BlowTorch Basics

Jinos

Since there isn't a thread on basics yet I figured I'd do my best to help, as so many threads on the forums have helped me throughout my time playing.  

I know people use different mobile clients depending on what they need while away from a computer. Nexus is popular. I'd use Nexus myself if Chrome didn't go exorcist on my phone, and needed a fiery cleansing to the disabled apps graveyard. So, I've made due with Blowtorch. Which is a Regex based client, so if you need any coding help for it, I suggest you seek out all the helpful people who understand these particular coding expressions here in Tech Support.

I may not be able to code my way out of a paper bag, but I've adjusted to Blowtorch's interface after some years of experience. Which is why I'm hoping to be of some use to any of you with UI questions.

First off: Button Sets.

Button Sets are a lifesaver for tasks and navigation in-game. The trouble is the default button set is geared to just a few commands, and it's a pain to edit. You'll want to create a new Button Set, which isn't confined like the default. (You can change their roundness, position, size, color, font. Quick note though - Changing the roundness affects the size of the block and the size of the font.)

I know having all these blocks on your screen can be an eyesore, but fret not. You can create a Clear Button. First you create a new button, and for its input you type .clearbuttons

When pressed it will take all those blocks off your screen, and leave you with a Back button to return your buttons to their original state. This is perfect for when you want to read what is going on.

Buttons can have two commands. One when pressed, and another when you drag your finger down to flip it. So, if you create a button for moving North, you can also set it to move South when you flip it, or input whatever you want.

I've found it best to create themes for Button Sets. My most glaring set is for Combat, as you can see. Thankfully the ones I made for Hunting and Testing are less cluttered.

I must warn you about a bug though. When you're switching between sets, and you press a button too fast, your current set will shift to your previous set, and trying to switch to the set you want won't work. You'll have to switch to something else, and then switch back to get what you wanted in the first place.

Another common bug concerns the very top half of your screen. If you tap too much near the notification bar, or accidentally press that high up the app itself will crash. Don't worry, you're still logged in! You just have to click on the app again. Your current game will be highlighted in green. Just press that and everything is back to normal for the most part. The exception being your input into the editor. If your trying to write a sentence it will now scroll to the right side, instead of spacing down so you can see what it is you're trying to write. If you don't need to talk to anyone, or write anything and you're just hunting it won't really matter, but to get rid of the side scrolling just Quit out of your game, and Quit out of the client before you log back in.

Since I'm talking about bugs, I'll mention the biggest one. For some reason you might wake to find all your settings and MuDs gone. But fear not! Breathe! It's a rare occurrence since the latest version fixed most of that crap. Just tap on your three dot interface in the upper right corner of your screen, and tap Recover Settings.

This will return your Buttons, Aliases, Triggers etc. But it won't return any of the Games you have input into the MuD directory. You'll have to manually add them again, but once you do that and login all your settings will be there. Phew.

Aliases - You can't delete them once created, but you can disable them, or modify them to a different command entirely. (Thankfully you can delete Triggers in case you were wondering.)

Timers -  Simply put. They suck post all the updates. I personally think they lead to the big crash above. Plus they're not as useful compared to what else you can do manually. 

I know it's strange to end this first post with bugs, but these can be what drive people away from making the best of something. Plus, I think it's better for people to know these beforehand.

If any of you have any questions for general use, I'll do my best to answer whatever I can.

-Helpful tips and tricks-

A semicolon is the command separator in Blowtorch, and it cannot be changed.

Hunting, combat, and general conversations are better read in portrait mode. Reading files, scrolls, journals, manuscripts, debates, sermons, rituals, performances, and lengthy discussions are better in landscape.

Good rule of thumb for writing in scrolls etc. Use a note app first, copy & paste into the editor, then use landscape mode to proofread your work inside the Achaean editor and make sure everything is formatting correctly before saving.

It's better to create Aliases for Combat within Achaea itself. You can add multiple commands into your alias by using a backslash.

Example - setalias pbg settarget gerbil/ enemy &tar/ punch gerbil/ cry/ say Oh the humanity!

