Musician Archive

Chaple’s Quick lesson on how to set up your SWG client for composing….

“Ok, to my fellow musicians on Chilastria, this is my “Piece Offering” per say. I still don’t agree with the current instrument prices, but I will argue no more. I might not be as musically talented as you guys are, but I’m human. Two, it’s a game. Let’s see if we can work it out.” – Chaple Starfox.

The biggest problem I have had as a musician is that when the band is practicing and trying different flourish combinations, if something cool happens and you ask everyone, “What flourishes did you hit?” people respond with, “um I think it was 5645… or 4534.. not sure which.”

So to solve this problem, I thought of an easy thing to do. I’ll walk you through it.

Step one, like many other ideas use create 8 macro buttons called:

Macro Name: XXA
Macro Text: /xxa;

Macro Name: XXB
Macro Text: /xxB;

Macro Name: XXC
Macro Text: /xxc;

Macro Name: XXD
Macro Text: /xxd;

Macro Name: XXE
Macro Text: /xxe;

Macro Name: XXF
Macro Text: /xxf;

Macro Name: XXG
Macro Text: /xxg;

Macro Name: XXF
Macro Text: /xxf;

Macro Name: XXG
Macro Text: /xxg;

Macro Name: XXH
Macro Text: /xxh;

Macro Name: XXI
Macro Text: /xxi;

Macro Name: XXJ
Macro Text: /xxj;

Macro Name: XXK
Macro Text: /xxk;

The next thing to do is starting with the first position in your toolbar put each macro button in a slot. So toolbar slot 00 = XXA Macro button, etc.

Now, if you’re familiar with this, cool. If you aren’t just keep following along with me.

Next, create a public or private chat room. Call it “BandLogger” or in my case, I called it “ChapLogger”. I make mine public, it’s not really important. Join the new channel, everyone in the band must join the channel as well.

********IMPORTANT********

Make sure that you don’t put the chat channel in your spatial tab or you will spam yourself silly!!!!!

********IMPORTANT********

Now, create a text file in the SWG root folder and call it “FloLog.txt”.

Cut and paste the below into it, remember to change “chaplogger” to what ever you called your chat channel.

(Begin cut… do not include)

XXA: /flo 1;/chaplogger Flo 1;

XXB: /flo 2;/chaplogger Flo 2;

XXC: /flo 3;/chaplogger Flo 3;

XXD: /flo 4;/chaplogger Flo 4;

XXE: /flo 5;/chaplogger Flo 5;

XXF: /flo 6;/chaplogger Flo 6;

XXG: /flo 7;/chaplogger Flo 7;

XXH: /flo 8;/chaplogger Flo 8;

XXI: /startmusic ;/chaplogger Starting Music;

XXJ: /StopMusic ;/chaplogger Stopping Music;

XXK: /chaplogger Mark end of Good Flourishes;

(End cut…. Do not include)

Now, once the file is saved, go into the game and type “/load FloLog.txt”. This will load all of the commands defined in the text document as aliases. What this means is that if you type “/xxa” it will first play Flourish 1 and then put a message in your chat channel recording that you hit that flourish.

I use the starting and stopping music keys to record when I want the drums to start and stop for special effect’s like solo’s etc. I would also highly recommend that at the beginning of each session everyone in the band types “/(ChannelName) Instrument”. This way someone reviewing the collected data knows what instruments correspond with the flourishes. I would also recommend putting in the name of the song as well.

So, the flow of events are simple:

Step 1. Create the macro buttons XXA-XXK

Step 2. Create the Chat Channel to have all your flourishes spam to

Step 3. Create the Text File defining the aliases

Step 4. Use the /load FloLog.txt to load the aliases

Step 5. type in “/log” – This command will record all of the text that goes across all the channels to a text file in your SWG/Server/Char folder. Just snoop some and you will find it.

Step 6. Have everyone type in “/(ChatChannel) Instrument”

Step 7. Band Leader types in “/(ChatChannel) (Name of Song)”

Step 8. Have fun. And just put comments into the chat channel as you find things you like.

