WoW Maximizer

[Xzin]

This is a useful tool. It allows you to remove the windows around the WoW client when you play windowed - and extends the functionality to allow you to place that window wherever you want and keep it borderless - something the game client does not (yet?) have. I used to use it before it was integrated into the WoW client and it was always rock solid and just worked.

It is open source (yay!) and does a few things that might be helpful for us multiboxers.

You can download WoW Maximizer from Curse Gaming at

http://wow-en.curse-gaming.com/downloads/details/146/

The latest version (1.4.1) is no longer maintained but it works pretty well for single boxers. What it does is allows you to play WoW in a window but remove the window borders. This is accomplished without this program if you click on the windowed and maximized buttons in the default WoW options. WoW does not let you move the window around though, it is all or nothing. In the even you have the hardware to box two characters on one machine, this will allow you at the moment to place one window at the left or right side of your screen but it does not currently support a second window.

Perhaps some talented programmer could modify the program to allow for this functionality? Right now the program only expects one WoW window. If there was another program with a different name or window class it would work fine but since you are cloning WoW copies, nothing changes and there is no way for the program as it is written to accommodate that. Fortunately the source is available with the binary..... so..... well - it can be updated.

This tool (once modified) would be very helpful for people who want to dual box side by side on a large monitor on the same machine.

[Ellay]

Kind of off-topic but you deserve mod rights, granted :)

[Xzin]

*looks at my post count* *looks at Ellays*

/giggles

[Anton145]

Hmm, Xzin you can use this tool to run more than 1 WoW..
I Dual-Box on a 19" Wide monitor, my computer is pretty lame and the CPU usage is from 70-90% all the time with the 2 instances running simultaneously. Here's how it looks:
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/7286/boxingsi8.jpg

My resolution is 1440x900 so when I shall open the 2 instances of WoW I first run the Maximizer.exe and 1 Windows will come up doesn't matter wich one, then I go into the .ini file and change my Margin row wich looks like this [code:1]margin = 0,0,0,440
margin = 0,450,1000,0[/code:1]
And I'll just add a "#" to row representing the already open window.
The "0,0,0,440" is my big window with 440 pixels margin to the left corner.
And the "0,450,1000,0" is the small with 450 p margin from the buttom of the screen and 1000 p from the left corner.

I hope you understood what I meant now.. Thanks for sharing this tool, I have great use of it!
:wink:

[Xzin]

Odd, that always crashed for me.

[Anton145]

Works for me in Windows XP as long as you start the first instance and then wait until that one is displayed properly before you start editing the .ini.

[Xzin]

So you cannot setup 2 different INIs and two differetn WoW directories?

I spoke with the author of the program but he has since moved on to other projects.

This isn't critical for me but it would be nice for some other boxers out there if somebody wanted to fool around with it a bit. I was hoping to get a 1 click solution to deploy it and also recover if one crashed without needing to take the whole "array" down.

[Anton145]

Well yeah, if you had 2 or more different installations of WoW that would work ofcourse, since the Maximizer.exe is looking for a Maximizer.ini in the same folder as itself..
So you would be able to have separate installations with individual Maximizer settings, that would work but there's no way you can get it to open multiple Windows from the same WoW installation as you want them to without configuring the .ini before opening each window. Unless you can make some magic in the Maximizer.exe... :wink:

[Xzin]

Maximizer is open source. I tried waiting and then opening... might have something to do with the fact that I play in landscape mode and it does not detect my resolutions properly......

[Anton145]

I dont know what "Landscape" mode is, but WoWMaximizer forces the computer to display the the resolution you selected in the configuration file.. Nomather what the WoW.exe tells your computer to do..

[Xzin]

Sorry! Portrait!

Turn the monitor 90 degrees.

[Stabface]

I run 5 WoW's on 1 box using Maximizer. My desktop res is 2560x1024 which is two 1280x1024 monitors in Stretch mode on an ATI x1650 PRO.
I have 5 separate WoW installs so I just copied Maximizer into each and set up the configs like this:

#copy 1
margin = 0,512,0,1920

#copy 2
margin = 0,512,640,1280

#copy 3
margin = 512,0,0,1920

#copy 4
margin = 512,0,640,1280

#copy 5
margin = 0,0,1280,0

This puts 4 small instances of WoW onto my left screen @ 640x512 each and 1 large instance of WoW on my right screen @1280x1024. I'll stitch up a quick screenshot and post shortly to demonstrate.


Works great I just have to launch them one at a time and wait for Maximizer to resize and relocate each WoW window before launching the next one. I'm also able to close one and then reload it at any time without any problems.

[Anton145]

I checked your post in the Screenshot forums Stabface, looks really nice!
And to Xzin: The fact that your monitors are configured that way shall not mather since the Maximizer forces the pixels to do as you want, maybe something in your .ini is wrong :roll:

[Xzin]

Possibly... I didn't fool around with it much really.

Stab - what do you do if/when a WoW crashes? Can you recover without needing to bring the whole system down and restart them all in sequence again?

