Decorating and Streaming

I've had people in the past ask me if they could watch me decorate.

It seems like a strange request to me (honestly, there isn't much to see other than me running around like a madperson while items appear and disappear in front of you), but I've always said, "Sure!"

Last night, I decided I'd try streaming what I was doing. That way, people could not only see what was going on in the game, but also what's going on on my end with the layout editor.

This morning, in a fit of perfectionism, I went at it again to see if I could make it better.

I'm still not sure how interesting this is to people, but when I asked in Homeshow if people would be interested in watching, a few people said yes. And I'm all about pleasing other people.

It doesn't take me much extra effort to stream while I decorate--just boot it up and then go at it. However, the first two videos I've done don't have any voice explanations of what I'm doing (or explanations, period). I'm working up to that. I hate my voice, and I tend to remain totally silent while gaming, so talking while decorating in order to explain my thought processes and what I'm doing will take getting used to.

Anyway, have the first two videos:

Attempt #1 at streaming. Very clunky.

Attempt #2 at streaming. Thank you Troy for helping me figure out how to make the transition between the layout editor and the game seamless and automatic (and for giving me the idea to frame the editor so that it looks fancy!).

How To: Macro Armor (and mounts!)

So I had a request today to write up a How To for macros, since people were complaining in guild chat that it takes them too long to switch armor sets from crafting to combat. I mentioned that I have all of my gear sets macroed (crafting, combat, harvesting, AND a large selection of appearance gear outfits). Here goes!

Keep in mind that I'm using a UI mod, so while my UI may look different from yours, the general appearance will be similar, and the instructions will be exactly the same.

First step is to hit O in-game to open your "Social" menu. Then click the "Macro" tab.

There are 10 pages of macros, with 10 macros each. That means you can create up to 100 macros!

Notice that all of the macro slots on the right side say <Click to edit>. These are macro slots that are empty, and can be used to create a new macro.

(Click the images for full size images)

Once I've clicked the <Click to edit>, a window pops up. The top of the tab says "Edit Macro #XX," where XX is the number 1-100 of the macro you've chosen. In this case, I'm editing macro #86. Honestly, the macro number doesn't matter one bit, except that it's the order your macros appear in your macro window.

You also can see that there's a space for the Macro Name. That's important, because that's how you identify your macro on the fly. Think up a good name that'll help you remember what the macro's for! You can see that on the lefthand side, I have macros named "Armor," "Crafting," "Harvesting," and "Waterbreathing." Armor, Crafting, and Harvesting all equip full gear sets of gear specifically related to those various things. Armor is my gear set for PvE (on characters I PvP on, I also have a "PvP" macro to equip PvP armor). Crafting is the gear I wear when I'm doing a lot of crafting. And Harvesting is the gear I wear when I'm going out in the world and harvesting a lot of items. Harvesting is heavily stacked towards bountiful harvests, so that I get as much bang for my buck out of every node I harvest.

Waterbreathing is a very simple macro--it equips my Hadden's Earring on the first click, and on the second click, it uses it. Poor Jazabelle doesn't have waterbreathing on her own, and I don't like to carry totems when I can just use the earring...

Back to macros!

I'm going to name this macro "Test armor macro" just so I can explain a few things about macros.

What I've done below is to name my macro, then started dragging items from my equipped items tab on my character sheet (yes, I know it looks really different from the default--I like to be able to see both my equipped items and my appearance items at the same time), and dropped them in my macro window. That automatically creates an "Equip item" line, that has the item I've dragged and dropped in it.

Something to note: If you drag and drop an item from an equipped item slot, it will appear with the "Appearance" box unchecked. If you drag and drop an item from an equipped appearance item slot, it will appear in the macro window with the "Appearance" box checked for you. And if you drag and drop an item from your bags, it will show up with the "Appearance" box unchecked. You can check and uncheck the box manually for each item.

Another thing to note: You can drag and drop items onto the box for the macro's icon! If you have a specific piece of armor that reminds you of what your gear is for, it's always helpful to drag and drop that armor piece onto the icon box, so that it copies the item's icon.

In the image below, you can see my icon is hovering over the macro icon box. EQ2 does provide some default macro icons (which you can scroll through by hitting the left or right arrows to either side of the macro icon box), but I find it easier to drag and drop one of the armor pieces from my sets into the box for ease of identification.

Additionally, you can drag and drop spell icons from your knowledge book onto the icon box if you're creating a macro for your spells.

Here's that same macro, with the sleeve item dropped onto the macro icon box. This is what it'd appear as on your hotbar when you drag the macro from the macro tab onto your hotbar.

And finally, here's what your macro page would look like once you hit the "Okay" button on the bottom of the macro edit window. Voila! You have a brand new macro!

Some of my personal macros:

This macro is my armor macro. As you can see, it has a lot of items in it--every single armor, weapon, jewelry, and charm slot, to be exact. Notice that only gear that would be visible on my character has an "Appearance" box. All of them are unchecked, as this is my combat gear, and so I want the gear to go to my combat clothing slots.

Additionally, the macro has two slash commands at the start-- "title setprefix" and "title setsuffix." These automatically set my character's prefix and suffix titles to the titles I've chosen.

For Jazabelle, prefix 74 is "Lady," while suffix 59 is "the Architect." Each character's prefix and suffix numeration are different, based on what titles they've achieved, and what their AAs are (since some AAs also grant prefix and suffix titles). To find out what titles your character has available, and what their number is, type "/title list" in-game. You should get feedback that looks something like this:

The more titles you have, the longer your list will be, of course.

To remove a title in a macro, you simply put the command "/title setprefix -1" or "/title setsuffix -1" depending on whether it's a prefix title or a suffix title you wish to remove.

For my crafting gear, I've named it "Crafting," and set the macro icon to be my Othmir Shell Armor.

The gear in my Crafting macro is geared towards success chance, progress increase, sculpting bonuses (since I'm a carpenter), and of course, the ever useful Hand of the Maker.

