Jesdyr has long been recognized as the person who developed the Layout Editor. He is also well known for his site http://www.eq2designers.com/ . However, a lot of people don't realize that besides the editor and all of the tutorials for it, he also has a Layout Organizer. We have all loved the Layout Editor. Most of us have watched the videos, found priceless help and guides on the website for our millions of questions, and often despaired that we would never be able to master it the way some in the game have done. But whatever our own level of expertise, we have enjoyed seeing what other players have accomplished with it. A lot has happened over the last few years and there have been upgrades to the Layout Editor making it more wonderful as time goes by. Building the Editor was in itself a great accomplishment. If anyone noticed, there are not very many third party programs that are acceptable for eq2. This is one of the very few that we are actually encouraged to use. I know everyone has a lot of questions about the editor and about Jesdyr. I tried to address some of them in the interview. I am sure he would be glad to answer more if you ask him. So let me introduce him now through the interview. When did you start working on the Layout editor? The very first editor was made when layouts were still only on the test server. The original layout files were binary files. Someone had asked if there was a way to build an inventory of items in the file. With that goal I figured out the structure of the file (mainly using a Hex editor) and then realized I could overwrite the position and orientation of items. At the time you could not pitch or roll an item in game, so being able to do those things was huge. I knew at this point, I wanted to provide an easy way for people to edit the files. I posted a simple image of a rug rolled 90 degrees on the forums as a sort of teaser ( https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/i-3-layouts.468542/ ). I also contacted SOE to make sure they were ok with a 3rd party application editing the layout files. Shortly after that the devs decided to make the files plain text which also created a ton of bugs. I had already built a functional program to edit the binary layouts but I never released that original version. I think I did two more complete rewrites of the program before giving it to anyone. How long has it been published? I believe I made the first download available sometime around October 2009. Early versions of layouts were buggy and SOE kept disabling them on live while they sorted things out. Can you tell us more of what it does and how it works? Basically it provides an easier way to make changes to the layout files. It does not interface with EQ2 itself in any way. Currently the layout editor is more about being able to precisely place items and has other features designed to make complex designs a little easier. You could open the layout files with any text editor or even most spreadsheet programs, but I find that hand editing files with hundreds or thousands of lines in that manner is tedious and likely not something most people would be willing to do. This is why even after SOE changed layouts to be plain text, I decided I would still make an editor. How many tutorials do you have? How do we find them? It has been a while since I made any new tutorials. Most of them should be listed here http://www.eq2designers.com/?page_id=31 or on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf5a2-uS1XQ7Zu2U7tfUfrg . Jezabelle has made some really good text based tutorials as well. (http://archive.eq2wire.com/showthread.php?t=517042) and (https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...to-layout-editor-in-bite-sized-tutorials.157/) I was always happy when another player took it upon them self to write/record a tutorial. It takes a good amount of effort to make tutorials and something about the processes of recording them always felt very unnatural to me. Can you list your website and how to download it? The website is http://www.eq2designers.com/ just click "Download Editor" on the left. You will need to have .Net 3.5 installed as well. There is a link to the Microsoft download site for .Net 3.5 on the page. Any special tips on how to make those domes? I actually played around with the idea of making a Dome feature. The problem is I could never decide how I wanted it to work. Due to the nature of EQ2 decorating, you cannot make a perfect dome design and have to figure out what works best for your goals. Building a dome that will only be viewed from within it, is fairly easy, but making one look right from the outside is tricky. When I build them, I just build rows of circles and experiment with number of items and angles for each row and maybe decreasing the scale. Honestly I think I have only made two or three domes myself. What else is it capable of? Updating an item's properties (location, rotations, crate, ..) is the most basic ability, but that is actually the easy part. I have spent more time building features that simply manage things the game discards like notes and item grouping along with letting the editor pull items from the moving crate when using another feature like duplicate or create circles/spirals. There are many features that I don't think get used all that much for one reason or another. Some things I thought would be a good idea but I never used them in practice(like tiling). Most of the time my goal is simply to make it so a user doesn't need to do something tedious like math. The main features I have use personally are Duplicate, Group Rotate, Mirror, Build From and Offset. Offset is one thing I am not sure people use but I used fairly often. It lets you set a temporary fake center point so all locations displayed in the editor are relative to that point just to make it easier to figure out where an item is at a glance. for my "Shrine to ?????" house , I set the offset to the location in front of the center of the zone door. This let me mirror everything across 0 instead of something like -135.23. Often when working on a circle I will set the offset to the center point. The unreleased 1.8 editor expands offsets to include an angle value to make building things on an angle much easier. I also added a Text creator for making signs out of books since they didn't use up item count. I included four fonts I made with it and I think they took me about 6hrs to make. Along with this feature I wrote a program that allows people to make their own fonts but it was a bit confusing and I am not sure anyone ever tried to do it. I don't even know if I have a copy of the poorly written instructions for it any more. People have asked me about tiling. Can you explain more of how that works with the editor? The tiling tool is honestly something I never really used outside of testing it. I updated the UI for it with 1.8 to make it easier to understand. I have a video about different methods for tiling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqCvVZ722p4 the part 2 is about inlays. I think the best method for tiling is just using duplicate and moving items based on their scale. What else can you tell us that you think we should know? I am still planning on releasing the scaled back version of 1.8 but it might have some bugs with it due to lack of testing... Could you tell us about you? People would love to know more about the person who designed the greatest tool decorators have available. I am a fairly private person so here is the short version... I am an IT professional living in Rochester, NY. I am in my late 30s and am currently working as Systems Administrator for a small software development company so I am kind of a jack of all trades. Before this, I worked for a software division of a fairly large company managing/supporting in house e-fulfillment systems. It was while I was working here that I started teaching myself how to code. The EQ2 Layout editor was my learning tool and was the first real program I ever made. I have always been the type of person who enjoys just making things, it doesn't really matter what the medium is. Really I am just another gamer...
