GINA Basics

[Cantus]

Class-Specific and Optional Trigger Groups

What are Trigger Groups?

Triggers and groups (folders that can contain triggers or other groups - for neatness/organization) show up to the right of the list of characters you've added to GINA. There is a red box pointing out the three Eternal Sovereign trigger groups in this screenshot:




Trigger groups have a small triangle to the left of their name. If it's a hollow triangle pointing right, like in the following screenshot, it means that group is "collapsed"... the triggers and other groups within it are hidden:


If you click on that triangle, it will turn blue and point down and to the right. This "expands" the group - showing you what's inside it (the triggers and other groups inside it will be "indented" to the right a bit):


Eternal Sovereign has three groups (folders) of triggers that will appear at the "root level" of GINA. The "root level" is what you'd see if you "collapsed" all of your groups as far as they would go.

The first image in this post shows the three Eternal Sovereign groups - "Eternal Sovereign", "ES - Optional Triggers", and "ES - Class Specific".


The Eternal Sovereign Trigger Group:

The Eternal Sovereign group is the most important. It contains all of the essential triggers that we should all be using when on guild raids.

This group should have only triggers that are relevant to all (or at least most) classes and that most people would agree are worthwhile (even if they may be a bit annoying). All of the triggers in this group should be enabled when raiding with ES.

The Eternal Sovereign is frequently updated and shared out. It will be continually refined and expanded as we do new raids, learn more about the emotes in raids we've been doing, and come up with new ideas for general-purpose triggers that would be helpful to - and appreciated by - most people in the guild.

We will check everyone's version of the Eternal Sovereign group before each raid - both to make sure that GINA is working for everyone and that everyone on the raid has the most up-to-date triggers for the raid we're doing.

The Eternal Sovereign group has three main subgroups:



Common - This group contains utility triggers that are relevant to (or at least not annoying to) most. Things like an announcement when your character hit max AAs and is no longer gaining experience.

Group - This contains utility triggers relevant to grouping (like a heads-up if you've been invited to a group) as well as group-event-specific triggers. For example, triggers related to the Kael AoW group event where you have to kneel (duck) and back off in response to emotes.

Raid - Contains important utility triggers relevant to raiding (like AFK Check, Starting Soon, Wiping, Tribute reminders, and other similar triggers). Also contains raid-specific triggers for any current content (and possibly previous expansion) raids.


The ES - Optional Triggers Trigger Group:

The ES - Optional Triggers group contains utility triggers that some people may find useful, but that are not essential to us (if they were essential, they'd be in the main Eternal Sovereign group). It also contains raid-specific triggers for older content that we may not be doing as official ES raids anymore.

It contains three subgroups:



Older Expansion Raid Triggers - Contains raid-specific triggers for older content raids. I recommend un-checking this group unless you are doing an older raid. This will speed up GINA's performance, as the program isn't comparing every line of text from EQ to a list of triggers for old raids that you won't be doing frequently.

Raid Optional Triggers - This contains triggers for current content raids that some people may like and others will hate.

For example, on the ToFS2 (Wedding) raid, there is a special mechanic where your spells won't do anything unless you're closer than 55 ft. to your target when it finishes casting. We made a trigger to alert casters to this. Most spell casters appreciated this, as otherwise they could easily miss that their spells are doing nothing. But it turns out that Rangers can deal archery damage from farther than 55 ft., but were getting angry about the spam from this trigger when their ranged attack spell procs were failing. For that reason, it was moved into the Raid Optional Triggers group where those who want it (spell casters) can enable it while Rangers can switch it off.

Utility Triggers - This group contains a bunch of utility triggers that some people may love and others will hate. None of them are essential for our raids, which is why they're not in the main Eternal Sovereign group that everyone should have enabled. Rather, players can pick and choose which of these optional Utility Triggers they like, and enable just those.

An example of an optional utility trigger is audio announcements of all mez breaks (note that text-only mez break announcements are part of the main Eternal Sovereign group). Some people may like this. Others would find it very annoying and distracting. Because it's in the ES - Optional Triggers group, people can pick and choose which triggers to enable or disable to meet their preferences!


