ShadowTeq

Golem

Thursday, July 01 2010 - 0 comments

Golem User's Guide

Sunday, July 04 2010 - 0 comments

Download and Installation:

To get started using Golem, download it from the ShadowTeq website. Installation is as simple as unzipping the download file to a folder on your desktop, and running GolemLauncher. GolemLauncher will download several files required to run Golem, after which you will be able to launch the program by clicking 'Launch Golem.'

The first thing you'll need to do after launching Golem for the first time is to install the Golem user interface for EQ2. This is the in-game window that Golem looks for when trying to craft. You can perform this step whether EverQuest II is running or not. To install the user interface files, click the link labeled 'Install the Golem User Interface.' This will take you to the Golem UI Installer page, pictured to the right. Golem will attempt to locate your EverQuest II installation using a variety of methods, and in most cases will be successful - but in the event that it is not, you will need to click the 'click here' link to tell Golem where EverQuest II is installed on your machine. After verifying that Golem knows where EverQuest II is located, click the button labeled 'Install the UI'.

If you are using the default in-game UI, then Golem will create a new UI folder for you, install its UI files into that folder, and modify your EQ2 UI settings to make the Golem UI the active UI. If you are using a custom UI, like eq2Maps or Profit UI, then Golem will ask you whether you want Golem to install its UI files into your custom UI, or if you want to have Golem create its own UI to use. In most cases, you should choose the former option - this will allow you to continue using your custom UI, while still allowing Golem to work correctly.

If you've already gone through this step, Golem will instead ask you if you want to re-install the UI. This may be useful in the future if the Golem UI is ever modified.

If you installed the Golem UI while EverQuest II was running, you'll need to restart the game in order to continue. To verify that Golem has installed your UI properly, open your Recipes window (usually by hitting the 'N' key, or clicking on a crafting table), and visually inspect the top-left corner of the window to find Golem's 'registration marks' - marks Golem uses to identify the crafting window and its various pages. They're very small, but should be clearly visible, and look like the screenshot to the right.

While you're in game at the moment, now would be a good time to make sure your EQ2 log file is turned on. Golem uses the log file for a great deal of validation and sanity checking, and so cannot function without it. In-game, type /log and press Enter to toggle your log. If you get a message saying that logging is "now ON" - then you don't have to do anything else. If it says logging is "now OFF" then you'll need to type /log and press Enter again to turn logging back "ON".

 

Crafting for the First Time

With the installation and initial setup out of the way, you're probably ready to start crafting now. The easiest way to craft with Golem is via the 'Finish My Craft' feature. From the start page in Golem, click the link labeled 'Finish my crafting for me!' and you'll be taken to the 'Finish My Craft' page. To use this feature, you must be currently crafting something. Go in game and start crafting an item, then when you want Golem to take over for you, click the 'Finish My Craft!' button and Golem will do so, spamming and countering crafting events as you would expect it should. If you want to take over for Golem, click the button again and Golem will stop crafting, allowing you to get back into the crafting job.

This feature is particularly useful if you only have a few things to craft, or if you enjoy crafting manually but often get interrupted during your crafting sessions. Using the 'Finish My Craft' feature allows you to deal with interruptions without losing the progress you've made on your crafting job.

 

Running a Crafting Job

Golem can be used for much more than crafting a single item at a time. Golem was designed to run as a fully-featured automated crafting tool. All you have to do is tell it what you want it to make, and how many of each item to make, and Golem will do the work. To get started, from Golem's start page, click the link labeled 'Set up a crafting job.' This will take you to Golem's set up page, pictured to the right, where you can tell Golem what you want to make. Before we can tell Golem what we want to make, however, we have to set our hotbars in-game with the recipes we want to build.