You'll notice in my macro that I have a slot to "Use: Earring of the Solstice." This is done by going to the dropdown "Macro Step:" and changing it from "Command" to "Use Item," then clicking the "Add Step" button.

From there, you can drag and drop an item that can be used (such as a totem, a piece of gear with a "use" feature, a charm with a "use" feature, etc) onto the button that appears.

I like to also have the "Use item" option for my Harvesting gear's harvester kit (all the items I have that have a + to harvesting of various types). That way I can ensure that I have all the harvesting bonuses possible when I go out harvesting.

Keep in mind that a macro fires off every single line instantaneously, so to get a macro to fire off properly when you equip a bunch of items and use an item (whether or not you had to equip it first), you'll have to click the macro twice.

This is because you can't use an item at the same time as you're equipping items. It will cancel the use. However, the second time you click the macro, you've already equipped all the gear, so the macro simply fires off the use.

Here's a simple example of one of my appearance armor macros. Notice that all of the gear has the "Appearance" box checked, so that it goes into my appearance tab, not my armor tab.

You'll notice at the bottom that I also have a bunch of /cancel_maintained spells listed. This is so that when I click this macro, I can also change my equipped mount to match my gear.

Mounts are an odd thing. If they're in your Mount tab, you can drag and drop them into your macro. However, that will cause them to automatically create a "Use Item" macro line for the mount. And you can't use a mount that's in the mount tab. You have to stick it in the mount slot and click the use mount button, or stick it in the mount slot and add the line /summon_mount to your macro. You cannot change what mount you are riding on the mount tab via macros. You can change the appearance of the mount you are riding, though!

What that means is, the mount you summon on your mount tab has to manually be changed. So if I want to ride my SuperUberWargOfDoom for fast ground mount speeds instead of my SuperUberSokokarOfDoom for flight, I have to manually drag and drop the mount from the mount tab to the equipped mount box on the mount tab.

You can get around that, though!

Say I want to use flight wings, as in the above macro. I have a warg equipped in my equipped mount box. I can't use a macro to switch mounts. But if I have a flying mount in my bags, I can do a Use Item macro line for the mount in my bags. I can also do an Equip Item macro line (it must be done through the dropdown box at the top--dragging and dropping the mount into the window will just try to use it), and set the mount I want to use as my appearance to the 1st Charm slot. For some reason, instead of equipping the mount in the actual charm slot, it equips the mount in the appearance mount box of the mount window.

So I can change my flying appearance to be whatever I want, and keep my SuperUberSokokarOfDoom in my inventory to cast the mount spell when I want to fly. And I can keep my SuperUberWargOfDoom equipped in my main mount slot on the mount tab at all times, and switch mounts with the single click of a button.

Which brings us to...

My mount macros.

The above image is of my ground mount. As you see, I have several /cancel_maintained spells listed in my macro. This is because sometimes I switch out my mount for various reasons (I have multiple mount macro spells, and several mounts in my bags to allow this). If I were to leave off the /cancel_maintained lines, when I tried to click my mount macro while already mounted, for the Ground Mount macro, I would need to double click the button (the first click dismounts me, and the second click summons the new mount + appearance). For the Flying Mount macro, I would instead receive the error, "Not while mounted" (as it would attempt to summon my flying mount while I was still mounted on my ground mount).

To combat that, I use /cancel_mount and the name of the mount exactly as it appears in the maintained spells window when I summon it. That way, one click first cancels the mount I'm riding, then summons the new mount.

And there you have it. Some macros to make your life easier, whether it's changing armor, changing appearance armor, or changing mounts!

How to Build a Straight Staircase (Without the Layout Editor)

Building staircases is often the bane of homeowners. The common instinct is to either start building from your bottom floor or your top floor, and to simply try your best to meet up with the other floor in the right number of steps.

With that method, you have no control over where your top step (or bottom step, depending on where you start) winds up. Some people get around this by building the bottom floor, the stairs, and then putting in the top floor, so that at least the top floor lines up with the stairs.

Another problem is that you often wind up with steps oddly spaced, or not aligned properly.

That's a pain in the butt.

There's an easier way to set up your stairs, so that they fit nicely in the room you're building, you know exactly where the top step and bottom step will be, and they line up perfectly with the upper floor.

It doesn't matter whether the staircase you want to build is along the cardinal axes, or whether it's at an angle--as long as you set the stairs straight to each other, this staircase tutorial will work.

To begin with, you're going to want to take your step item and size it appropriately so that it fits in the location where your top step will wind up. Use whatever material you like for your steps. Some ideas include:

• Stair building block
• Block building block
• Divider tops (or bottoms)
• Table
• Shelf
• Columns
• Rocks

For this tutorial, I went with white marble stairs. Remember, size it to fit your upper floor's opening!

Next, you'll want to lower the first step down to the bottom floor.

Once your stair is positioned properly, take more of your step items and line them up in a straight line, each step item touching the one before it.

When you have your bottom step where you want it to be, stop adding steps. I advise that you have at least 9 steps between the bottom floor and upper floor. The larger the distance between the upper floor and the lower floor, the more steps you're going to need.

I find it easiest to have an odd number of steps. In this example, I have 9--the minimum that I feel is a good number for stairs.

Now that you have all of your steps lined up, you're going to want to raise the first step you placed. We'll call that step 1.

This next bit is going to seem strange until you really think about it--in a staircase of 9 steps, I want to raise step 5 next--the middle step. This is because it's easy to divide spaces in half visually, but much harder to accurately guess what 1/9th of the space looks like. If I were to raise step 2, I would need to divide the remaining space into 9. By raising step 5 and using it to divide the distance between the lower floor and the upper floor, I know for a fact that step 5 is exactly where it needs to go. It's the middle step, and it goes midway up.

Next, we're going to divide the space between step 1 and step 5. That would be step 3, the middle step of the remaining steps.

Now we get to divide the space between step 1 and step 3. Logically, that means we're raising step 2, as that's the step between 1 and 3.

There's a large gap between steps 3 and 5. We should probably fix that by raising step 4.

