DAoC Patch Quick FAQ
1. What is this PatchQBar?
This program is a simple in-memory patch to allow you to map 9
quickbar icons per page.
2. Why would I want to run this program?
In the wonderful world of DAoC Realm vs Realm switching quickbars
can prove quite challenging. Adding a 9th quickbar slot on any
given page gives you 14% more space to add that extra macro or
style that you're going to need in the heat of battle.
3. How do I use PatchQBar?
Just extract and run PatchQBar.exe from any directory. A terminal-
style window will open and indicate that it is waiting for you to
start DAoC. Now start Dark Age as you normally would.
4. I logged in, but I still have 8 slots in my quickbar! Have I been
hornswaggled?
No, DAoC is hard-coded to only have 64 quickbar slots. The secret
9th slot is actually mapped to the first key on the next quickbar.
5. Whaaaaat? First what on the who hah?
You heard me! If you're on the first quickbar and you press '1'
you're going to get the first thing on that quickbar page. If
you press '8', you'll get the last thing on that quickbar page,
just as you'd expect. But if you press '9', you'll get the first
thing on quickbar page 2. If you're on page 2 and you press '9'
it is like pressing '1' on page 3. All without having to switch
pages.
6. Ok, so what happens if I press '9' on the eighth quickbar page?
In programming we call that "UNDEFINED". It doesn't seem to
visibly do anything, but it is an out of bounds array access,
and that's never good.
7. Can I shift-9 to get to a 9th quickbar page?
No, pressing shift-9 will take you back to the first quickbar page.
8. Why 9 and not a full 10 quickbar slots per page?
This is just a quick hack. Like Mythic said, adding 10 slots per
page is difficult. I've seen the code and it is not written for
extensibility.
9. Why can't you just write it so that I can use *and* see 9 slots
per page?
Again, this is a quick hack. Doing it right would require even
more extensive digging through a binary dump, and I just don't
have that kind of free time.
10. Is this program stealing my DAoC password?
No.
11. Mythic just patched Dark Age and now my 9 key doesn't work any
more!
Yes, this program actually patches a section of code segment loaded
in memory. When a patch comes out, that section of code is more
than likely going to move. If the area to be patched is not what
is expected, then the program won't patch, and you'll lose your
9 keymapping.
12. Why are quickbar changes so slow in laggy situations? I swore I
pressed shift-7 but it didn't change!
When you think you're pressing shift-7 as one keystroke but DAoC
handles it differently. When you press 7, the keystroke handler
acutally then querries the state of the shift key. So if you've
lifted your finger off the shift before that call returns, DAoC
takes it as just a 7 and the quickbar doesn't change.
13. Isn't that an asinine way to do it?
Yeah. Let's hear it for DAoC being based on old Mythic code!
14. This is pretty sweet! How can I get ahold of you with my
suggestions?
There are plenty of clues I've left for even the casual gamer to
find me. Hopefully Mythic sees this code as benign :)