alias in game terms, for the unintiated, is a stand-in for something else, generally text. We use aliases to save time and to assist us with repetetive typing. Before we start looking at examples though we should talk about the syntax of creating and using an alias.

First of all, an alias will always have a semi-colon as it's first character. Usually if you want to type something into the chat window, you'd hit your Enter key to activate the chat window, but Turbine has made it so that hitting the semi-colon key (or the forward slash, for that matter) will activate the chat window for you, adding the semi-colon to the chat line, of course. This is a handy time saver and a relief of many sources of frustration. Don't worry about hitting enter first, just type in your alias and be done with it!

An alias may be of any length and any character type except for spaces; they must be one word. Aliases can contain other aliases, but only one /command can be executed at a time, so an alias to do the Moose Dance followed up by an emoted smile will not work.

Now that we know the rules governing aliases, the next thing to know is how to make one. The structure for an alias is, in Turbine's words: /alias add ;[new alias string] [alias result]

If that looks like Greek to you (and you don't happen to know Greek), don't worry, an example should help. Again, straight from Turbine, an example of how to make an alias: /alias add ;nospam Everyone please stop spamming!

Here's how that breaks down: /alias is the command used to manipulate aliases add tells the /alias command what we are doing, in this case, adding a new alias Everyone please stop spamming is the text that our alias stands for. When we use our alias, this text will be substituted for our alias.
 * nospam is the alias we are creating. When we want to use this alias, this is the text we will type in.

To use this, I'd type ";nospam" in the chat window and the world would see... Hasukhe says, "Everyone please stop spamming!"

I'd like to point out that when making an alias, the word "add" is totally superflous and may be left out thus making Turbine's example read: /alias ;nospam Everyone please stop spamming!

Say there is an emote that I like to type a lot, I can make an alias for it like so... /alias ;tgrin /e flashes a toothy grin. To use it, I'd just type which results in... Hasukhe flashes a toothy grin.
 * tgrin

In AC2, we have ye' olde standard chat commands /tell, /reply and /retell. What we don't have are the short versions of those commands like in AC, fret not though, we can make our own now with aliases... /alias add ;t /tell /alias add ;r /reply /alias add ;rt /retell

using... results in... You tell Hasukhe, "Yee Haw, aliases kick booty!"
 * t hasukhe, yee haw, aliases kick booty!

Of course, if you were accustomed to sending me tells, you might want to just make an alias for sending tells right to me, like so... /alias ;thas /tell Hasukhe, (dont' forget the comma at the end) use: result: You tell Hasukhe, "Hey! I have lots of gold for you!"
 * thas Hey! I have lots of gold for you!

OR

You might choose to make an alias for my name instead and use it with your alias for "/tell", like so... /alias ;has Hasukhe use: result: You tell Hasukhe, "How many Tonks does it take to light a torch, Hasukhe?"
 * t ;has, How many Tonks does it take to light a torch, ;has?

Ok, so that's all fine and dandy, but right now I want to show you the REALLY cool stuff (that I've found thus far) you can do with aliases.

First, you have to know that there are some built-in aliases in AC2 already. The two that I am aware of are ;target and ;loc.

Hasukhe says, "Grim Reaper"
 * target returns the name of whatever you have targeted. To use it, simply select something and type in ";target". Say I target a Grim Reaper and do that, people will see...

Since we know we can use aliases inside of aliases ("recursive aliases", for all you nerds), let's tell our fellowship what we have targeted... /alias ;ftar /f I have the ;target in my sites. use: select something (i'll use the reaper again) result: Hasukhe says to your fellowship, "I have the Grim Reaper in my sites."
 * ftar

/alias ;im /f I am at ;loc, please save me! use: result: Hasukhe says to your fellowship, "I am at 0.0N, 0.0E, please save me!"
 * loc, as you may have guessed, returns your current coordinates. Let's say I'm standing in the middle of the Osteth free-for-all arena and I want my fellowship to know where I am so that they can come move me from harm's way, here's what I'd do...
 * im

Hopefully more of these commands exist and will be discovered soon. I will add to this document as warranted by new discoverys. Please send me your findings should you have anything to add to this.

One final thing you can do with your aliases is add them to your keyboard short-cut bar so you can activate them with number keys. The first thing you have to do is make the alias that you want to add to a number key. I'll make one for the /follow command... /alias ;f /follow Now I'll put that alias in a key-slot /alias shortcut ;f 8 That will drop a shortcut for ";f" into the #8 slot of whichever short-cut bar is currently active. Ok, that's kind of a lie, due to a peculiar quirk that programmers have of starting their counting with "0" instead of "1", it actually drops it in the #9 slot, however I would imagine that Turbine fixes that before too long. For now though, I'd recommend adding short-cuts to aliases on an empty or rarely used short-cut bar then move them around to whichever ones you like per normal operating proceedure.

That about covers it. Other alias commands to know are /alias remove ;[unwanted alias string] (removes any alias you do not want anymore) /alias list (lists all of your currently programmed aliases) /alias clear (clears your ENTIRE list of aliases, careful with this one) /alias clearlist (same as clear. Guess Turbine wanted to give us plenty of room to really bork ourselves)

For kicks, here is are aliases that I frequently use. Let these whet your appetite for making your own.


 * t /tell
 * r /reply
 * rt /retell
 * fa /friend add
 * fs /friend status
 * s /sit
 * f /follow
 * po /point
 * tjp /tell John Prosper, (etc for a good number of other clanmates)
 * tr I'm targeting the ;target
 * ftr /f I'm targeting the ;target
 * tt /tell ;target,
 * im I am at ;loc
 * fim /f I am at ;loc
 * ahi /a Hail and well met fellow Prosperians!

enjoy! -Hasukhe

AC2Vault

"/alias ;rest /rest" to create the alias

"/alias location ;rest 8" to add it to my hotbar.

~SarpendonTD Here