the rest of the story: How long have you played the game? I started sometime in 2006, There was some breaks here and there, but I haven't really played in the last few years. After so many years I really got burnt out on the game and my home server's population decline just took the fun out of playing. I still poke my head in every so often but the old friends list is a barren wasteland. What server do you play on? I played on Unrest which is now Halls of Fate. Who is your main toon? My main character was my coercer JesDyr. For decorating I used my carpenter JesDer. I had an army of alts since I use to multi-box, but they were more of a distraction than anything else. For the PvE side, the only class I enjoyed was coercer which was my first character and the least played class in the game when I started her. What do you like most about the game? I have been playing MMOs since sometime in 1998 (Ultima Online). I actually played EverQuest (1) for about 20 minutes in beta and just didnt like it so I never paid attention to EQ2. I had a friend who got me to try it and I loved the complexity of the game early on. At various points I played so many different games within the game. I was a Raider, a Soloer, a crafter, a decorator, and sometimes even a troll in chat... I always enjoyed a good messy PUG, and met some great people that way. What do you enjoy most about decorating? Honestly I enjoy the community the most. It is rare to have such a helpful and welcoming community as EQ2 Homeshow. It is why I still visit the forums to see what people have been up to while I am not even playing. As far as decorating itself, I just like making things. It doesn't really matter what it is, sometimes I just want to see what I can create. Do you have any houses published that we could tour? I haven't made anything new in years. I did actually re-publish my portal house recently. I thought it was published at some point, but I guess I unpublished it at some point. What toons' names are they under? I believe they are all under either JesDer or JesDyr. Do you have any favorite designs you have worked on with the editor? Honestly it is rare for me to place an item in a house without tweaking it in the editor. Every house I have made since layouts has been done with the editor. My favourite house is still "Shrine to ?????" which I think some people don't understand the amount of effort that it took to build. It is all structure and little decorating. My 2nd favourite house is my "Dragon Shrine". I knew as soon as the Dimensional Pocket was a house I had to build something in there. I really loved the sky in that zone and built the main window before I had any idea what the theme would be. (Some unpublished works) Can you please talk to us about the Organizer? My original plan for 1.8 of the editor would have combined the organizer with the editor... but i scaled that back for 1.8.1.x The organizer is a simple editor that will show you how many items are in each house and show you the manifest of each one as you click on them. Although there is a manifest editor in the layout editor, this one will show every house that you have saved layouts for, allowing you to go through each manifest without having to load different layouts.
Of course, I had to go tour his houses!!! All of the published ones are in hall of fame. I started with JesDyr's Dojo: Shrine to ????? (these are portals guys) JesDyr's Hub Dragon Shrine I am sure the irony of this won't be lost on those who do the Gathering Obsession Questline
More from the Dragon Shrine (edit- stormiiz is not his- will have to see if i can do a showcase on them later)
Stormiiz isnt one of mine... She is an old Guidlmate. I think all the portals on the right side of the portal house are old guildmates' houses.
