What exactly are hotstrings for?

[ockhamsrazor]

As I understand it, keymaps allow you to convert one key stroke to another across running WoW instances. I haven't been able to figure out what hotstrings are for....

And let me say in advance, yes I searched for "hotstrings" and purused dozens of posts. Still no clue what exactly they accomplish.

Can someone please describe them and give me an example of why I would want to use them?



Thanks,

Matt

[sicsid]

Hotstrings are set up in keyclone. when a button is pushed the hotstring will run and basically do a command for you.

read up on the Leaderless, non focus thread. Ill post link to it in a sec.

Focusless, targetless, 'leaderless' setup. ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=11459')

ToonA:

2 --> LBAT
Ctrl-alt-] --> LBBT
Alt-Shift-] --> LBCT
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-] --> LBDT
Ctrl-] --> LBET

ToonB:

Ctrl-Shift-] --> LBAT
2 --> LBBT
Alt-Shift-] --> LBCT
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-] --> LBDT
Ctrl-] --> LBET

ToonC:

Ctrl-Shift-] --> LBAT
Ctrl-alt-] --> LBBT
2 --> LBCT
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-] --> LBDT
Ctrl-] --> LBET

ToonD:

Ctrl-Shift-] --> LBAT
Ctrl-alt-] --> LBBT
Alt-Shift-] --> LBCT
2 --> LBDT
Ctrl-] --> LBET

ToonE:

Ctrl-Shift-] --> LBAT
Ctrl-alt-] --> LBBT
Alt-Shift-] --> LBCT
Ctrl-Alt-Shift-] --> LBDT
2 --> LBET

Notice that the 2 goes down the list on each character.

Bound to ], ingame on each toon, you need the following macro:

/target [mod:ctrl,mod:shift,nomod:alt,target=ToonA]
[mod:ctrl,mod:alt,nomod:shift,target=ToonB]
[mod:alt,mod:shift,nomod:ctrl,target=ToonC]
[mod:ctrl,mod:alt,mod:shift,target=ToonD]
[mod:ctrl,nomod:alt,nomod:shift,target=ToonE]
/cast [target=targettarget,harm] Lightning Bolt
/targetlasttarget


Above is ripped from that thread. Basically pushing 2 on your keyboard will tell all the slaves to run the command. If the same button is pushed from a different slave, it will then run the commands to assist him as new 'main'. This set up is great for switching keyclone PiP and always having the new screen be the main and the slaves assist the new main. Its also great to do soloing on accts as you dont need to set up new macros for single play.

It took me a while to kinda wrap my head around it but now that i figured it out, i dont see why i never did it this way for the first 51 levels :P

[Moorea]

Can someone give a simple/minimal example of what keyclone's hotstring are for; and how to set one up. I don't get the more complex example above and I would like something minimal (even if contrived)


(I own keyclone but I couldn't figure out what this part of the feature set does... I'm not using it and only use DNP lists so far but feel I'm probably missing out on something)

[Solmaran]

You have a 3 box, a Tank a healer and a dps. You set up 3 keymaps in keyclone. On your tank you set up 1 -> StartAttack. On the healer you can set whichever key is bound to a macro that does something like bubble the tank to startattack. On the dps you set whatever key is bound to his attack macro to StartAttack.

Then when you hit the 1 key on your tank the healer bubbles him and the dps assists and starts attacking.

You could then set up a key on the tank called "HealMe". You can set that hotstring up on the healer to run whichever key is bound to the macro you have set up to heal the tank. On the dps you just don't set it at all.

Then when you hit the key on the tank for healing him it will cause a button push on the healer but not the dps.

[zanthor]

As I understand it, keymaps allow you to convert one key stroke to another across running WoW instances. I haven't been able to figure out what hotstrings are for....

And let me say in advance, yes I searched for "hotstrings" and purused dozens of posts. Still no clue what exactly they accomplish.

Can someone please describe them and give me an example of why I would want to use them?



Thanks,

MattIf you understand keymaps, then you understand hotstrings.

Keeping in mind that a keymap lets you press G on client A and receive H on client B...

On client A's keymap file you have the hotstring
G -> PressHOnClientB

On Client B's keymap you have the hotstring
H -> PressHOnClientB

When you press H on client A the G gets converted to "PressHOnClientB" and sent to the other client which translates it back to an H.... now if you press G on client B nothing happens, but if you press H on client B, it converts to a hotstring "PressHOnClientB" which is received by client A and translated to a G...

[Saevio]

I had a hard time wrapping my head around hotstrings too, but once I understood what they actually were, it all fell into place.