Now, when you’re done you will see that when you look at your log, it’s full of EVERYTHING that you typed and received while playing. So, you might think, “What am I to do with this??? I played for 6 hours, am I suppose to delete all the garbage… this is useless Chaple!! Sigh… thanks bud… I think my IQ dropped after reading this…”

Well, it’s not and this is why:

Ok, so now you have a log file, but you just want to read specific channel. This is how you parse it. Just cut and paste the code below into a text file and rename it to “parse.vbs” and run it. The VBS compiler is installed on Win2k/xp by default, if .vbs doesn’t work for you, go to the Microsoft website and download it and install the toolkit.

‘(Begin cut)
'Create a file called Parse.txt
'Paste all of this code into it and rename the infile and outfile
'Save and double Click

msgbox ("Starting")
Set fso = WScript.CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

dim infile,outfile

‘This is the path and name of where you want it to save the filtered log.

outfile = "F:\StarWarsGalaxies\profiles\gee007\Chilastra\log.txt"

‘This is the original log generated by SWG

infile = “F:\StarWarsGalaxies\profiles\(Profile)\Chilastra\Chaple Starfox_chatlog.txt"

'Creates the outfile
Set OutStream = fso.CreateTextFile(outfile)

'Where the source file is. The actual log file is what the name of your char is, so you will need

‘to modify the path to where your log is.

‘Since I really don’t want everyone to know what my logon is I removed it from the text.

‘So check the path and make sure it’s right. Replace (Profile) with the correct folder name.

Set InStream = fso.OpenTextFile(infile, 1) ' 1 = Read. 2 = Append

dim myline
dim searchfor
searchfor = "[ChapLogger]" ‘Or what ever you called your chat channel.
Do While InStream.AtEndOfStream = False

MyLine = InStream.ReadLine

if instr(myline,searchfor)=1 then
OutStream.WriteLine(myline)

end if
Loop
Set InStream = Nothing
Set OutStream = Nothing
msgbox ("Done")
’(End Cut)

Now, that 500 meg text file is trimmed way down to a decent size and the only thing in it is what was done in the logging channel. All that is left is to find the sections where you put comments into it and look for where you hit “Good Flourishes” and cut and paste that section out.

With a quick review of the parsed log you can now easily go back after jamming and say…

“Hmm, joe was on the Ommni, Mark was on the Nar’s and I was on the Mand. Joe played 7322, Mark played 88322 and I played 12121” and the next jam session you can refine the sound even more because you know what everyone played even if those people aren’t on, as long as you can find replacement band members who can play the same instruments your in luck.

All I ask, is that if you find a good song, that you post it.

NOTE:

On a side note, I am currently working on an external composing tool as well. I have run into some roadblocks in the sound processing, but the idea is to have a user select up to 20 instruments, pick the song, set the flourishes w/ delays and hit play. So that composing would be much easier. I really could use some help on the code, if I get a beta out I will post the link for download here.

Sincerely,
Chaple Starfox
Master Musician/Entertainer

This is a great idea!
Thanks for posting this, I'm recopying to my band's forum so the proper people will see this.

I knew you could log chats but I didn't conceive of the versatility of the function.

BTW:
are you not finding buyers for your instruments? I would think they would sell fast when the other people selling are pricing much higher than you . ...

If you need some help advertising let me know. I won't be back in game till September due to RL concerns, but send an email or get in touch with Leppy or Drew's Bazaar if you need so retailers for your stuff.

I don't think it's an issue of you agreeing with current prices, right? It's if the buyers will pay, and you're on the winning end of it with your prices. ..

Unless you're just not getting any business, which might be an advertising problem. WTH do I know, /shrug, I'm a music major, not a business major.

Very nice post! I hadn't thought of using the log file in this way either and will give it a go when I get home tonight. Generally I get an idea of which flourishes people are playing from watching their animations and figure it out that way... but of course you can't watch 5 people and recall all their flourishes unless you have a remarkable D.A.R.Y.L. style memory