We now have half our stairway complete. It looks nice, and it didn't take any camera swiveling or multiple raises and lowerings of the steps to get them spaced properly. Which means that since we have half complete, we should probably think about the other half. We do the same thing, raising step 7 to split the space between the bottom floor and step 5.

Then we raise step 6 to split the space between 5 and 7.

Next, we raise step 8 to split the space between 7 and the bottom floor.

Finally, we raise step 9 a bit to make sure step 8 can be reached from the bottom floor. You may have to adjust the spacings of steps 8 and 9 to get their distances to match the rest of the steps.

In just a few minutes, you've produced a nice, even staircase with a minimum of hassle.

Here's a video showing the building of a staircase in action:

And here's the slideshow I presented at SOE Live 2014's Hardcore Decorating player panel.

Hardcore Decorating 2014--How to Build A Straight Staircase

This is the "tiling" class I taught on Test Copy (before it was Beta) on tiling with the layout editor. Note, the bolded section in the middle is also obsolete with the most current layout editor, AS LONG AS you use the Diff button instead of New From Diff. If you use New From Diff, the instructions are still applicable. If you use the Diff button, you can skip the bolded section AND the end section, since your editor will automatically fill in the correct UIDs of items in the crate.

Keep in mind this was written in 2011, so while it doesn't tell you exactly what to do, it should give you an idea of what's needed to tile.:

You say to the guild, "Alright, first up.... everyone, I want you to make sure you have your layout editor open."

You say to the guild, "Let me know when you have it up."

You say to the guild, "*monotone* Everyone open your books to page 143, and look at the first paragraph..."

You say to the guild, "Good!"

You say to the guild, "Alright. First thing everyone's going to do is look at the right side of your layout editor."

You say to the guild, "I don't mean all of the controls. I mean further right than that."

You say to the guild, "The veeery right side of the window."

You say to the guild, "Looking at it? Good. Now grab it with your mouse pointer and draaaaaaaag it right even further."

You say to the guild, "Well, Daani cheated!"

You say to the guild, "everyone ELSE drag it until the scrollbar disappears ;)"

You say to the guild, "You should see that the last column is called "UID""

You say to the guild, "Very good. Now, this is when things get a little complex."

You say to the guild, "Let's step away from Norrath for a moment, and pretend we're at a biiiiiig fancy (but not too fancy, because people are wearing nametags) party."

You say to the guild, "At this biiiiiiig party, there are several people named Bob. Strangely enough, every single Bob is identical!"

You say to the guild, "Luckily for us, they're not related. And they all have different last names."

You say to the guild, "So it's easy for us to tell who Bob Smith is, versus Bob Orville."

You say to the guild, "That's exactly what the UID is."

You say to the guild, "It tells the game, "Hey, THIS Grassy Square tile is NOT the same as THAT Grassy Square tile!""

You say to the guild, "To go back to our party, Bob Smith is over by the punchbowl. Bob Orville had to visit the men's room."

You say to the guild, "We can't just switch Bob Smith and Bob Orville around, because Bob Smith is pouring punch into his cup, and Bob Orville... well. We don't want him standing next to the punchbowl, that's for sure."

You say to the guild, "So the UID is what keeps your game from mixing items up in the layouts."

You say to the guild, "It's what keeps your "Go up the stairs" teleporter at the bottom of the stairs, and your "Go down the stairs" teleporter at the top of your stairs."

You say to the guild, "It is also assigned to each item EACH TIME YOU PUT IT IN YOUR HOUSE."

You say to the guild, "That means, when you place an item from your bags into the house, it gets assigned a UID."

You say to the guild, "If you right click the item and send it to the moving crate, it STILL has the same UID."

You say to the guild, "If you right click the item and move it to a new location, it has the same UID."

You say to the guild, "But if you pick up the item.... well, it's not actually Bob Smith. It's Jane Smith, and she just got a divorce from Bob Smith."

You say to the guild, "So her last name changes."

You say to the guild, "Because she sure doesn't want to be associated with THAT jerk anymore!"

You say to the guild, "And when you place the item back in your house, she's marrying someone else. Maybe she marries a John Doe."

You say to the guild, "So now her last name is Doe."

You say to the guild, "And the tile has a brand new UID!"

You say to the guild, "I think of UIDs as the last names of items, if you haven't yet caught that."

You say to the guild, "The catch is that every single "person" in a house has a different "last name.""

Gracey says to the guild, "and the last name changes if you pick it up"

You say to the guild, "Yep!"

You say to the guild, "You can never ever have two of the same UID in a house, or it really confuses the game. It can't figure out which item you mean. It's like having two Bob Smiths. Every time you call, "Hey Bob Smith!" they both turn around."

You say to the guild, "So, everyone think they understand UIDs and their importance?"

Kallus says to the guild, "and the newest guest always has the highest numbered last name"

Zula says to the guild, "when you say person you mean item?"

You say to the guild, "Yep!"

You say to the guild, "To both the comment and question."

You say to the guild, "And that's useful information to know, about the newest item in a house having the highest UID. You can sort by UID and figure out the order items were placed in the house."

You say to the guild, "Alright, with that in mind...."

You say to the guild, "The layout editor does NOT know what an item's UID is unless the layout itself tells the editor. That means, when you open a layout in the layout editor, all of the items have the correct UIDs."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "so, when i save a layout, and open it in the editor, how do all the UIDs for items that were already placed in a previous session get assigned?"

You say to the guild, "They're already there in the layout."

You say to the guild, "The game assigned them."

You say to the guild, "And the editor can read that information in the layout file and spit it out in an easy to understand method for us."

Zula says to the guild, "when they were 1st placed ?"

You say to the guild, "Mainly, by sticking it in the UID column ;)"

You say to the guild, "yep."

You say to the guild, "From the moment you place an item in a house, it has a number attached to it."

You say to the guild, "That number WILL NOT EVER CHANGE unless you PICK UP the item."

You say to the guild, "It is a number assigned by the game server."

You say to the guild, "NOT by the layout."

You say to the guild, "NOT by the layout editor."

You say to the guild, "That number does not ever change."