The ES - Class Specific Trigger Group:

The ES - Class Specific group contains utility triggers that are relevant to particular classes (like Cleric or Warrior) and also groups of triggers relevant to categories of classes, like * Mezzers * (Enchanters, Bards, Necros), * Healers * (Priest classes and maybe Paladins?), * Tanks *, * Splash/Group Healers *, * Pet Classes *, and so on.

As an example, a Paladin might have the following groups selected: Paladin, * Tanks *, * Splash/Group Healers *, * Rezzers *, and possibly also * Healers *.

A Magician might choose to have: Magician, * Pet Classes *, and * Ranged DPS *.

This "ES - Class Specific" folder needs a LOT of work. Many classes and categories are empty or missing entirely. I don't think any would be considered done yet. It's very much a work-in-progress. I have a lot of requests for class-specific triggers, but a combination of being a slacker and prioritizing raid-specific triggers that apply to everyone means I'm behind on working on these. I will get to them eventually, though!


If you have old triggers, triggers from someone else, or triggers you've created that you think should be part of one of the three Eternal Sovereign trigger groups, please contact Cantus in-game or send a Private Message to Cantus on the forums!


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[Cantus]

Selecting Trigger Groups by Character (Checkboxes)

As mentioned in the Trigger Group post, Eternal Sovereign has three different root-level groups of triggers.

While you should have the whole "Eternal Sovereign" group selected (checked) whenever raiding with ES, you are encouraged to selectively enable or disable (by checking or unchecking) subgroups within the "ES - Class Specific" and "ES - Optional Triggers" groups. Here are the two steps to easily do this:


1. You need to first select which character you want to selectively enable or disable triggers for.

When no character is selected, you will not see checkboxes next to each trigger group. It will look something like this:
<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1-VAP80A ... KxWpUAH2Kt">

But when you click on a character (click anywhere in the green box containing the character's name EXCEPT for the red "stop" circle - that would disable GINA for this character!) there will be a red box around the selected character and you will be able to selectively check or un-check trigger groups just for that character:
<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1GmcD2uG ... KsTiYC1Mmn">


2. Click the arrows next to groups to expand or collapse them to see their contents. Then you can click in the check boxes to selectively enable or disable groups for the selected character.

Note that individual triggers can't be selected or un-selected. For that reason, I try to put even individual triggers in their own groups so that you can easily enable or disable them.


Example:

As an example, I first clicked on Cantus in GINA to display checkboxes. I then clicked on the triangle next to the ES - Class Specific group to expand it out. I then made sure that subgroups relevant to a Bard (such as * Melee DPS *, * Mezzers * and Bard) had checkmarks but none of the other classes or categories were checked:

<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1kkhPhvP ... fp1q_dsD2E">


What do the Checkboxes Mean?

<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1qj9uqJV ... nAWlxaJH3t"> = All of the triggers and subgroups within this group are Enabled for the selected character.

<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=17LqzxS3 ... hwv9qHg2qc"> = All of the triggers and subgroups within this group are Disabled for the selected character.

<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1qjlV-Yp ... x7NxBkBciU"> = Some subgroups are enabled while others are disabled for the selected character. Click the arrow to expand out the group to see which are enabled/disabled.


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[Cantus]

Deleting Triggers and Groups

Right-click on a trigger or group. A context menu will pop up that looks like this:

<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1lMJQNgA ... agXsxdM6W-">

Select "Delete". You will be asked to confirm that you really want to delete this trigger or group:

<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1U1PbKNc ... TwGow3O2rs">

Click "Yes" to confirm. That's it! You successfully deleted the selected trigger or group.



Why would I want to Delete?

When new triggers are shared, it will add any new triggers/groups that you didn't have previously, and will overwrite (update) any triggers you have with the same name.

But it will NOT delete any triggers or groups you have that are not in the updated pack that's shared with you. It also won't re-name triggers.

So if there were bad or outdated triggers in your old pack, they will still be there when you receive an updated pack. Or if old triggers were re-named, you'll keep your old trigger as well as receiving the new one - potentially hearing multiple messages when that emote fires.