You can also add your Achaean aliases into the queueing system! 

queue add class pbg for certain class skill balances, or queue add eqbal pbg for common uses. It's a lifesaver when you create a button for them.

Tunnelvision is your friend in combat, or big crowds while mobile.

Sparring and combat practice. Blowtorch has no built in logging feature. So whatever your screen captures is how many pages you've set to see within Achaea's config command. Nothing else. If you have a good friend who can spectate you in the arena, log what you're doing, and send you that file to read over. Buy them a beer. Buy them all the things. Grovel at their feet. Laud their accomplishments. Then use what you've learned to gut them in the arena.

Outside of that adjusting to the pace of combat on your phone is practice and experience. Practice practice practice. I need a lot of practice myself. Fecking practice. Yes, I mean fecking. Don't ask me why, it's what a good friend taught me. Just do it!  

Laedha

This is ridiculously impressive. Kudos to you!! 

Jinos

@Laedha

It's not much, but I hope to add in more information when I get the chance. 

Jinos

Alright. Here's the second installment of BlowTorch basics where I'll be covering more of the Options at your disposal, along with some simple Triggers, Highlights and Gags.

Once you tap on the MuD you want to play, tap on the three dot interface and you'll get your directory.

 

Tap on Options to get to the Program Settings.

These are mostly up for personal preference, but you'll mostly be interacting with the Bell, Button, Input, Service, and Window options.

Bell - (I don't personally use the Bell option.) It's one of the few special commands built into BlowTorch. You can find more information on them here - http://bt.happygoatstudios.com/?view=special

Button - This will give you options on how your phone or tablet will handle them. You're given the choice of haptic feedback on buttons you create. This will vibrate your phone which will drain your battery. Fast. So, I'd recommend having no haptic feedback if you're playing for more than an hour.

Input - You'll use this for your keyboard settings. I like using the full-screen editor, which enables you to see suggestions on what you're typing as you type it, as well as show you what words you have misspelled. 

Service - This deals with how you're gonna structure your playing. It's also the option that I'm most wary of tampering with so I mostly leave it with its defaults. Here you can disable processing those semicolons as the command separator if you want to use something else within Achaea's config options.

Window - Here is where you'll deal with what's displayed as you're playing. Colors, font size, fonts, etc. 

Now let's tackle some basics on Triggers.

Triggers - Tap on your three dot interface while in a game, and tap on Triggers. Then click on new and you're ready to craft a new trigger. But first you need a line of text to capture that you trigger off of. 

Let's start with a staple that will help you with some anti-theft. Generosity: A feeling of generosity spreads throughout you.

Label the trigger, add in the pattern of text, and since we don't have any special characters in this pattern you will keep the green check-mark set to Literal.

Next you'll tap on New Action. Stick to the Ack With option for now, this will enter a command when your trigger is... well, triggered. Input selfishness or an alias for selfishness into the responder. And voila. You're done. (You can also add a highlight to this, which I'll cover later below.) Now be sure to test your newly created trigger. Oh! And make sure you're using the queueing system within Achaea, or you'll want to change your response input to queue add eqbal selfishness. Because generosity has an equilibrium cost when used.

Another useful trigger to have is Rebounding. Set an alias to light your pipe filled with malachite/skullcap and smoke it beforehand. Then create a trigger capturing the pattern of: Your aura of weapons rebounding disappears.

Add your smoking alias to the Ack Responder and you're set. You'll want to disable this trigger while you're hunting, or you'll burn through your mineral and herb reserves. Just remember to turn it back on when you're raiding or defending! 

Highlights - These are incredibly useful, but it's easy to get carried away highlighting everything until you realise you can no longer read what is happening. So bear in mind to use these as you need them, depending on what you're doing.

Now for a simple highlight let's go for Loyals. People have mounts, pets, and class skill loyals. Sometimes what you encounter while wandering around is someone's loyal and not a denizen to pummel. So, it's useful to probe something first, and this highlight will help you see if a creature belongs to someone. (This might not stop you from killing it anyways, but people get attached to their fun little text critters, so expect the consequences of murdering something that belongs to someone else.) You should also create a highlight for your own Loyals. To keep track of the former if it should happen while you're logged in. You do get a message when you're offline though, so you'll know whose unmerciful destruction you will plot.