You say to the guild, "That's why your teleport pads no longer get mixed up."

You say to the guild, "And why your player written books stay in the order you place them."

You say to the guild, "Every single player written book that was written in a Stonehide Leather Notebook has the same ItemID. The game doesn't care about the book's title. It positions items by their ItemID and UID."

Daani says to the guild, "well permanently until you pick the item up"

You say to the guild, "Yep. It only changes if you remove the items from the housing world, and put them back."

Andala says to the guild, "do they go away when you crate them?"

You say to the guild, "nope."

You say to the guild, "The crate is bascially just a thing that makes an item intangible and invisible."

You say to the guild, "The crate still preserves the item's location even when it's in the crate."

You say to the guild, "The item's just not visible anymore."

Andala says to the guild, "when you pick it up and place it again it gets another randomly assigned semi permanent ID?"

Passionate says to the guild, "because it's part of that "housing world""

You say to the guild, "Yes."

You say to the guild, "And it's not random."

You say to the guild, "It's chronological."

You say to the guild, "But it's chronological across the entire server."

Passionate says to the guild, "like grassy square <1> grassy square<2>"

You say to the guild, "So when you're placing items, you may notice you have an item with a UID of 47663197"

You say to the guild, "And you may notice that the next item you placed has a UID of 47663200."

You say to the guild, "That's because someone else in the game (or several someones) placed three other items before you placed yours."

Kallus will curse Jazabellex when his numbers are so far apart... she's at it again!.

Passionate says to the guild, "oh ...so it's world wide not in your house only"

You say to the guild, "Yes, it's world wide."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "surely with all the house items constantly being placed across a server, the UIDs would now be counting up into the trillions? i'd have thought they'd need to recycle numbers now and then."

You say to the guild, "But all houses occupy the same "world" in the sense that they all allow us to do the same things -- take items, place them, move them around, etc."

You say to the guild, "They may recycle numbers, I don't know. All I know is that even though I'm in my own home, the numbers jump sometimes."

Passionate can definitely feel her brains moving towards the nearest exit in her head ....

You say to the guild, "Sometimes I have perfectly chronological numbers."

You say to the guild, "I have every number between 47663197 and 47663200."

You say to the guild, "And other times I jump from 47663197 to 47663200."

You say to the guild, "The times it jumps tend to be the times when the server is busier."

You say to the guild, "And the times I get ...hmmm. can't think of the word. Not chronological. Sequential!"

You say to the guild, "When I get 'em sequential, it's at times when the server is almost dead."

You say to the guild, "So perhaps it's not worldwide, maybe it's only per each house type. Either way, it's NOT just in a single house."

You say to the guild, "To be honest though.... none of this matters for actually using the UIDs ;)"

You say to the guild, "What matters is that all house items have a UID. Each UID is unique. That's why it's a Unique ID."

You say to the guild, "And each UID is persistent, until the moment you PICK UP the item. When it leaves the housing world, it loses the UID."

You say to the guild, "When it is replaced back in the housing world, it gains it again."

You say to the guild, "But it gains a different one."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "or at least a new one."

You say to the guild, "Yes. I said that badly, sorry."

You say to the guild, "When it is replaced back in the housing world, it gains a new UID."

You say to the guild, "There, that's what I meant to say."

You say to the guild, "Okay. So. Now that we all understand that all items have UIDs and what their use is (helpign the server differentiate between items) let's examine WHY we need to know that."

You say to the guild, "Over here, I have a pretty (ugly) garden."

You say to the guild, "Over here, I have a stack of grassy squares."

You say to the guild, "Both my garden and my stack of squares use grassy squares."

You say to the guild, "I've decided, "Hey, I want to tile more of this room in squares, but I'm really not feeling like doing it by hand."

You say to the guild, "Actually, I've decided I want to tile the OTHER room in squares."

Gracey says to the guild, "so you are moving them to preserve the UID's..."

You say to the guild, "Yep."

You say to the guild, "I could have just picked them up in my bags, come over here, and dropped them all."

You say to the guild, "But that would have changed the UIDs."

You say to the guild, "So."

You say to the guild, "I'm a bit of a garden freak in EQ2. I love my gardens."

You say to the guild, "I have my pretty (ugly) garden in the other room."

You say to the guild, "And I've decided I need a garden in this room too."

You say to the guild, "Both gardens use grassy squares."

You say to the guild, "I have this stack here, and the three in my pretty (ugly) garden over there."

You say to the guild, "Each grassy square has a UID assigned to it."

You say to the guild, "But.... I'm not going to be shifting them around by hand. I'm lazy, and the editor comes with a tool that makes it really easy to tile things."

You say to the guild, "It's the tile editor tool!"

You say to the guild, "Er, tile area tool."

You say to the guild, "So now I want everyone to go to their editors."

You say to the guild, "Click Tools, navigate down to Create objects, and click Tile area."

You say to the guild, "It should pop open a window named "Tile an Area" with a lot of scarrrrrrrrry boxes."

You say to the guild, "Okay! So now you're looking at the scary window. And you're panicking."

You say to the guild, "And you want to /quit desktop RIGHT NOW and never touch the editor again."

You say to the guild, "Or at least close the scary box so it's not staring at you.... BUT YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO!"

Zula says to the guild, "no just close that window lol"

You say to the guild, "But you're NOT ALLOWED TO! *stamps foot*"

You say to the guild, "You have to leave it open, 'cause I said, and I'm the teacher."

Kahlef says to the guild, "But... but..."

You say to the guild, "So. Instead of looking at all of the scary boxes and panicking.... lets look at ONE row of boxes at a time."

You say to the guild, "The very first row is a dropdown menu."

You say to the guild, "If you open it up, it has three options."

You say to the guild, "The XY Plane, which is a very fancy mathematical way of just saying "The floor""

You say to the guild, "Luckily, Jesdyr took pity on us poor not-mathematical people, and put (floor) there so we know what the heck he's talking about."

You say to the guild, "Then below that says the XZ Plane. Jesdyr has kindly informed us that what he ACTUALLY meant by that was (North/South wall)"

You say to the guild, "And what THAT means is, if I want to tile a wall with tiles...."