Currently, the best way to deal with this is to simply delete your old trigger group and have the updated one shared with you. This will ensure that you have the latest trigger group without unwanted remnants of old trigger packs hanging around.

Most commonly, when there are major updates to the main (required) Eternal Sovereign root-level trigger group, everyone on a raid will be asked to delete their old Eternal Sovereign group before the updated group is shared out.


There is also a bug (covered in the Troubleshooting post) where you may hear two or more trigger messages for every event. One of the ways to resolve this is to Delete your old trigger pack and ask for it to be re-shared with you.


Keep in mind that you can un-check (disable) old triggers that you may not want/need again. So it there's a chance you may want them again in the future, it's probably best to disable triggers rather than deleting them outright.


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Troubleshooting

This is a partial list, and will be expanded in the future. Please check back for additional troubleshooting tips!


I Hear Multiple Triggers!

If you hear triggers two or more times, you're not alone. This is a very common bug.

First, make sure the text that fired the trigger wasn't issued more than once. For example, Rapitiss typically gives the "Wiping" message in raid chat multiple times. If he said "Wiping" five times and you hear "Wiping" five times from GINA, there isn't a problem.

It doesn't always work, but it's worth trying to close and re-open the GINA program. It also sometimes works to click on your character's name in GINA and then un-check and re-check the "Eternal Sovereign" group (or whatever group or subgroup contains the trigger that's repeating).

If none of the steps above work, the surefire way to resolve the issue is to Delete the trigger group that contains the trigger that's firing multiple times and ask for it to be re-shared with you. Be sure to re-check the triggers you want after it's re-shared.



Some Triggers Don't Work

If certain triggers work but other triggers don't seem to fire, check the Chat tab in the Options window (Alt+O by default). Make sure that all relevant chat types are set to "Show".

If something is set to "Hide", I don't think any chat of that type goes to the log file. If it doesn't go to the log file, GINA won't see it and can't fire triggers.

I personally have all chat types set to "Show" except for "Heals (You)" and "Heal Over Time", which are set to "Nonzero Only".



I'm Not Hearing/Seeing Anything

If you don't hear triggers at all, do the following:

• Try closing and re-running the GINA program.

• Issue a /log on command in-game for the character to ensure you're outputting EQ text to a logfile (that GINA watches).

• Make sure you've added that character to GINA.

• Make sure GINA is running for that character. When everything is good, you should see a green bar with the character's name that looks something like this:
<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1B9qGVVw ... qcp1FkFmf1">

If it looks like this, it means you turned off GINA for that character. Click on the green "play" button to the left of the character's name to re-enable:
<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1saJCiS8 ... bPQGfLshMw">

If the character bar is green but it has a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark, it means that the character is enabled but GINA hasn't seen any additions to that character's logfile since the GINA program was run. Maybe EQ isn't running for that character? Maybe that character doesn't have /log on?
<img src="https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1Wcn6YVp ... THGdPtLp8S">



Trigger Lag - I Don't See/Hear Triggers until Seconds Later

If there is delay (lag) between a line of chat appearing (like an emote on a raid) and you seeing/hearing the GINA trigger, there are several things you can do:

1) Issue a /loginterval 0 command in-game. This makes sure that EverQuest writes any lines of chat directly to the log file with no delay, so that time-sensitive GINA triggers fire right away. Thank you, Phaolin, for this tip!

2) Un-check or Delete any old GINA triggers you may have, as a large number of triggers (and/or poorly written triggers) can cause a lot of GINA lag.

3) Make sure your log file isn't too huge. Refer to the post on having GINA automatically archive your logfiles so that your active logfile never gets too big but so that you always keep your old logfiles if you ever want to refer back to them.


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Links & Other Resources

• * New GINA Trigger Requests *

• * GINA Discussion, Advice, and Technical Support *

• Tanluyen's GINA Post
• GINA Website - Getting Started
• EQFreelance GINA Getting Started
• CM99games YouTube Video: How to setup GINA audio triggers
• GINA Setup Slideshow
• Ocher Monk's Youtube Video: EQ 101 How to Set Up Gina


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