AudioTriggers+

AudioTriggers+ compared to EQ AT's and GamTextTriggers

• AudioTriggers+ is currently harder to use than the in-game system. The plan is to add a nice graphical user interface at some point, but I don't know when that will be. So at the moment, if you want to use this program, you will need to edit the atconfig.xml file with some sort of text editor, like wordpad.

• AudioTriggers+ adds precise control over the search order of the patterns. You can choose either to continue searching for more sounds to play, or you can play a sound and then stop the search there.

• AudioTriggers+ allows you to monitor more than one log file, so if you are multi-boxing, you can have a single instance of AudioTriggers+ running for multiple boxes. You can choose which triggers to attach to which log file, and you can determine the search order on a per-log file basis.

• AudioTriggers+ has better sound control. More sounds can be played simultaneously, and you shouldn't ever hear a sound get cut off like in EQ or like GamTextTriggers. Also, you can tune the sounds individually, by changing the Left/Right balance, and the volume. AudioTriggers+ allows the sounds to be taken anywhere from the system, so you don't need to pile them all into a single directory (unless you want to).

• AudioTriggers+ runs as a separate program (like GamTextTriggers, but unlike EQ's AT system), so if you have a multi-core chip, it will create less overhead for the processor.

How to build

Note that this requires some knowledge and comfort-level with Linux and/or Cygwin.

At some point I'd like to be able to provide a binary which you can download, instead of having to build this on your own, but that day is not today.

Dependencies

1. Install the latest Cygwin from cygwin.com, and add the following packages:
   1. Devel/git
   2. Devel/gitk [optional]
   3. Devel/git-gui [optional]
   4. Devel/gcc-core
   5. Devel/libxml2-devel
   6. Devel/make

Do the build

1. Open a cygwin shell and do
   1. git clone git://github.com/yeroca/AudioTriggersPlus.git
   2. cd AudioTriggersPlus/src
   3. make
   4. make install

How to use

In the file XML/example_atconfig.xml, you'll find a crude example of the format needed for the file src/atconfig.xml.

There are three main elements in atconfig.xml: <sound>, <trigger>, and <logfile>

<sound>

These describe the sound file and any adjustments you want to make to the volume, balance (aka "pan"), and priority. The priority determines which sounds are more important than others, and when the system is highly burdened with lots of sounds, the ones with higher priorities are more likely to play than the ones with lesser priorities. Priority is probably something you can leave off, because EQ doesn't put much burden on the underlying sound system. To start with, I'd suggest just specifying the file alone. Note that right now the sound file has to be specified in Windows pathname format instead of Cygwin's /cygdrive/c/... method.

The name attribute you give the sound is arbitrary, and you will use it below when describing a trigger.

<trigger>

These provide the pattern to search for in a log file, and provide the name of the <sound> to play when the trigger is found.

<logfile>

You need one of these for each log file you will monitor. If you are one-boxing, that means you only need a single <logfile> element. The logfile element contains a <file> element which gives the Cygwin-style pathname to the log file, e.g.: /cygdrive/c/Program Files/Everquest/Logs/eqlog_*_*.txt

Each <logfile> element also contains <attach_trigger> elements which describe which of the <trigger>'s (see above) should be looked for in this log file. The order of the <attach_trigger> elements determines the search order. Each <attach_trigger> element can contain an optional <stop_search_on_match/> element. If this element is present, the search will stop if the trigger's pattern matches the log file line, but only after that trigger's sound is played.

How to use the atconfig.xml file

Once you have created your own atconfig.xml file, move it into the src subdirectory.

Start up AudioTriggersPlus by issuing these commands from a Cygwin shell:

1. cd AudioTriggersPlus/src
2. ./AudioTriggersPlus

If you've made any errors in the atconfig.xml file, the program should give you some decent error messages about what's wrong.