You say to the guild, "And the wall is either to the North or to the South, I pick that option."

You say to the guild, "In this case, it would either be the wall where the guild hall doors are..."

Andala says to the guild, "what if its inbetween the cardinal points like NW or SE?"

You say to the guild, "Or the wall opposite the doors where the Qeynos Claymore is set up."

You say to the guild, "You would have to rotate the wall you made."

You say to the guild, "Which is a lesson for another time."

You say to the guild, "For now we're just going to work on cardinal points."

You say to the guild, "Or at least, it's a lesson for after we get through using the tool on the floor ;)"

You say to the guild, "So then! Obviously the final option is for walls that are to the East or West."

You say to the guild, "Honestly? We could care less about walls right now."

You say to the guild, "We're trying to build a GARDEN! We need a grassy floor, not some dumb grassy walls!"

You say to the guild, "So..... we're going to leave the editor on the floor option."

You say to the guild, "and now, the first box isn't so scary anymore!"

You say to the guild, "So let's move on to the second line."

You say to the guild, "It says "Start point" on i t."

You say to the guild, "Hmm.... if I had to guess.... I'd say that's the point our editor will start tiling from."

You say to the guild, "But...."

You say to the guild, "When you pick a point to put a tile on, it's the CENTER of the tile that winds up there."

You say to the guild, "So this start point is obviously the CENTER of the first tile that the editor is going to start with."

You say to the guild, "We have to take that into account when picking our start point."

You say to the guild, "In this case, I'm going to pick...."

You say to the guild, "Right here."

Your location is -7.61, 0.23, 2.37. Your orientation is 48.82, 0.00, 0.00

You say to the guild, "Which is -7.6, 0.23, 2.4"

You say to the guild, "I rounded a little because I like pretty numbers, but you get the idea."

Andala says to the guild, "question?"

You say to the guild, "Yes?"

Andala says to the guild, "if you had placed your first tile where you wanted it and used the same/diff thing in the editor"

Andala says to the guild, "would it be giving you the center point location of that tile you could then use?"

You say to the guild, "Yep!"

You say to the guild, "In fact, that's such a good idea.... let's do it!"

You say to the guild, "I'm going to save my "with" layout now."

House layout save successful

You say to the guild, "After first moving the tile where I want it, of course."

You say to the guild, "Now that I have my with saved, I'm going to pack it in the crate."

You say to the guild, "And save without."

House layout save successful

You say to the guild, "And then I am going to New From Diff in the layout editor."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "say, Jaz. how did you ever come up with naming your difference files "with" and "without"?"

Kahlef coughs.

You say to the guild, "Gee Tock, I think it was from Rakuno, who got it from you!"

Tockvisits says to the guild, "LOL"

Kahlef whistles innocently.

Tockvisits highfives Kahlef.

Kahlef highfives back.

Starting layout changes.

Loading house layout complete!

You say to the guild, "So, I have a layout file with my position for this tile in it. I'm going to copy that position over into the evil Tile an Area box."

You say to the guild, "now you'll notice..."

You say to the guild, "I started in the Northeast corner of the room."

You say to the guild, "That's because the editor tiles from North to South."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "always?"

Jazabellex stands North and points South.

You say to the guild, "And east to west..."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "even if you set the end point to be in the opposite directly?"

Jazabellex stands East and points West.

Tockvisits says to the guild, "direction?"

You say to the guild, "UNLESS you tell it otherwise."

You say to the guild, "This is the default direction it goes."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "ah ha, hence the (optional) there."

You say to the guild, "Oh, we're not even there yet."

You say to the guild, "We're completely ignoring that."

You say to the guild, "In fact, Jesdyr was here yesterday, and you know what he said?"

Tockvisits says to the guild, "that's good to know. North to South, East to West."

You say to the guild, "DO NOT FILL OUT THAT LINE."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "ha ha, okay. "

You say to the guild, "Actually, he said that about the Start Rotations line, too."

You say to the guild, "Start Rotations is for a feature that isn't finished yet."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "yeah, was jsut about to ponder that line."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "good to know. much less confusing now."

You say to the guild, "So we've managed to make 4 rows unscary so far."

You say to the guild, "Okay, so now we're on the line called "Item Name.""

You say to the guild, "Geeeeeeeeeeeeee I wonder what I should put there?"

You say to the guild, "Quick, someone who's not Tock, Gracey, or Rakuno, tell me what to put there!"

Passionate says to the guild, "<crickets>"

Andala says to the guild, "er the name of the item as displayed in the editor?"

Kallus says to the guild, "grasy square"

You say to the guild, "YES!"

You say to the guild, "Thanks guys! I never would have figured it out if it weren't for you, then we'd be stuck here alllll night while I tried out different things :("

You say to the guild, "Okay, but to be completely serious, you can put ANYTHING YOU WANT right there."

You say to the guild, "The game and the editor don't CARE what you call your items."

Andala says to the guild, "which is why it says na (not applicable)?"

You say to the guild, "You can decide to call all of your Grassy Squares Bob, and it would still say, "Okay! I can put Bob right there for you, don't worry about it!""

You say to the guild, "Yes."

Kahlef ponders about filling that line with "Cheese".

You say to the guild, "I like to put in the name as it appears in the editor."

You say to the guild, "But it isn't necessary."

You say to the guild, "I could just as easily put in Garden Floor"

You say to the guild, "And it would work."

You say to the guild, "However...... the next part is VERY important."

Andala says to the guild, "that UID thing"

Daani says to the guild, "ok, so that little magnifying glass next to thename? don't click it."

You say to the guild, "Nope! Close. But not quite."

You say to the guild, "If you look at your editor, there is a column all the way to the left called "ItemID""

Gracey SO wants to click the magnifying glass now.

Kallus says to the guild, "3136362027"

Tockvisits says to the guild, "i did click it. brought up a list of 'standard items' but i have no idea how to edit that list."

You say to the guild, "Strangely enough..... that's what you put under Item ID."

