Garan

After some thought, I realized that the idea of adding an alert to ItemTracker would not resolve this issue since the biggest problem with acquiring special items is Pending Loot, particularly Pending Loot timing out. Since Pending Loot isn't exposed to Lua, the only way to track new items in Pending Loot is via the chat message so ItemTracker would be of no use since the item isn't actually in inventory. So, there are basically three practical solutions still possible. First, you can create multiple alerts, one for each item. Second, I could try to add an "or" capability to the pattern matching (fairly difficult and prone to errors). Third, I can look into something I had considered in the past which is adding the ability to execute Lua code snippets in both the trigger and response sections of the Alert. In the trigger section, it would allow users to generate a broad pattern that would match more results than desired but then use custom Lua code to narrow down those results to only the matches that are really cared about - for instance you could match on any loot acquisition but then use the Lua code snippet to compare the actual item to a list of items and only return true when it matches - the trigger would only fire if the code snippet returned true. The response code snippet would allow for interaction with other plugins or other special custom alert functionality beyond the "generic" scope of the plugin, effectively allowing users to expand on the functionality in any way they desire (within the limits imposed by the Lua API).

Given the potential benefits of the code snippet functionality, I believe I will pursue that avenue further, so there is a pretty fair chance that it will be implemented in a future version (besides, it sounds like a fun challenge). Until then, you will have to fall back on the first solution, multiple alerts.

Garan

Yes, some quick research revealed that I accidentally restored the wrong source after a system crash several years ago but since the plugin hadn't been updated since 2012, I didn't catch the error. Fortunately, I still have the source for 1.05 so I should be able to reincorporate both Shared alerts and Logged alerts, both features that were lost with 1.06. This has become a top priority and should be fixed this week.

EDIT: Ver. 1.07 is available with both missing features restored.

Note, Custom Logs are different from the plugin's Chat Log feature. The Chat Log simply displays all incoming messages from the chat to make it easier to determine the correct pattern and channel to use to match a specific message. The Custom Logs feature was intended to be used in conjunction with an external application that would parse the logs of actual alerts to see what the triggering message was as well as what alert it triggered including the date and time. These logs could then be used to review things like who is frequently breaking stuns, etc. to help players in groups improve performance. As I don't like to publish external applications for end user safety and security reasons (there is one exception to that currently in the works) I will be adding an Alert Log viewer to the plugin and renaming "Custom Logs" to "Alert Logs" in a future version.

Venogorn

Thanks for your answer. I just wanted to be informed when somebody of my group, including myself, gets any rare item, like lootboxes. So I have to do some work.

But I have to wait for the return of the shared-button you accidentally (hopefully) killed with 1.06. Any ETA for that?

Garan

Thanks for the comment. You are correct that there is no "or" operator which is a limitation of the patterns allowed by Lua. So, unfortunately, you have to define a separate alert for each item you wish to be alerted for. If you are interested in tracking quantities of several special items, you might be better off using ItemTracker. I have considered allowing ItemTracker to raise an event that Alerter could then use as a trigger which would allow you to get alerts for gain/loss of tracked items but it's a pretty low priority currently.

Venogorn

I love your plugins, Garan. Today I installed alerter 1.06 for the first time:

Isn't there really no OR-operator for search-patterns? I tried to alert for special items in Loot(Fellow):

But I used the German words for text and items, because of German client. When I use just a single word i.e. 'Essence' or 'Lootbox', I get the alert, when I try to use the pipe to check against more than one item this fails. For testing I used some more common items.

I know that this is no complete regexp-syntax and I read that LUA 5.1 Reference .

So do I really need to create a single alert for each item? And all the same for own loot again?

Grimfrithgar

Many thanks for the latest update!

The good news is that my issue is now resolved; the warning text stays on the screen after I clicked it!

The bad news is that the "Shared"-checkbox is now gone. It did not load my old shared alerts either. I tried to remove the old Plugins- and Plugindata-folders, and still the same issue. A quick look at main.lua indicates that the code for the Shared-function is indeed missing.

Regards

Garan

Well, I found some spare time and decided to do a minor update to fix the missing /World channel and the new quickslot types. I also changed quickslot Responses to continue to display for the Duration to alleviate Grimfrithgar's issue with the disappearing message with a new option to hide the Response after clicking the quickslot.

@Grimfrithgar, as to the timer display, I had previously used an unpublished option that allowed executing Lua scripts. That option may never get published but I may include the countdown timer display as a built-in feature.

Grimfrithgar

Thank you for your very quick and elaborated reply!