a consignment he did: and something cool he made for a guild hall: (no offense to our ratonga friends)
I absolutely love all your designs, and love the layout editor even if I've not mastered it yet. I just purchased another tenbrous isle to use strictly for learning the layout editor completely. I do hope if you have time that you do the updated one. Can I ask why you don't play anymore? Thanks for all your hard work and for all you do for the decorators in EQ2! Hugs, Moonpanther
Jesdyr, you have some of the most creative designs in the game imo, and I aspire to just approach that level of creativity. I am glad to see that you still poke your nose in the forums every once in a while and that you may be able to release a new version soon. Where ever you go, remember that you have brought HOURS AND HOURS of enjoyment, and yes, frustration to many players here. Let's all raise an ale to the incomparable Jesdyr! Ealdian, but you can call me Eli
I just want to say I appreciate everyone's kinda words and thanks over the years. This really the best MMO community I have every seen and I am happy people have enjoyed what I made. I also know I have caused frustration for others. Early on I did get some hate from people complaining about "unfair advantages" and I do understand that point of view when SOE was running contest but, I still don't think Homeshow is a competition. The only person I ever felt I was competing against was myself ... and maybe Jazabelle. I kinda answered that in there... Basically low population on Unrest and so many friends leaving combined with just getting generally burnt out one the game caused me to stop logging in as much. Eventually I left my raiding guild and shortly after that just stopped logging in all together. I really wish I could find better ways to make things more approachable but there is only so much you can do just working with files
It took me a very long time to get stuborn enough to try to learn your Layout Editor. Even though I used to be a software engineer I was very scared of the tool for some reason. After beating my head on my desk for a few days something just started working. I have no idea how I changed what I was doing but I was just flipping a tile in a hard spot and must have placed it over 100 times and it just started to work. Now I cannot live without this amazing tool. I have OCD and this tool has saved me. I could spend hours and hours using the editor to line up my storage dungeons perfectly. Some of you know just how addicted to storage dungeons I am so you might get just how enormously the tool has saved me. It was a life saver when my pain was out of control I could just zone out with the layout editor and forget about my pain. I bet you never thought your amazing work would be a pain reliever of sorts! Since then I have played with all the features and the tool keeps amazing me. I use the organizer on a regular basis. The tool has allowed me to become friends with some very cool people as well. People not knowing how to use this editor but need it to recover a missing moving crate or break out of a house/guild hall or just flip a tile up on a wall. That is not a small task...I don't make friends easily. Thank you very much JesDyr! You have truely touched my life in amazing ways.
I knew about the layout editor long before I downloaded it, but having downloaded an add-on years before, my WoW account had gotten hacked due to a keylogger hidden in the add-on file. Therefore I feared downloading the editor. Seeing what people could do with it, however, simply amazed me and I really wanted to be able to accomplish so much more than I could with the in game tools available to us. When someone explained to me that the editor runs completely separate of the game, I decided I would simply just have to take my chances with it. Time constraints due to my real life schedule kept me from doing so for a while longer yet. Then I participated in my first Frostfell house swap run by Homes and Tomes and I felt so limited because I had not yet learned to use the editor. I completed that home, laying everything manually, and hoped that the owner of that home would be pleased (which she was). Soon as Frostfell ended that season, I immediately downloaded the editor, only to feel very overwhelmed by what I found in it. Determined to learn how to use it, however, I set myself a challenge in a small Maj'dul apartment. I still laid everything manually, and probably did things the hard way, but I simply wasn't sure how else to do it. I then used the layout editor to rotate things on their sides and to embed items in walls so that only a portion of the item showed through. I made my own custom furniture, used items in ways they were not intended, and in the end I was quite pleased with how my An Erolissi Villa turned out. Since then I have learned how to use the duplicate feature, the mirror function, and the spiral/circle tool. I still sometimes find the editor to be very daunting, but I intend to conquer it. My latest published house would not be complete if not for the mirror function and duplicate tools and my guild hall would not have a lovely white marble domed ceiling without the use of the editor. Thank you, Jesdyr!
Hello all. I do not consider myself TRULY masterful with the Layout Editor but I can throw a few tiles at the walls and make them stick. I would be VERY glad to help anyone learn to use most functions of the LE. All I ask is that you create a character on Skyfire server. (who does not have to level either ADV or TS, I'll do all the work) My credentials include 1st place finisher in last summer's Retreats of the Rulers contest, AND I am a retired teacher. That means I can structure lessons so that you walk away understanding how to use the LE. I've taught a few of my guildies in the LE, and I can get testimonials if you need them. Let me know here, or in game. Ealdian but you can call me ELi
That is so generous of you. I will give it another determined effort next day off I get and failing that I'll be in touch!
Jesdyrs houses are so awesome, and didnt even know what server they were on so went to visit and vote, they were a little hard to find, but so worth the visit !