Daani says to the guild, "oh, mine ended up crashing my editor lol"

You say to the guild, "So, here's a puzzle for you guys."

You say to the guild, "I just opened my layout editor."

You say to the guild, "I have not opened a layout."

You say to the guild, "I went to the Tile an Area tool...."

You say to the guild, "And I need to find out what the itemID is for the Grassy Squares!"

You say to the guild, "How can I do that?"

Daani says to the guild, "click the magnifying glass and hope you don't crash? :)"

You say to the guild, "(Hint: I already did it once.)"

You say to the guild, "Bzzzt!"

Kahlef says to the guild, "Ask Jazabelle for th item ID?"

You say to the guild, "BZZZZZZZZT and no cheese or booze for you for a week!"

Daani says to the guild, "do a save from diff?"

Tockvisits says to the guild, "um... link it and copy the link out of game into text editor?"

You say to the guild, "DING!"

Kahlef says to the guild, "NUUUUUUUUU!!"

You say to the guild, "Daani wins!"

You say to the guild, "Do a New From Diff for one of the items."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "aw... Daani always wins... /grumble"

You say to the guild, "So that you have the information in the layout editor."

You say to the guild, "Now... I did a New From Diff, and I have a single grassy square in my layout file."

You say to the guild, "The ItemID is listed as 692760726."

You say to the guild, "That's a kind of long number."

You say to the guild, "And I've always hated typing numbers."

You say to the guild, "So instead.... I'm going to go to the ItemID box."

You say to the guild, "And I'm going to double click it!"

You say to the guild, "That selects the number for me."

You say to the guild, "Then I am going to ctrl+c to copy it."

You say to the guild, "And I am going to go to the Tile an Area box."

You say to the guild, "I am going to erase the 1 that is there."

You say to the guild, "And I am going to ctrl+v"

You say to the guild, "So now, my amazingly long number is copied perfectly into the Tile an Area window."

You say to the guild, "With absolutely no mistakes!"

You say to the guild, "Now I look at Item Scale."

You say to the guild, "Guess what that is!"

Daani looks around.

Daani says to the guild, "um, 3?"

You say to the guild, "*waits* No? Obviously, that box is the item scale."

Daani says to the guild, "oh, hehe"

You say to the guild, "Oh, you all misunderstood me."

You say to the guild, "Anyway! That number is actually 4.1 for this tile."

You say to the guild, "which... I like the size of this tile."

You say to the guild, "So I'm going to set the Item Scale to 4.1, so ALL of my tiles are this size."

You say to the guild, "Oh gosh, almost done! Only four boxes to go."

You say to the guild, "So now, we look at the "Number of tiles""

You say to the guild, "And we look at the X"

You say to the guild, "And we panic a little bit, because what the HECK does that mean?!"

You say to the guild, "....and then we look at the Layout Editor's main window."

You say to the guild, "And we look at the top row, where it tells us what each column is."

You say to the guild, "And we see that X is E/W!"

You say to the guild, "So.... putting those two things together... that means...."

You say to the guild, "Number of tiles X is the number of tiles in the East - West direction we want to have."

You say to the guild, "I have 13 tiles in my stack."

You say to the guild, "I kind of only want to use 12, because I can make a rectangle with 12. I can't really make one with 13."

You say to the guild, "Okay! So.... I need to pick a number of tiles to go in the east-west direction."

You say to the guild, "And I have 12 tiles."

You say to the guild, "I kind of like the idea of having 4 tiles going this way."

You say to the guild, "So I'll put in 4 for the Number of tiles X."

You say to the guild, "And I look at the Number of tiles Y box...... and I bet someone can tell me what the Number of tiles Y box should be."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "7!"

Zula says to the guild, "3"

Tockvisits says to the guild, "2?"

You say to the guild, "Tock fails class. Tock must now go repeat the introductory course "opening a layout file.""

Kallus says to the guild, "votes 3"

You say to the guild, "Zula however, passes with honors."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "uh, i suck at this."

Tockvisits sighs at Jazabellex.

Daani comforts Tockvisits.

You say to the guild, "The Y box is how many tiles in the North South direction you want."

You say to the guild, "Just like the number of tiles in the East West."

You say to the guild, "And since I had 12 tiles..."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "i'll never be a famous decorator now!"

Tockvisits grumbles under his breath.

You say to the guild, "And I wanted 4 tiles one way...."

Daani says to the guild, "and we said math would never be useful after high school!"

You say to the guild, "That means (simple math guys!) 3 tiles the other. Which you all told me, except Tock, so obviously everyone but Tock is going to become incredible."

Tockvisits cries at Jazabellex.

You say to the guild, "Oooh oooh now we come to the FUN boxes!!"

You say to the guild, "Okay."

You say to the guild, "I have tiles at scale 4.1"

You say to the guild, "I want them to be RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER."

You say to the guild, "How far apart do they have to be?"

Daani says to the guild, "ooh ooh I know! 8.2"

Gracey says to the guild, "with no lines?"

You say to the guild, "Right. Right next to each other with no lines."

Tockvisits scratches his head.

You say to the guild, "Daani wins a lollipop!"

You say to the guild, "And since tiles are square..."

Tockvisits glares menacingly at Daani!

Tockvisits says, "teacher's pet."

You say to the guild, "I want to put in 8.2 in BOTH boxes."

You say to the guild, "So that each tile is 8.2 from the one next to it in the North/South direction"

You say to the guild, "And each tile is 8.2 away from the one in the East/West direction."

Andala says to the guild, "I don't quite understand"

Andala says to the guild, "if we are measuring from the center"

Tockvisits says to the guild, "interesting that we're given the option of setting them to something different.... wonder what i could do with that..."

Andala says to the guild, "does the scale you choose assume from the center? I would have guessed half scale"

Daani says to the guild, "remember Gracey's lesson? that we move tiles 2 times the scale"

You say to the guild, "Tock, it's for tiling if you're not using tiles. Say... dividers or stone blocks."

Gracey says to the guild, "this is the part you missed out earlier...."