I kind of suspected that. Probably a good choice by Turbine, but it is a bit limiting in this case. The text being a hidden quickslot is a great workaround.
It's the second way I mean. The personal message (response) I get in the middle of the screen from the plugin disappears as soon as I click on it. If I do not click on it, it will stay up the whole duration specified in the response-settings.
To clarify:
1) I want a personal warning message triggered by the plugin, showing up on the screen
2) I want to send a message to the chat to warn my fellows
3) I want my personal warning message to stay on the screen for the full duration after I clicked it to warn my fellows
Number 1 and 2 is no problem, it works perfectly. Number 3 is the problem. Not a big issue, just a slight inconvenience.

How could I not think of this myself? This is a great workaround that leads to the result I am after!
No pressure. The workaround you provided will do great. If you do have time to look this up, I would appreciate if you follow up with some comments. But again, it is not too important for my sake

Regards

Garan

Hi, thanks for your comments.

Unfortunately, there are some very strict limitations on the Lua API as implemented by Turbine.

First, you can't programmatically send text to anyone but yourself so all we can do is use quickslots (which is what Alerter does even though they are hidden under other controls) so it's not possible to automatically send messages to other players, it will always require user intervention to activate. I suspect that was a limitation that Turbine imposed to try to prevent automating an army of bots.

Second, any plugin written in the last three or four years is using the latest API other than a couple minor bug fixes published two years ago. Sadly, none of the developers that donated their time (Lua was implemented on the developers own time, not supported by Turbine) to implement Lua are still working on LotRO so it is highly unlikely that the API will ever get another update, probably not even any more bug fixes.

Now on to your specific issues. The Duration does not (can not) affect the duration of a message sent via chat as it is no longer under control of the plugin once sent. The Duration setting only affects the visible effects that are part of the plugin such as scrollable text or images. In terms of a quickslot alert response, the duration determines the amount of time the quickslot is displayed until it automatically disappears. It almost sounds as though you would like two alerts, one sent via chat and the other displayed locally for you with a longer duration. The simplest way would be to use two alert definitions with the same trigger but different responses, the first which displays the quickslot that you click to send the message to chat and the second which just automatically displays a message with longer duration for you.

An alternative that wouldn't require too much coding is to add an option to keep the quickslot displayed after it has been clicked up to the duration of the alert. I will have to log in to see how this is working today as I thought I had added that capability in the past so it's possible that it didn't have the desired result and was removed for some reason. There is also a way to display a timer as a result of an alert, I don't recall if I triggered another plugin (most likely) or if it is an undocumented (or possibly unpublished) feature of Alerter, I'll have to look when I get a chance.

Unfortunately, that brings us to the last and sort of most problematic issue. Due to the lack of support by Turbine and the fact that the game just hasn't held my interest for a while now, I've pretty much stopped developing plugins (although I do have a few projects that draw me back every once in a while) so Lua projects in general are pretty far down on the priority list at this time.

Grimfrithgar

Hello and thanks Garan for your great plugins!

I'm just trying this one out to use in the Lúmithil-fight in RC.

I figured how to set an alias so I send a message to my fellowship when I click the alert. However, I usually find myself pretty busy during that fight, and was wondering if it is possible to make your plugin send a message to the chat automatically? If not, is it something that is possible to implement? See it was long time since you last updated this plugin, but worth asking

Edit:
It seems that when I click the message to send my alias, the message disappears even though I have set a longer duration. Is it possible to prevent this? For example when it comes to Lúmithil, I'd like to warn my fellows but still keep the message up. When the message disappears I know he will do his special attack any second.
It would also be nice with a countdown timer to see how much is left of the Duration, or maybe even the Delay. But that sounds like much work

Regards

Garan

There is a setting in FireFox for the referrer headers that you can google to see if it helps, but since you can follow the links in IE it probably isn't worth pursuing unless you start having issues with other sites.

I just reread your original post - be aware that the 'World' chat channel is not in the channel options for the currently released plugin so you either have to select 'All' which is inefficient or select 'Custom' and enter the channel number, 38, as RJFerret posted. Other than that, the only tricky part is determining the correct pattern string and that will depend on what exactly you are trying to match. The pattern string is NOT a true Regular Expression (if you're familiar with RegEx) but is closely related - the pattern follows the Lua rules for pattern matching which can be found at:
http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#5.4.1

Trendafil

Thanks for the quick reply!
I normally use Firefox. I have now tried Internet Explorer, and there the links do work. - Thank you for the hint!

Garan

The 'How To' examples are in the FAQ pages. There are a couple of things that could be preventing your browser from following the links properly - what browser are you using?

Trendafil

This plugin sounds wonderful, but I seem to be too dumb to set up the alerts properly. Is there a "How to" anywhere to be found? (My main goal is to be told when certain group content is mentioned in world chat.)

In addition, when I click on the links in the FAQs ( http://www.lotrointerface.com/portal.php?id=35&a=faq ), they send me to http://www.lotrointerface.com/index.php . Where SHOULD they really send me?

RJFerret

Might the new World chat channel be added please? :-)

PS: For others in the meantime, it's custom channel 38.