[Suljin]

So I finally caved in and downloaded this, after years of manually equiping my obis on blm, or changing small things here and there that werent large enough to warrent a full macro for them. But ive finally gotten lazy and know that this would be much more efficient and helpfull. Only problem is I have no freaking clue how to use this, at all. I copied your xml Dak, but im at a complete loss as to what to do with it, where to put it, how to use my macros now etc. I read the whole page on spellcast and tried to follow, but I am horrible with computers. I think once I get familiar with it I'll be able to make small changes as needed with gear etc, but I just dont even understand where im putting your text or anything. Its a bit overwhelming =D thanks for any help in advance.

[Suljin]

Ok so Ive gotten the basics of spellcast figured out, and am currently using Daks xml file, only making changes to some equipment. I dont have dark or thunderspirit and during those two days, if I try to summon any other spirit, even ones alligned with current weather, spellcast inhibits me from casting it. I have to manually unload it, cast spell, siphon, release, and reload spellcast. Any ideas of what to do? And dont just say go get the two spells, none are currently on AH and ive been doing the bcnm for thunder.

[dakpluto]

Suljin, on 16 January 2010 - 06:23 AM, said:

Ok so Ive gotten the basics of spellcast figured out, and am currently using Daks xml file, only making changes to some equipment. I dont have dark or thunderspirit and during those two days, if I try to summon any other spirit, even ones alligned with current weather, spellcast inhibits me from casting it. I have to manually unload it, cast spell, siphon, release, and reload spellcast. Any ideas of what to do? And dont just say go get the two spells, none are currently on AH and ive been doing the bcnm for thunder.

Get the pacts >.>

Not trying to be an ass, honestly. It's just there is no easy solution. There is a lot of calculations and advanced work going on in this spellcast to maximize your siphons, and it really requires all your spirits.

Best you can do is change the variables for Dark and Thunder to some other spirit, but unless you manually go in and change it whenever the weather or day changes you won't be able to get a maximized siphon.

Changes to make if you wanted to use...ice spirit:


<var name = "Dark">Ice</var>
<var name = "Thunder">Ice</var>

Then the changespell will always use Ice Spirit if the formula produces Dark or Thunder. But if it's water weather....sorry, unless you changed it manually to water, then reloaded spellcast, it's still gonna do Ice.

But the ultimate solution is still to get all your spirits.

[Suljin]

Like I said, im working on the last 2 pacts, its just they aren't on AH and im doing the bcnm for thunder. I lvld smn to ~60 long time ago before spirits were anything other than quick shields so obviously I had no need really for more than a few different cheap ones.

So what youre saying is, if I follow what you changed above, it also effects if say it was watersday? Or maybe I just read it wrong. And I also dont understand why it prevents me from casting say earthspirit if its firesday and dusty out, wouldnt either earth or fire spirit be = to each other (given only 1 weather icon)?

And I just died to an nm, wasn't aware that your file auto siphoned and released on its own haha. I tried to use fire spirit for a shield and suddenly it was released, I was like "um . . . . thats not right". So other question as well, is there an easy fix for that, or not. Just seems that you have it set up to never keep spirits out for more than 10 secs. Thanks for the help appreciate it. Ive re-read through your file and its confusing on the lower half but some of it makes sense.

[dakpluto]

No, only the Dark and Thunder spirits would be changed.

The reason you can't cast earth spirit on wind day is because the spellcast is using a formula to determine for you the best spirit to cast for siphon. It defaults to day first, double weather next.

As for the emergency spirit (and I meant to add this to the wiki, lol, sorry about that) you need a FFXI macro with the following:

/raw /ma "spirit of your choice here" <me>

What that does, the /raw is a command for spellcast that basically says "Ignore what follows" Spellcast will then not parse the spell or anything associated with it. That way the spirit comes out as normal and doesn't start the siphon commands. However it's also not changing gear, so what I do is just hit my macro to summon the avatar of the same element as the spirit. All it will do is give you an error that you already have a pet, but spellcast will still process the command and switch to the correct gear for that element. If using AF2 pants, you will have to do that manually.

Or, you can do what I'm now thinking is best, and create a dummy spirit set. It's a gear set that isn't linked to any rule, but instead called upon by your Spirit "oh shit" macro. Would look like this then:

/raw /ma "spirit of choice" <me>
/wait 1
/sc s "name of oh shit spirit set"

(/sc is a command line shortcut to send a command to spellcast. The s after it means "switch to set")

Only problem with that is that it won't parse the day/weather then...I'll have to think of a way around that. I'll add it to the list of things to come.

[Suljin]

Awesome thanks! Never would have guessed I could do any of that or figured it out haha. Also ive noticed that on occasion after I kill a mob using fenrir, just as the mob dies I get an error window that pops up and the game has to shut down. Never had this problem before I got spellcast, is it a known issue or could I have done something wrong or what? All ive changed with what your original file had was some of the equipment.