You say to the guild, "Andala wasn't here for Gracey's lesson."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "we're measuring from the center of one tile, to the center of the adjacent tile."

Daani says to the guild, "oh sorry"

Andala looks sad.

You say to the guild, "Andala, the length of one tile is actually 2x the scale."

You say to the guild, "As I told you before, a tile of scale 0.5 has a length of 1."

You say to the guild, "In order to get a tile with a length of 1 sitting next to a tile with a length of 1, we have to MOVE the tile a distance of 1"

You say to the guild, "But that tile is only scale 0.5"

You say to the guild, "which means that to put a tile next to another tile with no seam..."

You say to the guild, "We have to multiply the scale by 2."

Tockvisits:Tockvisits\/a says to the guild, "the tile's scale is effectly set to be it's radius, from center to edge?"

You say to the guild, "Yes."

You say to the guild, "Exactly."

Tockvisits cheers!

Tockvisits says to the guild, "I know stuff!"

You say to the guild, "Sorry, I try to avoid any technical terms ;)"

You say to the guild, "Although a radius would be a circle, so.... ;p"

You say to the guild, "Okay. So that's why we set the tile spacing to 8.2."

You say to the guild, "Since we're working with squares, it's the same on both sides."

You say to the guild, "If we were working with dividers, it might be different. But we're not!"

You say to the guild, "So... I've filled out the Tile an Area window."

You say to the guild, "The next thing to do is hit Create."

You say to the guild, "But before I do that... I want everyone to fill out their window."

You say to the guild, "I don't care what you put in for your Start Point. Pick your /loc if you want."

You say to the guild, "For item name, pick whatever you want as well."

You say to the guild, "For item ID, use 692760726"

You say to the guild, "For item scale, put 4.1"

You say to the guild, "Number of tiles, X is 4, Y is 3."

You say to the guild, "Tile spacing, both are 8.2"

You say to the guild, "Now.... hit create."

You say to the guild, "And watch magic happen."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "numbers!"

You say to the guild, "Now.... everyone look over at the UID column."

The rest of the instructions are obsolete with version 1.6.6.3 and above of the layout editor. Instead of following the instructions below, you would:

1. Place all of the tiles you want the game to use as your floor (or ceiling or wall) into the moving crate of the house.
2. Save a layout with those items in the moving crate. I call it ninekiller.
3. Go to Tools > Replace Tmp UIDs.
4. Select your ninekiller layout.
5. Hit go.
6. Save the resulting layout in the layout editor. It now has the correct UIDs.
7. Load the layout in-game.

The following instructions are the old instructions for any version of the layout editor before 1.6.6.3.

You say to the guild, "Those are some pretty UIDs aren't they?"

You say to the guild, "98001, 98002, 98003...."

Andala says to the guild, "nice and sequential"

You say to the guild, "Why, it's almost like... the layout editor MADE THEM UP!"

You say to the guild, "That's right guys."

You say to the guild, "The layout editor made those up."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "shifty editor... trying to tricks us."

You say to the guild, "Why? Why didn't it use the UIDs of the items we want to use for our floor?"

You say to the guild, "Because we have no way of telling the layout editor WHICH items we want to use for our floor."

You say to the guild, "Well we do."

You say to the guild, "But it takes extra work."

Andala says to the guild, "because the editor uses the same item id since its the same item type?"

You say to the guild, "ItemID is something we told it."

You say to the guild, "When you use the tile area tool, the UIDs will ALWAYS start with 98001."

Andala says to the guild, "but it assigned them to all the tiles why? because we created an Object?"

Andala says to the guild, "something the editor now sees as one thing"

You say to the guild, "No. ItemID is always the same. ALWAYS."

You say to the guild, "Every single grassy square in existence has an ItemID of 692760726"

You say to the guild, "ALL of them."

You say to the guild, "That's how the game knows it's a grassy square."

You say to the guild, "ItemIDs are how the game says "grassy square.""

You say to the guild, "Remember, a game is all math."

You say to the guild, "All numbers."

You say to the guild, "And in computer-land, Grassy Square = 692760726"

You say to the guild, "Which is why all of the Grassy Squares have 692760726 in their ItemID column."

Andala says to the guild, "you'd think they'd all still have mac addresses of something.."

Andala says to the guild, "but I guess we can use what the editor gives us"

You say to the guild, "The editor is taking that number from the game."

You say to the guild, "In the game world, 692760726 = Grassy Square."

Andala says to the guild, "the id's it makes up, I mean"

You say to the guild, "Ahh."

You say to the guild, "Well, we're getting to the UIDs now."

You say to the guild, "So, we wanted to tile a floor."

You say to the guild, "We told it to tile a floor."

You say to the guild, "But the editor didn't have any tiles to tile with."

You say to the guild, "So it made up imaginary tiles."

You say to the guild, "And gave them imaginary UIDs."

You say to the guild, "Which.... actually works fine, if you don't care where the game gets the tiles from."

You say to the guild, "If I were to save the layout RIGHT NOW, and use it in-game..."

You say to the guild, "It would work."

You say to the guild, "In fact..."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "or if your tiles are the only ones of their type in the house."

You say to the guild, "everyone come stand by me."

You say to the guild, "On the tile."

You say to the guild, "and now I'll click the Working macro to load my layout with the imaginary tiles..."

Starting layout changes.

Loading house layout complete!

You say to the guild, "Huh"

You say to the guild, "I guess I only had 12 tiles, not 16."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "yup, some got cannabalized."

You say to the guild, "well, that ruins the explanation."

You say to the guild, "Pretend I had 16."

You say to the guild, "Hehe"

You say to the guild, "If I had had 16 tiles, there would probably still be some tiles left in that pile Gracey moved for me."

You say to the guild, "and it would have stolen some from my pretty (ugly) garden."

You say to the guild, "Because the game says, "Hey, you want me to put these items here? NO PROBLEM! Let me just grab any tile that has the right ItemID and stick it in the spot for you!""

Andala says to the guild, "how do you tile several room with the same tiles?"

You say to the guild, "That's where UIDs come in."