Here's a very basic intro to hotstrings.
So here we have our two test characters, a priest and a mage. Now to get straight into it, let's say that when I press 1 (Fireball) on the mage, I want the Priest window to hit 0 (Smite), this can be done using hotstrings.

Mage
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/599/76881607fc5.th.jpg ('http://img511.imageshack.us/my.php?image=76881607fc5.jpg')

Priest
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/8668/92395953bx3.th.jpg ('http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?image=92395953bx3.jpg')

Step 1
Click Setup on Keyclone and click on Keymap editor in the side menu.
http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/9566/92374954dv7.th.gif ('http://img139.imageshack.us/my.php?image=92374954dv7.gif')

Step 2
Enter the ingame key for Fireball into the key field (which in this case is 1) and enter a hotstring into the hotstring field, this can be anything, for this example, let's enter test. After that's done, click add.
http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/7328/39503763pb7.th.gif ('http://img80.imageshack.us/my.php?image=39503763pb7.gif')

Step 3
Now click save to save the keymap as a file, for this, I'll name it A.
http://img83.imageshack.us/img83/338/76395240lv4.th.gif ('http://img83.imageshack.us/my.php?image=76395240lv4.gif')

Step 4
Now click new at the top and repeat the step, entering the same name for the hotstring, ie. test, but this time using 0 as the key (0 is the ingame key for smite on our Priest).
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2247/78940876qa9.th.gif ('http://img526.imageshack.us/my.php?image=78940876qa9.gif')

Step 5
Now click save again, but name it something different, logically, I'll name this one B.
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/2020/95489836ms1.th.gif ('http://img207.imageshack.us/my.php?image=95489836ms1.gif')

Step 6
Now that the hotstrings are set up, we need to tell keyclone which keymaps to use for each window, so click Ok to leave the keyclone setup panel and return to the main keyclone window.
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/9611/53606802mc8.th.gif ('http://img527.imageshack.us/my.php?image=53606802mc8.gif')

Now in this example, the top WoW instance in the list is the Mage and the bottom one is the Priest, so right click on the top WoW in the list and click on Load keymap, then select A.kcl and hit OK. For the bottom one, do the same, but load B.kcl instead.
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/7646/58576599os3.th.gif ('http://img522.imageshack.us/my.php?image=58576599os3.gif')

Step 7
Now switch back to WoW, specifically, the Mage window, make sure both the Mage and the Priest have an enemy target selected, then hit the 1 key on the Mage, the 0 key will be pressed on the Priest and they will both fire off their spells.
http://img364.imageshack.us/img364/9614/78562191qb4.th.jpg ('http://img364.imageshack.us/my.php?image=78562191qb4.jpg')

Note: This behaviour will not be reversed, hitting 0 on the Priest will not hit 1 on the Mage, to do that, you will need to add in another hotstring.
Edit: Hitting 0 on the Priest will hit 1 on the mage.

Hope that helps someone :)

[Moorea]

Thanks a lot Araketh ! this should be stickied !

[Fluffy]

Thanks a lot Araketh ! this should be stickied !... yes... thank you very much... i was totally missing steps 6 and 7 when trying to do the focus/leaderless setup... much appreciated!

[ockhamsrazor]

Thanks for the responses! That really clears things up for me also!

[keyclone]

instead of right-click/load-keymap... you can set the appropriate keymap to be auto-loaded by specifying it in the command definition

http://solidice.com/keyclone/screencaps/kc_v1.8l_command_editor_explained.jpg

[Harem]

Step 7
Now switch back to WoW, specifically, the Mage window, make sure both the Mage and the Priest have an enemy target selected, then hit the 1 key on the Mage, the 0 key will be pressed on the Priest and they will both fire off their spells.


Note: This behaviour will not be reversed, hitting 0 on the Priest will not hit 1 on the Mage, to do that, you will need to add in another hotstring.

Still missing something here.

Loading A.kcl on the Mage instance creates the hotstring 'test' whenever 1 is pressed - right? This hotstring is translated via the B.kcl loaded on the Priest instance into the key O. So I guess I'm not understanding why pressing O on the Priest isn't doing the same thing - sending the 'test' hotstring to the Mage instance which gets translated via the A.kcl into a 1 keypress.

If we are mapping a key to a hotstring and then we tell different instances what they should use for a keypress when they recieve that hotstring - then how doesn't it go both ways?

EDIT: Maybe you meant hitting 1 on the Priest will not hit 0 on the Mage?

[delafoo]

So.... If I want to use the Leaderless, Focusless system, and created this for ToonA

ToonA:







` --> FOA



Ctrl-alt-O --> FOB



Alt-Shift-O --> FOC



Ctrl-Alt-Shift-O --> FOD



Ctrl-O --> FOE



Would I Add them all, Then save it all as 1 hotstring file, or do I need to save each one individually? Once done do I just assign the 1 or multiple hotstrings to the given character?

