Seasoned Star Wars Galaxies veterans know all of the best ways to get the most out of the game interface. The community again pitched in to share their proven methods for customizing the UI in Star Wars Galaxies with options, shortcuts, and more. Keep reading for more tips and tricks written by players for players!
Exercise Your Options
Did you know that you can use cut, copy, and paste in game? Kravis tells us how! Press "O" for the Options window, press Keymap, click the All tab, and find the Chat Edit Cut, Chat Edit Copy and Chat Edit Paste commands and assign them a key. You can now paste in text from out of game into spatial chat and macros.
Aerous Esea also recommends expanding your toolbar to a second row. In the Options window, click the Interface button. Check the box that reads "Expand Toolbar to a Second Row". Digital_Terror, who also recommends this, notes that the actions in the second row can be activated by pressing Shift+#.
For a starting player, missed communications can be a killer. To make certain you don't ever miss one, Zion Halcyon recommends setting your chat options. In your chat box, where the named tabs are listed (usually Chat, Combat, etc.), right click on Chat and click Modify Tab.
From here, make sure you move tells (instant messages), guild chat, and group chat over to the main spatial window. This will allow you to see if someone in your group is trying to talk in guild chat, and also adds guild chat if you are in a guild. Now go to group chat (or guild chat if in a guild), and again, right click the name and modify. This time, leave the spatial messages out, but add in group chat, guild chat, etc.
What this does for you is two things: first, you never miss a message if someone is trying to contact you if you are in spatial, because the different color of the text shows as bright as day. Secondly, if you are in a heavily spammed area and someone tried to get a hold of you and you miss it, rather than struggling with the spatial chat, you can switch over to the group/guild chat. None of the spatial messages are there, making scrolling up and finding what that person wanted easy! It can be a real life saver, and save a lot of time in scrolling up to find out what someone said.
When you're hunting for creatures in the wild or trying to find quest objects, Iseult of Bloodfin suggests that you turn on "Show All Object Names" under Misc in the Options window. Consider increasing the " Object Name Range " slider under Misc as well. The "Show All Object Names" will display text over creatures, quest objects, basically anything you can interact with. Increasing the object name range will make this text viewable from a distance. Don't forget to turn off "Show All Object Names" when you're in a city, though -- all of the text may slow you down.
Find a Shortcut
Drashk Dza'lya of TCPrime shares a trick for quickly retrieving items. Items stored in a droid can be instantly retrieved from the toolbar. To do this, drag the item to your toolbar, as normal, so that you can use it. Now, call out any droid that you own that has an Item Storage Module installed. Drag and drop the item over to the droid. You don't have to open up the droid Item Storage.
Whenever you need the item, simply use it from your toolbar. This will bring the item into your inventory from the droid. You don't even need the droid called to perform this. To equip or use the item, just use the item again from your toolbar. This is a great way to carry around spare sets of armor, without having to take up inventory space.
Digital_Terror also suggests for quicker access and storing of your favorite vehicle and/or mount, dragging them to an unused box on your action bar.
Take Command
If you're having trouble finding a specific command, Nebaf of Bloodfin has some advice for you. If modal chat is enabled, type / and hit the tab key to display a list of all commands. If you wish to narrow the list down, type one or more letters, and all commands starting with those letter(s) will be displayed. For example, typing /group then hitting tab will display all commands that start with /group.
Ani'cul of Sunrunner has a tip for the popular adventurers in the galaxy. When seeking to send the same message to multiple people, start the message as you usually would, but then include a comma (no space) between the names you wish to send it to. For example, /tell nobody,somebody,anybody "There's a party going on right here!"
The three players you named will receive the same statement without having to retype it, or edit the previous chat line for names. This is very useful when you want the message to be heard at the same time, or when you are in a group and want to exclude a member or two from discussion.
Tired of adding everyone in your guild to your friends list? Neilston of Naritus has a tip for you! You'll need to find out the "number" of the guild chat for your player association via the chat browser, and substitute it where you see XXXX below. Copy this into your chat browser and press Enter to create an alias command:
/alias gwhoguild /chatr query guild.XXXX.guildchat; /pause 1; /chatr who guild.XXXX.guildchat
This will list every member that is currently logged into your guild chat on your server when you type /gwhoguild. Neilston suggests that may have to run it twice, as lag might cause it to "misfire".
Decorate Like a Pro
Sybooth of Kettemoor shares the know-how for adding color text to house signs. Simply type whatever you want the sign to say into notepad followed by simple HTML color codes (\#ff0000\). By typing it in notepad and copying it out into the text field you can have multiple lines. Your text might look like this:
\#0000ff\My House \#00ff00\Welcome!
With the Structure Management Terminal, choose Set Name and paste the text to add some color to the outside of your home.
Inside your house, make use of these furniture movement aliases from Kupyi Labe for quick and easy decorating. Kupyi suggests the following set:
/alias mf /move forward
/alias mf /move back
/alias mu /move up
/alias md /move down
/alias rl /rotate left
/alias rr /rotate right
Then typing /mu 250 or a /mf 50 or a /rl 180 becomes easier than typing the entire command.
Keep an eye on the Friday Features for more game tips in the near future. Be sure to visit the official Star Wars Galaxies forums to find additional tips from your fellow players or to share your own!