You say to the guild, "I want to tile the room. But I want to keep the game from stealing tiles from somewhere else."

You say to the guild, "So... what I am going to do, incredibly smart person that I am.... is put ALL of the tiles I want to use in a layout file using New From Diff."

You say to the guild, "It doesn't matter what their locations are. they can be messily stacked, neatly stacked, in another room..."

You say to the guild, "All that matters is that I have them IN a layout file, WITH their UIDs."

You say to the guild, "So to start, I'm going to stack my tiles again."

Starting layout changes.

Loading house layout complete!

You say to the guild, "And I moved one tile over to my pretty (ugly) garden, for demonstration..."

You say to the guild, "Now, I want to use these tiles here in the doorway."

You say to the guild, "So I'm going to save my With layout."

House layout save successful

You say to the guild, "I'm going to pack them alllllll into the moving crate."

House layout save successful

You say to the guild, "and I'm going to click my Without macro."

You say to the guild, "Then I'm going to go to my layout editor and hit New From Diff."

You say to the guild, "Then I'm going to save my Working file and load it, because I want to be able to see where my stuff goes."

Starting layout changes.

Loading house layout complete!

You say to the guild, "Now, I have a layout file with all of these tiles in it."

You say to the guild, "And I have my tiles sitting out here."

You say to the guild, "I'm going to go to the Tools > Create objects > Tile area."

You say to the guild, "And I'm going to just hit Create again, because the layout editor remembered all of my info from last time. EXCEPT! I'm going to cut down my tiles from 12 to 9."

You say to the guild, "Since I only have 12 tiles..."

You say to the guild, "So that means my Number of tiles X is now going to be 3 instead of 4."

You say to the guild, "then I hit create..."

You say to the guild, "And now I have a layout file with TWO sets of 9 tiles in it."

You say to the guild, "One set has REAL UIDs, but the wrong locations."

You say to the guild, "The other set, created by the edtior, has FAKE UIDs, but the RIGHT locations."

You say to the guild, "So.... I'm going to do something really fun."

You say to the guild, "I'm going to go to the first item at the wrong location but with the right UID."

You say to the guild, "And I'm going to copy it's UID."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "Ctrl X, C, and V are your friends. cut, copy, paste"

You say to the guild, "then I'm going to go to the first item at the right location with the wrong UID."

You say to the guild, "And I'm going to paste over that wrong UID."

You say to the guild, "Now suddenly, I have a single item with the right UID and the right location!"

You say to the guild, "But what about that other item, with the wrong location and right UID?"

You say to the guild, "I need to click the "crate" checkbox on that item."

Andala says to the guild, "help"

You say to the guild, "Hm?"

Andala says to the guild, "the first tiling we created...were those the bad locations or good ones?"

Andala says to the guild, "it looked like good location but wrong tiles"

You say to the guild, "Bad."

You say to the guild, "The first tiling we created had very very pretty UIDs. 98001, 98002, etc."

You say to the guild, "This is because the layout editor made up the ids."

You say to the guild, "real UIDs look something more like..."

Andala says to the guild, "I'm not understanding what you mean by bad and good locations then"

You say to the guild, "47663177"

You say to the guild, "Okay."

Andala says to the guild, "I understand the fake uids"

You say to the guild, "When I did a new from diff..."

You say to the guild, "I put all of these tiles in the crate."

You say to the guild, "And they have the UIDs I want."

You say to the guild, "But their location is RIGHT HERE."

You say to the guild, "And this doesn't let us tile the room."

You say to the guild, "When we used the layout editor to create a tiled room..."

You say to the guild, "it tiled them all."

You say to the guild, "But it gave them fake uids."

You say to the guild, "We want it to have the locations the layout editor told us is the right spot for our tiles."

You say to the guild, "But we also want it to have the UIDs we got from when they were stacked here."

You say to the guild, "So the GOOD location is the location that was created by the editor."

You say to the guild, "That means the good location is the one with the fake UID."

Andala says to the guild, "so we need the get the locations from the problem first tiling and match those with the second set of uids in your stack so those are moved to the locations from the first try"

You say to the guild, "And we want to put a real UID in the fake UIDs spot."

You say to the guild, "Perfect. yes."

Andala says to the guild, "so do we always have to do this twice to use the fake id for it to work?"

You say to the guild, "So we copy-paste the real UIDs over the fake UIDs. And we click the checkbox for the crate on each item that originally had the real UID."

You say to the guild, "For right now, yes. Jesdyr is working on a way so that we don't have to."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "you only need the generated tiling layout and the UIDs from the tiles you actually want to use."

You say to the guild, "But until he comes out with a new layout editor, we have to do it this way."

You say to the guild, "Let me fill it in real quick."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "i'm not understanding. do what twice?"

You say to the guild, "You have to have the items in the editor twice. Once are the items created by the editor."

You say to the guild, "Twice are the real items you get with new from diff."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "i just delete the lines i get the real UIDs from after i paste them into the lines i want them in. if you crate them, the layout is being told both to insert them into the tile layout and put them in the crate."

You say to the guild, "I'm not done yet ;)"

You say to the guild, "Although yes, you could just select the line and hit delete after you're done copying."

You say to the guild, "But I like to leave them in the file just in case I copied the wrong thing."

You say to the guild, "That's where the crate comes in."

You say to the guild, "I now have all of my original items from New From Diff crated."

You say to the guild, "And the items created by the layout editor now share UIDs with them."

You say to the guild, "I navigate up to the top of the window...."

Tockvisits says to the guild, "ah, you use the del crates button after you're done, huh. "

You say to the guild, "and hit "del crates""

You say to the guild, "Yep!"

Tockvisits says to the guild, "sneaky"

You say to the guild, "then I save the file."

You say to the guild, "And I load it."

Starting layout changes.

Loading house layout complete!

Andala says to the guild, "save the file as....? random name?"

You say to the guild, "Tadaaa! Now we have a grassy floor with no risk of stealing tiles from other places."

You say to the guild, "Save File as working."

You say to the guild, "Just like New From Diff."