Creating info windows in Anarchy Online
Watch the shopping channel for a while, and you will probably see those strange hand-made links coming by, mostly by advanced shoppers and engies selling services. Clicking them will open a nice window, with text, links to items, or even images included in that window. Welcome to the world of creating Info windows!
Attention: Do not copy this tutorial, link it! If you would like something to be improved i’d be more than happy to do that!
The easy way to tell you what we are talking about, is simply showing you such an Info Window, i was using a time ago.
In this tutorial, we will try to explain how you can make such an Info Window.
1. Requirements and tools.
2. Creating a new chat window.
3. Getting the item link.
4. Creating the Info Window.
5. Layout, markup and item images.
6. Can & Can’t do.
If you have any questions, comments, usefull additions or would like to see some things changed, just place a comment! Be creative, and good luck :)
1. Requirements and tools.
To create Info Windows, we don’t have much tools at hand and have to do most of it manually. This can be scary at first, but once you play around a bit creating test windows, you’ll learn the go and nogo’s and end with the Info Window you wish for every task it could be handy for.
I might even create a set of online tools for you, but i’m not going to promise them to you :)
A little knowlegde of HTML code might come in handy, but is not required. It IS required though to know how to open and create text files on your machine.
If you’d like to use images in your Info Windows, you’ll need to have a webbrowser on your machine (who hasn’t?), know how to view the name of an image on a webpage, and know how to use auno.org for searching for items.
To color pieces of text, we will use AOScripter created by Unity Of The Rose.
2. Creating a new chat window.
If you post an item in chat (may that be Vincinity, Shopping channel, etc.) it will show a link. Now the question is, how does the game make that link? As some of you may know, most of you may not: those links to the items are a simple kind of HTML code. To help you understand, we are gonna make a new window.
From the start of the game, you get one chat window. Some of you have found out you can make more windows and do scary technical stuff with them. But for the people that don’t, i will show you how to.
Right click on your current, or any chat window you have, and select “Chat Configuration”..
A new window will popup. We’re gonna make a new chat window, so it will only have contents we put in it, cause you probably don’t want to search a huge logfile for the thing you typed or posted..
The new chat window has no channels selected. We only need a channel where we drop the item..
..and get the item link from..
The most logical choice for me was to choose Vincinity for that. Once clicked, a v-shaped mark will be in front of it, telling you that Vincinity goes to your new window..
Since we want to get the item link, we need that window to log the messages. To keep it easy, go to a quiet area now where there is no Vincinity chat at all so there won’t be any other code in you’re log..
Offcourse we still need to know where these messages are logged. Therefore we view the log window..
..which will bring up a window like the next image. At the top of that log window you will see the full location of the Log.txt we want. You might want to write the CharXXXXXXXXXX number and WindowX number down, so it’s easier to find it..
Notice the Clear button at the bottom of the window, which you can use to clear the Log.txt so you wont have to search through big chunks of text to find that item link you want. If there’s no Log.txt, it might not have had anything to log yet, so don’t worry.
3. Getting the item link.
If everything went right, and you’re at the correct location on your system, you dropped an item in the window, there should now be a Log.txt. Open it up, and be scared :P In my case, it showed this..
["#0000000040000002#","Vicinity","Enatox",1128755675]<a href="itemref://253476/253476/1">Haitte Stool</a>
If you chose Vincinity, and you’re in a public place, there might be even more stuff in the log. What we need to look for, is the item reference..
<a href="itemref://253476/253476/1">Haitte Stool</a>
This item reference consists of a link (<a href="">link name</a>), and the actual item reference (itemref://253476/253476/1). As you can see, Anarchy Online uses some basic HTML code to display windows and items!
For people that don’t know HTML, links are created like this..
- A link:
<a href="location">This is a link!</a>, which consists of..- The opening link-tag:
<a href="location">. - The closing link-tag:
</a>. - And the link text in between:
This is a link!.
- The opening link-tag:
Combining the HTML code and Anarchy Online, the itemref:// is just like a webadress: http://.
Not to confuse you, we do need the complete..
<a href="itemref://253476/253476/1">Haitte Stool</a>
..from the log!
