Getting started
From Dual-Boxing Wiki
Contents |
Introduction
This page is a starting point for people that understand what multiboxing is and that are interested in becoming a multiboxer. It includes information that is valuable for using 2 clients or more and is meant to be generic so it is valuable for different kinds of games. Make sure you go through these steps when you start multiboxing.
To start multiboxing, you should have an understanding of: hardware(configuration and performance), software(configuration and performance) and macros.
Other 'getting started' pages can be found at:
"This isn't exactly a straight-out-of-the-box plug and play type of hobby. Think of it like building model cars -- the point isn't to show off the shiny model car on your mantle once you're finished -- they joy is to build the car in the first place. Showing off the model once it's finished is just a testament to the work you put into it.", Vyndree
Practical steps
Check if your game allows multiboxing
Make sure that multiboxing is allowed by the so-called "Terms Of Service" of the game. These terms can usually be found on your computer if you have installed the game. Otherwhise you could go to the publisher's website or contact the publisher to get this information.
Overview of games and their multiboxing 'legal status':
- World of Warcraft - allowed by TOS, confirmed by GMs
- Age of Conan -
Important:
- Do NOT multibox with games where multiboxing is not allowed. It will probably get you a temporary or permanent ban from the game.
- Make sure that create your game accounts with YOUR name as account holder. Some games(like WoW) don't allow account sharing in their TOS.
Decide how many clients you want
The amount of characters and their specific roles will greatly influence your effectiveness with multiboxing. You have to consider if you want to just have 1 extra character to assist your other ones, so you can perform regular tasks more easily or you could consider to create more characters and create a whole team to clear instances/dungeons all by yourself.
The more tasks you have to micromanage, the more difficult it becomes so:
- The more people you handle, the more difficult they become to handle.
- The more different types of characters(e.g. their class or skills) you have, the more difficult it becomes to manage them all.
Most games allow you to make trial accounts. You could do this to try out the new play style before investing money in it. This way, you can also find out if your current hardware can cope with it.
Decide if you want software or hardware boxing
Getting your keyboard can be done in 2 different ways: through hardware or software.
Hardware could be a setup with wireless keyboards where 1 keyboard shares a set of common receivers on different computers. Software multiboxing exists out of a program that sends the keyboard input from a program on 1 PC to other programs on the same or other PCs.
Verify that your hardware can handle it
Hardware specifications depend greatly on the game you are playing and which Operating System you are using. It also depends on what other software is running in the background. The hardware specifications below suggest that you run the game on a clean PC with no time-critical and memory-consuming software in the background
You can check out the Rigs page if you're interested to see what kind of hardware people have to multibox specific games.
World of Warcraft
Understand that these numbers are not per se definite or 100% accurate. They are estimates that can very case-by-case:
- CPU: You can run about 2 clients on a single 2.5GHz CPU core. This means that:
- A (recent) dual core machine at 2.67GHz can run about 4 clients. In case of a dual Xeon CPU, the client limit is 3.
- A quad core machine at 2.67GHz can run about 8 clients. If you have
- Memory: About 500MB per client. This theoretically means that you could run 4 clients with 2GB of RAM. However, the operating system requires some memory too, so you in Windows XP you should have at least 1GB extra. In Linux, 500MB extra should be enough.
- Harddisk: That depends greatly on the speed of you disk and the space available on it. Performance-whise, a single 7200rpm harddisk can smoothly run 2 clients.
- Graphics card: An nVidia GeForce 7900GT or 8600GT can run 4 clients at a decent framerate on all clients with high-quality video settings enabled.
Set up the hardware for multiple clients
CPU affinity
This section is only valid for people with multi-core CPU's or multi-CPU hardware configurations.
Setting the CPU affinity means that you determine on which CPU or CPU core that your application is running. This way you can spread performance over the different cores that are available and it increases your performance. Software multiboxing solutions like KeyClone offer this in the command-settings tab of the software setup window. The operating system usually also offers the setting of affinity in the task manager that comes with it.
In Windows
- press ctrl+alt+del (and click on Task Manager if it doesn't show up automatically)
- go to the "Processes" tab
- right-click the process
- click on "Set affinity ..."
Note: Windows doesn't remember the program's CPU affinity when you exit the software and restart it.
Graphics card settings
Don't forget to tweak your graphics cards for optimal performance. Some drivers offer you to enable or disable multithreading for performance increaste. Try to find the best settings, but be careful to not destroy your current operating system installation!
Set up the software
Operating System
Specific tips and tricks for operating systems can be found here:
Key replication
Go to the Software page for more information on specific software products.
Configure the game
Macros
Graphics settings
You can tweak the performance of your clients for multiboxing: If your graphics card doesn't have a lot of memory (e.g. 256MB) and you want to run a lot of clients(e.g. 5), then you can consider to use low-resolution textures. Methods of tweaking:
- If you have an older graphics card: Set all video quality settings to the lowest available settings and gradually increase them.
- If you have a newer/faster graphics card: Set all video quality settings to the maximum and find out which ones that cost a lot of performance and optionally decrease those.
There is a useful post for lowering / raising the game graphics settings beyond the in-game thresholds for even more performance / quality results here. Take note of the reccommendations within this post to make these [variable] changes to your config.wtf for more permanence.
Basic In-Game Tutorial
Once you have all the above items done, you're ready to go into the game and try things out. A basic written tutorial exists to get you started: Multiboxing 101 (5 Mage Tutorial) Alternatively, you can check out Vyndree's excellent video tutorial: How To Multibox: Setting up your very first group. (Youtube direct link in case the original goes away.)