Thanks.

[KTSid]

The problem with a lot of write ups such as that one or peoples explanations are that they seem to get off on sounding smart. For example not explaining what the LBAT stands for until the reader has read through a crap load of info doesn't make much sense. I love the write up so please don't get me wrong but when you are explaining something that uses terms/symbols/abbs then you are suppose to let people know up front what they will be used for/or mean. When I first read part of the post I actually gave up because I felt I was suppose to know what things like LBAT stood for already and the post was for more advance (so to speak) macro/hotstring writers. Then after coming back to it I finally read through it.

[delafoo]

s,
The problem with a lot of write ups such as that one or peoples explanations are that they seem to get off on sounding smart. For example not explaining what the LBAT stands for until the reader has read through a crap load of info doesn't make much sense. I love the write up so please don't get me wrong but when you are explaining something that uses terms/symbols/abbs then you are suppose to let people know up front what they will be used for/or mean. When I first read part of the post I actually gave up because I felt I was suppose to know what things like LBAT stood for already and the post was for more advance (so to speak) macro/hotstring writers. Then after coming back to it I finally read through it.


Yes, this is unspecific. Working on it myself, it seems that LBAT etc is just the name of the particular hotstring for the paticular toon. I think the naming is different for clairty.

I'm still unclear on the focusless system if you create a group of 5 hotstrings and name it one thing, or if they are saved individually and assigned, since the example above only shows one ability.... the focusless system shows 5 fper toon per skill, and doesn't really explain how one should save the hotstrings.

Once I get this figured out, I'm posting a SuperN00b guide ;p

[suicidesspyder]

So in otherwords using hotstrings and all can i still have all my movement buttons on the dnp list but if i switch to one of them and they become the main will they still work or no

[heffner]

Although I haven't used them yet, my basic interpretation is that you can press a specific key on your keyboard but that can be translated to pressing totally different keys on your clients. So, we are used to pressing "A" and whatever is bound to A gets activated. With hotstrings, pressing the "A" key on your main can be translated as pressing the "X", "Y" or "Z" key on your various slaves. Definitely has it's uses....which I need to implement!

[Clanked]

Still missing something here.

Loading A.kcl on the Mage instance creates the hotstring 'test' whenever 1 is pressed - right? This hotstring is translated via the B.kcl loaded on the Priest instance into the key O. So I guess I'm not understanding why pressing O on the Priest isn't doing the same thing - sending the 'test' hotstring to the Mage instance which gets translated via the A.kcl into a 1 keypress.

If we are mapping a key to a hotstring and then we tell different instances what they should use for a keypress when they recieve that hotstring - then how doesn't it go both ways?

EDIT: Maybe you meant hitting 1 on the Priest will not hit 0 on the Mage?

I am wondernig the exact same thing. Can someone please answer this?

[Saevio]

Yup, you guys are right, the behaviour would be reveresed in my example. I wrote it a few days after figuring it out for myself, but I guess I just made a mistake :P

[confusedtx5]

Oh, i think i get it now.
But if pressing '2' on toon A activates the hotstrings for toon B, C and D correctly. What would toon E do if he didnt have any keymaps defined? does he just recieve '2' or does he just not do anything?

[keyclone]

if E had no keymap or keymap entry for the hotstring being pushed around, it would be ignored.

[outdrsyguy1]

I'm sorry guys, but i've been trying to figure this out for over an hour and i can't get the keyclone keymapping to work at all.
Here's what I want.

"W" is my move forward button and is on the do not pass list.
"J" has been assigned to a hotbar slot on the right hotbar and has a macro the tells toons to follow focus whenever i hit "J". Obviously, i want to follow the focus whenever I run forward with the letter W but W only works in the screen i'm active in.

Now the hard part.

I created a keymap with "w" as the key and test as the hotstring and save it as testw. then i create another keymap with "J" as the key and test as the hotstring and save it sas testj. So since i can only load one keymap per toon, how do i make it work? I've tried putting both the W and J in the one keymap but that doesn't work either, i'm totally stumped.

please be very simple and clear if you respond, i was lost for a long time with the whole LBAT stuff not knowing if that was the hotstring or the file name or what.

thanks

[outdrsyguy1]

any help on this gang? i'm trying to just do the focus target autoswitching setup where my group leader is the focus and all party members follow the focus (i don't have the understanding or patience yet for FTL setup, let alone the macro space). I just can't figure out how to make keyclone take the letter W in the screen i'm in, and turn it into a J in all other screens.

thanks