Game Guides Archive
Thread: is there a way to specifically target something that has a space in its name?
Click on it. 
I guess you want it for a macro...AFK hunting is bad, mmmkay.
Now I've finished being facetious...no idea, sorry.
lol
actually it is for a macro but it's not for camping something. it is just a case of making a search easier so i don't accidentally drive by what i am searching for.
if i was gonna camp something i could just cycle through targets or whatever, don't need to target by name (and yeah i've done my fair share in the past, so sue me)
Ratel wrote:Click on it.
I guess you want it for a macro...AFK hunting is bad, mmmkay.
Now I've finished being facetious...no idea, sorry.
If he was doing it afk, their would be better ways to do it.
As far as I know, to target anything with spaces in the name, you have to type the full name including spaces. For example, lets say you want to target "a Kunga Warrior". Then you'd have to type /target a kunga warrior. If you want to target "both vane (a kunga warrior)" then you'd have to type /tar both vane (a kunga warrior).basically however the name appears over the head of the target is how you have to type it with the /target command. Otherwise you'll just end up targeting the closest object that starts with the same first character of the word in your /target command if the name in your macro can't be found.
So if you have /tar a piket longhorn in a macro, but no picket longhorn is withing target range, you might get anything within target range who's name starts with an "A".
Anyway, as far as I know, you have to type the full name and all characters in that name to target it successfully in a situation where there are other items/objects/mobs around that start with the same first character. It's not case sensitive, but character specific.
I don't think it works like that. From my experiances, it just goes off what you type right after "/target". I've tried "hiding" a vendor for guildmates to use, then using the "/target vendor" command. I ended up targetting my storage vendor across town. Even when using the command "/target vendor: guild stuff", I get my storage vendor.
HardwiredXMan wrote:
As far as I know, to target anything with spaces in the name, you have to type the full name including spaces. For example, lets say you want to target "a Kunga Warrior". Then you'd have to type /target a kunga warrior. If you want to target "both vane (a kunga warrior)" then you'd have to type /tar both vane (a kunga warrior).basically however the name appears over the head of the target is how you have to type it with the /target command. Otherwise you'll just end up targeting the closest object that starts with the same first character of the word in your /target command if the name in your macro can't be found.
Yeah, above poster is right. Let's say you're in the Deathwatch Bunker, you want to target the overlord to find out where approximately his room is. Unfortunately this is now impossible, because trying to type "/target Death Watch Overlord" will target the nearest Death Watch Bloodguard. Basically, the game takes the first word before the space and shoots it through the targetting system. It goes something like this for the above example: The game will fix your targeter to:
1. The MOB with a name starting with Death.
2. Since there is more than one MOB starting with Death, it will go in alphabetical order, so Blood would come before Overlord in this case.
3. Since there is more than one Death Watch Bloodguard, it will then target the nearest MOB with that name.
As far as I know, there is no workaround for this right now
Darkknight109 wrote:
Yeah, above poster is right. Let's say you're in the Deathwatch Bunker, you want to target the overlord to find out where approximately his room is. Unfortunately this is now impossible, because trying to type "/target Death Watch Overlord" will target the nearest Death Watch Bloodguard. Basically, the game takes the first word before the space and shoots it through the targetting system. It goes something like this for the above example: The game will fix your targeter to:
1. The MOB with a name starting with Death.
2. Since there is more than one MOB starting with Death, it will go in alphabetical order, so Blood would come before Overlord in this case.
3. Since there is more than one Death Watch Bloodguard, it will then target the nearest MOB with that name.
As far as I know, there is no workaround for this right now
The reason that is because the /target command now has a flaw in it somehow. I'm not sure if it's a range thing or not...but I know for example if you go into a cave and need to target "a pile of bones", typing /target a pile of bones won't work unless you are close enough to the pile of bones or have had the bones spawn in the game world by previously being near the bones before. if a mag seal container is closer, and you type /target a pile of bones, you might get the mag seal container targeted instead because it starts with thesame letter and the bones are not close enough or hasn't spawned yet. If i'm correct, items that spawn stays in your RAM buffer until loading other graphics and data from other items loading in will clear it from the RAM....so as long as it's in your cpu's RAM, it is always accessible or can be manipulated by commands if there is a command to manipulate it like the /target command. When it's pushed out of your RAM, your CPU has to make a server call to download the graphic/file again and then and only then can you manipulate it or see it in the game world. If it aint buffered/downloadedinto your RAM, you cannot manipulate it. THis is part of what makes cpu's lag when you don't have 1gig ram.....gotta redownload previous graphics and such that was cleared from the RAM.