As an alchemist I have access to creating a homunculus, who will be my helpful assistant here. Now craft a new Trigger, label it Loyals if you want, but instead of using a regular pattern we're going to use a coded expression which I call the magical blob. For this pattern you'll want to use: (\w+) is loyal to (\w+).

This expression (\w+) substitutes one word. So you won't have to create triggers for every use of He/She is loyal to <person's name>

Since we're using an expression in this trigger, you'll want to tap off the green check-mark that says Literal, since we aren't using a literal pattern here, we're substituting parts of the pattern. You'll get a warning explaining your use of coded expressions. Acknowledge and you're good to move on.

Now you'll want to tap on New Action, then on Color. This is where you'll edit the color of your highlight. You're given options of foreground on the top left dot, and background on the dot to the right.

I caution you to be careful with using background color additions. Especially for things that you probe, rather than something you see passing by, because your screen might end up like this:

And the only way to fix it is to QQ and quit out of BlowTorch. So, if you create highlights for probing things, stick to the foreground colors only!

Finished result is:

Gags - For those of us on mobile clients Gags are an essential part of saving our precious screen space from walls of text.

We'll begin with gagging a general emote. Achaea has a good selection of them in help emote list. If you've ever attended anything with a crowd you've seen a lot of emotes, which can flood your screen, making it difficult to keep track of someone speaking, incoming tells, and whatever else is going on.

Now you'll want to create a new Trigger. I've decided to use the hopping emote as a base pattern. You'll then tap on New Action, then onto Gag. Make sure Gag From Output, and Gag From Log are both checked, then tap done. You don't want to type anything in the Retarget to Window bar for this. Just leave it blank. 

When you have to gag people's emotes to each other you're going to have to use expressions. More magical blobs! Thankfully Achaea gives you the patterns you need by using the showemote command. So, you can gag things beforehand. Can't see who's performing next with all the cheers? Gone. Can't stand people snuggling? Gone! Can't stand someone begging you for monies, or crying for mercy? Gone!

Examples being - (\w+) hops about madly.

(\w+) hops up and down on (\w+) foot.

Just a quick note. Be sparse in gagging emotes that concern you. Not knowing what someone is directing at you lets people get away with some nasty things. In which case you'll want to be able to see it, so you can bring them a fiery bloody end.

-Tips and helpful tricks-

If you're consistently defending or raiding, and have regular leaders. Make a button or alias to walk to them in case you're ever off balance and can't follow, or you get left behind because of gravehands, piety, etc. This makes regrouping less of a headache for your party leader. 

Also make a button, or an alias to follow these party leaders. So they're not having to beckon you five times, and you're scrambling to type something.

Create aliases for deffing up as soon as you log in. I've encountered some people who consider deffing in the room to be rude... just def up. Your safety is more important.

Create a trigger for keeping up mass. In fact, create an alias that turns on tunnelvision, applies mass, touches cloak, puts up rebounding, and curseward whenever you need to group up to defend or raid.

Make a highlight for useful tattoos, cloak, tree, mindseye, moss. That way if you look at your tattoos and don't see your highlight, you'll notice something is missing, and hopefully you can fix it before you go out hunting, or are summoned into a room full of people that want to punch your face. 

Navarr

You've done so much work to help out! I use mobile a lot and it can be a huge hindrance, only reason I'm not using blowtorch is the daunting fact of needing to start completely from scratch after spending ages setting up everything using the nexus client. 

I might try it in the future and this guide will be my precious go-to, thank you! 

Siduri

Is there a way to fix the wilderness and subdivision map showing the wrong colours in spots? 

Jinos

@Siduri

I haven't found a solution yet. Culling extraneous colors doesn't help. Whoever built BT seemed to have a certain MuD as a template for what they based their client on. 

I've been trying to find a decent system encoder that can process Achaea's sub and wilderness properly, but it's slow going with all of them.

I created an alias to turn off Ansi in Achaea, and back on when needed. BT will still pick up its own highlights at least. It's not pretty by any sense, but we're able to see most things then.