4. Creating the Info Window.
Just like the item references described above, opening info windows use a link too. Though not itemref:// since we don’t want to open item info, but text:// cause we’re gonna put any text or links in it we want.
And that is all! Instead of a location to an item, we simply put in the contents we want in the info window. Replace CONTENTS with the things you want to show up in your info window..
<a href="text://COTENTS">My first info window!</a>
So, if we would want to make a window with just some sweet words for our little friends, it could be something like this..
<a href="text://We love you leets!">Leet Love</a>
Now, don’t go posting that in a tell or your Vincinity chat, cause that will not work. Actually, just posting the code won’t work anywhere :) To let Anarchy Online recognise the code as a script, we have to go to the Anarchy Online Scripts folder. This folder is normally located at..
C:\Program Files\Funcom\Anarchy Online\Scripts\
If there is no Scripts folder in your Anarchy Online folder, create it.
Now open notepad or any simple text writer, and paste the code in it, then save it to the scripts folder.
- Do NOT use Microsoft Word or anything like that, cause that puts a lot of extra information in your script you don’t want and the script will not work.
- Do NOT put spaces in the script name!
So for example, we would like to create the Leet Love script, we save the Leet Love code to leet.txt in the scripts folder.
To execute the Leet Love script now, we simply do /leet.txt in any chat window we want!
5. Layout, markup and item images.
As i explained before, the info windows are basic HTML code. We can markup that code, but not everything is possible! Actually, i’m only using <br> for a new line, and <center></center> to center text. And colors offcourse! The most important markup you will be using is..
- A new line:
<br>. - Centering text:
<center>and</center>. - Font coloring:
<font color=#FFFFFF>.
To give your text colors, you can use AOScripter.
But be aware: you have to edit your script by hand after using AOScripter, cause AOScripter writes <font color=#FFFFFF> as <font color="#FFFFFF">. Notice the "? With the <a href="text://CONTENTS"> mixing up with "’s in <font color="#FFFFFF">, will break your script!
To solve that, leave the outer " as they are, and remove or replace all the " in the CONTENTS with '.
An example..
<a href="text://<font color=#FFFFFF>White text.">Click!</a>
<a href="text://<font color='#FFFFFF'>White text.">Click!</a>
To bring even more fancy contents to your info windows, you can insert images. And that is even easier than getting item references!
- Look up the item image you’d like to put in your window on, for example Auno.org or AOMainframe.com.
- Right click on the item image on the webpage, and select View Image or Properties. The image name is a number, which is the actual item image in Anarchy Online!
So, for example, a Gunner’s Cap shows the item image named 205759.gif.
To put that name in your info window, use..
<img src=rdb://205759>
Lets make an example of this image, combined with all we have learned before..
<a href="text://<center><img src=rdb://205759><br><br><font color=#FFF000>A QL200 <a href=itemref://207001/207001/200>Gunner's Cap</a>">Example!</a>
Writing advanced info windows might bring a lot of confusion, so you might wanna put every markup, item reference or item image on a seperate line to give you a better overview of your contents, and to make sure no mistakes happen like one > where should be two. If you think it’s ready to check out, put everything back on one line again.
Remember that every info window code should be on one line, or it doesn’t work.
6. Can & Can’t do.
CAN do? I leave all the creativity to you. One extra thing might be that it’s possible to execute other users’ scripts from an info window, like making him do the pulp dance if he clicks a link, or let him send you a tell, or even let you open a browser window..
<a href='chatcmd:///pulp'>Dance!</a><a href='chatcmd:///tell Enatox'>Send me a tell!</a><a href='chatcmd:///start http://www.anarchy-online.com'>Go to AO's website.</a>
What you CAN’T do, is for you to find out. I will sum up some things i said in this tutorial..
- Script names cannot contain spaces.
- The code of the info window has to be on one line.
- The code of the info window can not be larger than 4096 bytes.
- You can’t use
"or'for both the outera href=and contents.
I advise to check out Anarchy Arcanum and Zanthyna.com, to see even more uses of scripts.
I wish you good luck with designing your info windows! If you have any questions, tips, changes you wish or additions, post them as a comment below. Thank you :)