Other times in the same situation, i'd get the pile of bones targeted even though the mag seal container is closer. Later I realized that it may be because the distance you are hasn't allowed an item to spawn...you know it's there but it actually hasn't spawned into the game world until you get close enough to it. Therefore no command you type will target it.
For the times when I'm trying to target a certain item/vendor or mob....I too have had an issue where I may type /target a piket longhorn. I may be standing right next to the that piket, yet my target jumps to "a voritor lizard" or something else further away that starts with the letter a.
This has led me to believe that the /target command is broken, probably in the way that pass through healing works.....which your target cursors temporarily gets locked onto the last item or thing that you have targeted and if that item or thing is not within spawn range, the next closest thing that starts with the same name or is closest to the name of your last target will be targeted even if you areclose to another item that starts with the same letter(meaning A and a space is closer in name than Andy would be if you typed /tar a because a space comes before the letterNin ascii code).
So with all of this, I have come to believe that the /target command doesn't always work, but when it does work correctly, typeing the full name of what you want to target always works better than typing partial names.
Although I can't be certain that the /target command works exactly like I said, I do beleive that throughout all my experiences using it, typeing the full name has more often than not resulted in targeting the exact thing I want to target. It doesn't work all the time, but most of hte time it does.
Also I forgot to add, that sometimes I can type "/target a" and because nothing is around me that starts with the letter A, I may get the next best thing targeted. I'm not sure if that's because of the ASCII code order or if the devs have a different system for the order of symbols and letters being targeted. I put my bet on it being the ASCII code because it's the simplest way.
The short answer is that the /target command is random depending on a bunch of other factors. IN general, typing the full name of your target will usually get the best results.
Message Edited by HardwiredXMan on 10-04-2005 01:14 PM
Just to let everyone know that may not have any idea what ASCII code is. Basically in programming, games or applications, when doing any kind of search for a string of characters.....whether it's the letter A, the question mark ?, a space, a underscore _.....the search is done using the ASCII code of those symbols and letters. So if your looking for the Letter A, it's not ordered and searched for by the letter A, it's searched for by the ASCII code that represents that Letter or symbol.
For the letter A, the ASCII code is 65, for lower case a, it's 97.
A space has an ASCII code of 32.
So in ASCII code a space is ordered higher than the letter A. This is evident when you sort a vendor list and anything that has nothing but letters in it will be ordered lower on the list while stuff with dashes and such would be ranked higher on the list if they exist in the name. Typically, numbers and special characters...(- + = * ? _ &..etc ) will have higher rank than letters. Their ASCII codes come before letters and that's why list are sorted with those symbols first.
For example. _Voritor comes before Voritor. =Jedi comes before Jedi.
So when the targeting system is used in the game, it simply does a ASCII character search for the closest string and automatically targets it.
For example, say your trying to do /target Master Yoda, but master yoda is no where to be found. The next best thing may be Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The system will first search for the ASCII code 77 (represents the capital letter M) and compare it to all the searchable text strings within range and compares them.....if it finds a match, it moves on to the next character which is the lower case letter a (ASCII code is 97). It continues to do this until it either finds the full search string you typed (/target Master Yoda) including spacesand other symbolsor else it simpy targets the next closest string which would be master Obi-Wan once it can't find the next letter in the words or phrase that you typed. If Master Obi-Wan did not have the word Master in front of it, the next closest target would be the first text string that comes after the first letter or symbol that you searched for. In this case, the letter M is that character and anything starting with the capitol letter M will be targeted instead of Obi-Wan. If nothing starts with a Capitol letter M, it looks for the nextclosest ASCII code in order from0 to 255.
So the game doesn't or shouldn'tdisregard anything after a space in a name, a space can be searched for just like any other letter....however, nothing in the game starts with a space so it will probably default to the next highest ASCII code that after the ASCII code of a space and is nearest to you.
It certainly can get a little more complicated than this and programmers can build their own search criteria and orderso I can't say that this is exactly how SWG does it, but it is the default method used in any search engine and the game looks as if it follows these rules upon first look, but you never know how the devs have programmed it to work. As with everything in the game, the devs seem to have programmed a function that keeps track of everything you have done, so I wouldn't put it past them to use that function to keep track of everything you have targeted within a certain distance or timeframe.