Setting up the in-game hotbars is easy: in-game, hold Shift and press a number from 1 to 0 (with 0 representing the 10th hotbar). This will switch your primary hotbar to the number you pressed. Remember this number - it'll need to go into the big box to the left of the smaller boxes in Golem's setup window. Once you've switched your hotbar, open up your recipes list (again, using either 'N' or by clicking on your crafting table). You'll see a list of recipes, and each one will have an icon to the left of its name. Drag this icon out from the recipes window and place it into one of the available hotkeys on your crafting hotbar, just as if you were adding a spell or combat art to your hotbar. Do this as many times as you have recipes to build. If you run out of room on your selected hotbar, you can switch to a new hotbar and continue. Using the hotbars in this manner allows you to craft up to a total of 120 different recipes in one session!

After you've finished setting up your in-game hotbars, you need to tell Golem how many hotbars you want to craft from, which hotbars they are, and how many of each recipe on those hotbars you want to make.

First, choose the number of hotbars from the drop-down list at the top of the setup window. After you select the right number of hotbars, Golem will create that many hotbar setup rows in the hotbar list below the dropdown. For each of them, put the number of one of your crafting hotbars into the large box on the left. Then, for each of the hotkeys in your hotbars that contain recipes, you need to tell Golem how many of that recipe you want to craft. Do this by typing the quantity into the box in Golem that corresponds to the in-game hotkey for each recipe.

The 'C' and 'F' buttons attached to each hotbar representation in Golem are special: the 'C' (for Clear) button clears the hotbar completely, making it as if it were never set up. The 'F' (for Fill) button will take the quantity you put in hotkey '1' and duplicate it across all the hotkeys for that bar - so if you want to craft 1 of each of the recipes on one of your hotbars, all you have to do is put a '1' in the first hotkey, and press the 'F' button.

Once you're satisfied with your setup, go back into game and make sure you have all the fuel and components necessary for the job you've set up. Then find your crafting table, get real close to it. Make sure no other windows are open - no bags, crafting windows, etc. Then, go back to Golem and click 'Begin Crafting' - and Golem will get right to work.

 

The Crafting Process

Now you're watching Golem as it crafts for you - if all is well, you're looking at a window that looks similar to the one pictured to the right. This is the 'Crafting In Progress' page, and shows you several things about the status of your current job. At the top, there's the timers - the first timer indicates how long the current job has been in progress, and the second timer in parenthesis shows an estimate of how long the job will take to complete. This estimate is calculated each time a recipe is completed, and so it can't be perfectly accurate - but in my personal experience it gets pretty close.

Below the timers is a window displaying the details of each hotbar and its current status. This window is broken up into sections, one for each hotbar. At the top of the section is the hotbar number, and a label indicating how many of the total items on that hotbar have been made. Under this are the details for each hotkey: the hotkey number and its number of made vs total items. The color of the boxes indicates the current status of that hotbar or hotkey: grey means that a hotbar or hotkey has work pending, blue means that the hotbar or hotkey is currently being crafted, green means the hotbar or hotkey has finished being crafted, and red (for hotkeys only) indicates that an error condition occurred (like being out of ingredients for that recipe) and that the items remaining to be crafted for that hotkey have been skipped.

Below this window are three buttons: 'Stop Crafting!', 'Pause Now,' and 'Pause After Combine.' The 'Stop Crafting!' button immediately stops Golem from crafting - though it will not stop the crafting process in-game. If you want to stop that, you'll have to click the stop button on the crafting window in-game. The two Pause buttons will pause Golem's progress on the crafting job, but at different times: 'Pause Now' pauses Golem immediately, while 'Pause After Combine' will instruct Golem to finish crafting the current item, and then to pause when the item has been completed. In either case, once Golem is paused, an 'Unpause' button will appear to allow you to tell Golem when you'd like it to resume the process.

The last element is the Current Status display, which shows a glimpse into the task that the crafting engine is currently working on. Usually this scrolls by pretty fast, and isn't of any practical purpose, but can be fun to watch. =)

 

Under the Hood

The crafting engine comes out of the box ready to craft, but sometimes needs a little tweaking in order to work just right on your particular setup. The Engine Tweaks page, which can be found by clicking the link labeled 'Tweak the Crafting Engine settings,' allows you to adjust the timings and settings of nearly every part of the crafting engine; although the defaults are usually sufficient for most purposes.