[Shirai]

Are you still using (extended) gear macros?

I have noticed the game crashing when using those together with spellcast.

[Suljin]

extended as in?

[dakpluto]

Suljin, on 18 January 2010 - 01:22 AM, said:

extended as in?

Do any of your macros run scripts that have gear changes in them? If spellcast is trying to change gear, and a windower script is trying to change gear, it can cause really bad issues.

[Suljin]

I only have spellcast changing gear and then some of my macros in game have gear changes, is that what youre referring to? But no I dont use windower gear swaps

[Shirai]

That brings me to the next question, you're saying as the mob dies.
You mean by that the second the mob dies, or the second you release Fenrir?

If the second, do you still have some gearswaps written in your release macro?
And how often does this happen?

[Suljin]

Nope its as the mob dies. The game crashes before I even see the exp/etc scroll across the text window. And only noticed it with fenrir sofar. Seems very random, ive had it happen 2x in an hr, and then gone a full day on smn and never had it occur.

[Shirai]

Weird!

Well asking a bit further then.
Sorry for the short bluntness of the form but I want to know:

OS/PC related:
-Windows version (With service packs)
-DirectX version
-Hardware (Ram, CPU, GPU, etc.)
-Driver versions

FFXI/Windower related:
-Windower version
-Spellcast version
-Any other plugins you are running and their versions.
-Any .dat swaps?

Also if you have the possibility give the error code which pops up when the game crashes.
You should be able to find that in your error logs, otherwise write it down when it happens again.

[dakpluto]

Highly doubt it is spellcast related then. Spellcast has no triggers based of a mob dying. Only thing that could be triggered by a death is if you are engaged when the mob dies. Then at time of death you are changing states from engaged to idle.

But as we know that's a fairly uncommon state for a SMN to be in. So please let me know if that's the possible common link.

[Suljin]

Actually it has always happened when im engaged and meleeing along with fenrir.

Running vista (86)
Dont really know the stats off top of head for the rest, and not much time atm to look but can later

Use windower 4.2
Spellcast 2.22
no dat swaps

tparty, blinkmenot, distance, expwatch, statustimer, recast, chatmon, some more but cant remember atm. At school so can check later but sounds like issue could be with meleeing while killing.

[dakpluto]

Suljin, on 19 January 2010 - 06:21 PM, said:

Actually it has always happened when im engaged and meleeing along with fenrir.

Running vista (86)
Dont really know the stats off top of head for the rest, and not much time atm to look but can later

Use windower 4.2
Spellcast 2.22
no dat swaps

tparty, blinkmenot, distance, expwatch, statustimer, recast, chatmon, some more but cant remember atm. At school so can check later but sounds like issue could be with meleeing while killing.

OK, I'll take a look at the melee portions.

EDIT:
Line 633, try removing:

<action
type = "equip"
when = "idle|aftercast"
Set = "$Avatar"/>

(It's at the very end of the spellcast) I think it may be conflicting with the cancel spell at the start.

[Suljin]

Ok ill do that, and after ive had time to use smn enough and havent had any problems, ill let you know, thanks!

[Suljin]

On a quick note, just went to smn real fast and removing what you suggested above keeps me in whatever gear I am in. In fact, I couldn't get any gear to swap at all while removing that.

[dakpluto]

>< aight, I'll take another look at it this evening. I should have a chance to actually go out and fiddle around on my SMN today before dynamis.

[dakpluto]

UPDATE TIME!!!!!!

For the time being since the windower wiki being gay to me, just use this pastebin link:

http://pastebin.com/f4578466


Some of the new changes:

Favor has been added! New Gear sets for all the avatars for with favor and without favor active. Also in addition, added a new line when summoning to add in if Favor is active or not.

Spirits have been redone! This was a biggie for a lot of people that like spirits, and hated the auto-cast siphon of the original XML. So what I did was this:

Ice/Fire/Water/Wind/Earth/Thunder: if you summon one of these, it will cast the most MP friendly spirit for day/weather at that time. It will equip the correct gear set, and will stay active until you release it.

Light Spirit: since he tends to be cast for specific reasons, he doesn't change spell. In any day/weather combination it will still always cast Light Spirit.

Dark Spirit: since Dark Spirit is fairly useless on it's own in any situation, this is our new Auto-siphon spirit. Hit your dark spirit macro and it will summon the best Siphon spirit, auto-siphon, and then auto-release, just like the old spellcast.

Notice: ALL MELEE STUFF HAS BEEN REMOVED. Word of advice, use a seperate spellcast for melee, it's much easier than trying to integrate the two.

Plans for future spellcasts: Scaling siphons to maximize MP effectiveness. Bahlran's Ring for assault/salvage (this is probably fairly easy to do right now, but I've stuck with my Ulthlam's and SE won't let me change, so haven't been motivated to look into it yet. QQ )


I hope y'all enjoy the new Spellcast