The first page of tweaks completely involves the engine timings. These settings allow you to manipulate the delay-driven parts of the engine. Though the defaults work for most setups, there may be times when you need to change these settings in order to improve the reliability of the crafting engine. If it seems like EQ2 is not properly registering mouse clicks or keyboard key presses, increasing the top two settings - Mouse and Keyboard Event Timings - may help improve reliability, especially on older or slower computers. Increase these in 5ms increments until EQ2 is properly registering mouse or keyboard activity originating from Golem. The other commonly tweaked engine timing is the last one on the list: Crafting Engine granularity. This setting determines how long in between actions Golem waits before running the next action. These actions happen very fast, so this timing is central to the proper execution of the crafting engine. On slower computers, Golem runs a little too fast, and can eat system resources that other applications - particularly EQ2 - need in order to run. If this is happening, EQ2 will appear to slow down to a crawl whenever Golem is actively crafting. If that happens, try increasing this setting by 5ms at a time or so until it stops happening. If you set this setting too high, however, the accuracy and reliability of the crafting engine will suffer.

The second page of tweaks allows you to set non-timing-related parameters that apply to crafting jobs. The first setting, 'Low Power Threshold %' lets you set at which % of your power you wish Golem to stop using the spam keys that require power (3 and 6) to function, and when to reserve those keys for crafting events only. Next is 'Durability Threshold %', which determines when Golem will spam Durability or Progress. If the current job's Pristine Durability bar drops below this value, Golem will spam for Durability - otherwise, it'll spam for Progress to speed the job along. Next is the key to open your recipes list - usually 'N' but it can be any key you can bind in EQ2. The next two settings let you set minimum health and power percent amounts at which Golem must have before it will start crafting a recipe. This is useful to set if you expect to be losing a lot of health or power during a crafting job. Finally is the Always On Top setting, which determines whether or not Golem will stay on top of all other windows.

 

In case of Trouble

If you encounter a situation that this guide was unable to help with, please feel free to visit the official support forums and request help. If you've tweaked settings that you don't know how to return to normal, there's a link on the Tweaks page that lets you reset everything to the defaults. If all else fails, deleting all the Golem files and starting from scratch can help resolve problems related to settings or crashes.

Event Counters aren't working!

Tuesday, July 06 2010 - 0 comments

Sometimes, when using Golem, it can seem as though crafting events (which are the icons + text that pop up which demand you respond with a specific tradeskill art) aren't being properly countered by Golem. What's going on?

Golem comes pre-configured with a large list of events and the proper countering keys. This list (which you can see if you open up 'counters.xml' in Notepad) is pretty large, but is not all-encompassing. In developing this list, we had to rely on third party sources for this data, which means some of it may be inaccurate or missing - particularly any events that were added after our sources were written. Does this mean that Golem will never be accurate?

Not at all. While Golem's post-installation counters file may having information that is missing or inaccurate, Golem itself will seek to correct the issue. Any time Golem encounters a crafting event that it has no knowledge of, Golem goes into adaptation mode, and guesses at which counter key will counter the event. If the guess is correct, it will remember this new information for future encounters with that event. If it was incorrect, Golem will remember that as well, so that the next time Golem encounters the same event, its second guess will not include the previously incorrect guess. In this way, Golem is capable of learning new crafting events without any manual intervention.

What about the inaccurate data? Golem also does sanity-checking on event counters it thinks it knows well. If Golem knows an event's counter, and applies it - but the counter fails, then Golem will 'forget' the previously "known" but incorrect counter. The next time that event is encountered, Golem's adaptation mode will kick in, and it will eventually find the right counter.

If you've been using Golem for a while, and you're still having trouble getting Golem to learn your event counters, you may have turned off the chat text that Golem relies on to determine success or failure when countering. To fix this, right-click on your "Main Chat" chat box, and select 'Chat Options'. In the chat text settings, expand 'Chat Text', then 'Nearby Chat', and make sure 'Narrative' is selected, then click 'OK'. After events, you should see "You successfully counter <eventname>" for successful counters, and "You failed to counter <eventname>" for unsuccessful counters.

If you're pushing the top tiers of your crafting profession, or doing some quest-specific crafting that has events that don't exist in normal crafting, you may experience a lot of missed counters up-front - but fear not, for Golem is learning...

Editing an Advanced Job

Sunday, July 11 2010 - 0 comments

Advanced Crafting jobs are jobs that use the recipe search interface in EQ2 for selecting the recipes you want to make, rather than the hotbar / hotkey method that 'Simple' crafting jobs use. This guide will instruct you in properly setting up such crafting jobs.

Advanced Crafting jobs require more work to set up than Simple jobs, but can be saved and re-used later. Additionally they can be shared with others and downloaded from our forums. This is possible because the details of each job are saved in a Job file, which can be found in the 'jobs' subfolder of your Golem folder. These job files are simply XML files, so they can be edited using any text or XML editor, although the preferred method of editing a job is to use the built-in job editor in Golem.

To begin using Advanced Crafting jobs, launch Golem, then click the 'Set up an advanced crafting job' link. This will take you to the Advanced Crafting setup page, where you can choose an existing job to begin crafting, or you can manage your jobs by editing, deleting, or creating new jobs. From here, click 'New Job' to be taken to the New Job page, where you can create a new crafting job.

There are three important elements to this page. At the top is a text box for the job's name. This name will also become the filename for the .job file, so you need to avoid any characters that are illegal in filenames, such as <, >, ?, etc. Any name will do here, but try to choose one that is descriptive of the purpose of the job.

Below the name box is a grid for entering recipes. For each recipe, there are three fields to enter: Recipe Name, Search Terms, and Quantity. For Recipe Name, enter the name of the recipe you want to make. This is a display field only - it won't be used in the search for the actual recipe - that's what the Search Terms column is for. In Search Terms, enter the search terms you'll use to find the recipe you want to make. There are only 18 characters available for this, and most recipe names are much longer than this - therefore you'll need to be creative when coming up with search terms. I will cover this further in the guide. For Quantity, enter the number of items of this recipe you want Golem to craft.

If you want to delete a recipe out of the list, just delete its name - when you save the job, the deleted recipe will be completely removed.

Below the recipe grid is the Save Job button. Click this to save your job when you're done - you'll be taken back to the Advanced Crafting setup page with your newly-created job selected and ready to begin crafting. Or you could click Cancel and undo all your changes.

Specifying recipes by their search terms can sometimes be frustrating. Many recipes have similar names, and it can be tough to get the recipe you want to appear at the top of the results list, where it will need to be in order for Golem to craft it. For example, say I want to set up an advanced crafting session that will regularly make 'maple club's for me. The term "maple club" is less than 18 characters, so we can get away with searching for it directly in the recipe UI - but it will return several recipes, not just the one we want. Worse, the one we want is *not* the first result! We've got 'imbued maple club' and 'blessed maple club' in that list, possibly along with others depending on your settings and level.

How do we get down to just the 'maple club' we're after? The recipe search UI allows for a couple of features that will help us: sub-string keywords and excluded keywords. To remove results from the search, you put a minus sign in front of any keywords you want to exclude. For our example, that would mean we'd want a search term like this: "-blessed -imbued maple club". But this is more than 18 characters! So we can't do that - or can we? Sub-string keywords are keywords where, instead of using the whole word, you use only the first few characters of it. This is how we'll get our character count down to below 18. This is how I would do it: "-ble -imb map club". That's 18 characters exactly, and will match 'maple club' while excluding the 'blessed' and 'imbued' varieties. You can use this same technique on all the recipes in question in order to isolate them - or at the very least to get them to the top of the recipe search results screen.

My advice is to experiment with searching for the recipes you want to craft, and *always* test your search terms before setting Golem up to craft them - you may waste resources on unwanted items if you fail to heed this advice.