[HPAVC]

I had problems with Maximizer seeming to not end on the size that I wanted. I got a black screen for quite a long time with the wow gauntlet cursor and then I ended up with something quite different than I ordered.

Not that there is anything wrong with the distributed executable, but recompiling it and fixed this for me. But later I have this up for Wine.

[Stabface]

Possibly... I didn't fool around with it much really.

Stab - what do you do if/when a WoW crashes? Can you recover without needing to bring the whole system down and restart them all in sequence again?

Yes, I have 5 individual shortcuts and just have to relaunch the one that crashed. It will load up and then snap right into place. Just be sure to turn off KeyClone before logging in else you're broadcasting your password to the world. ;)
I (cleverly?) labeled each shortcut with a suffix of M, UL, UR, LL, LR - main, upper left, upper right, etc. - so I know exactly which one to restart.

One limitation I dislike is that you cannot launch 2 simultaneously -- it appears Maximizer launches WoW, waits a certain amount of time and then looks for a window with the "World of Warcraft" title to do its magic on. So you have to wait for 1 to fully load and get "Maximized" before loading another. (note to self: create a batch file to launch WoW's one-by-one with a delay between.)

You can do this off 1 WoW install as well BTW, you just instead have to put the Maximizer parameters into the command-line instead of the .INI file.


I *believe* it would be possible to fix this so you can launch as many as you want all at once -- if you had a way to change the title of the WoW window! Maximizer has an option to change the name of the target application window it is maximizing. But I haven't done any research to see how to change the title of the World of Warcraft window. I'm sure it's possible.


On my machine it takes ~15 seconds to get to the login screen per WoW instance, another ~15-20 to login and get past the load screen, plus a bit of laggy time after that where the world is still loading models and other players and such. So about 2ish minutes before you're in game and ready to rock. Which I guess isn't all that long really, but still annoying.

[Andorades]

I have some problems using Maximizer. I have 2 monitors, first 22" widescreen operating with 1680x1050 and the second a 19" with 1280x1024.
When i start maximizer wow starts and it operates with 1680x1050, 60fps an a cpu usage of 4%. I have Intel Core2 Duo E6600, 2x 2.41Ghz.

When I open maximizer for the second screen, it works with resolution 1280x1024.
But now both screens have only 9fps and gaming suxx -.- The CPU usage is constant on 4%.
I use a Geforce 8800GTS with 640mb.

Anyone an idea what's wrong?

[beyond-tec]

horizontal / vertical span activated?

more infos about that:
http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums2/viewtopic.php?t=877

[Andorades]

it is not real horizontal span, it is dual view. each montior can be configured for its own. i don't know how this mode is called.

so if i take horizontal span with e.g. 3200x1024 i should get better fps on both screens?

[Shogun]

it is not real horizontal span, it is dual view. each montior can be configured for its own. i don't know how this mode is called.

so if i take horizontal span with e.g. 3200x1024 i should get better fps on both screens?

Yes, it needs ideally to work as a single desktop to ease the pain for the GPU. There's a thread or 2 about this somewhere on the boards that explain it better than I can, but using a span should help you :)

[Silly Gooooose]

is it possible to do the separate WoW spots without having 4 separate installs?

Only way I can do it at the moment is changing the data in the maximizer.ini and then saving, then opening wow, then changing and saving, then opening wow... it's annoying.

[Djarid]

dead easy, use a batch file to launch the wows and configure teh settings on the command line.

I use keyclone now so can't remember the options off the top of my head but a search on "command" and "maximizer" should yield results

[Method]

I run 5 WoW's on 1 box using Maximizer. My desktop res is 2560x1024 which is two 1280x1024 monitors in Stretch mode on an ATI x1650 PRO.
I have 5 separate WoW installs so I just copied Maximizer into each and set up the configs like this:

#copy 1
margin = 0,512,0,1920

#copy 2
margin = 0,512,640,1280

#copy 3
margin = 512,0,0,1920

#copy 4
margin = 512,0,640,1280

#copy 5
margin = 0,0,1280,0

This puts 4 small instances of WoW onto my left screen @ 640x512 each and 1 large instance of WoW on my right screen @1280x1024. I'll stitch up a quick screenshot and post shortly to demonstrate.


Works great I just have to launch them one at a time and wait for Maximizer to resize and relocate each WoW window before launching the next one. I'm also able to close one and then reload it at any time without any problems.Thanks Stabface - this is very helpful. Just want to confirm before I reproduce - is there anyway to use just one client for this instead of installing 5 different versions?

Thanks again

[Method]

dead easy, use a batch file to launch the wows and configure teh settings on the command line.

I use keyclone now so can't remember the options off the top of my head but a search on "command" and "maximizer" should yield resultsEep, just saw this post after I posted the above. Would you mind elaborating on "batch file" Is there a wiki I can refer to on how to use this?

thanks again!

[Method]

dead easy, use a batch file to launch the wows and configure teh settings on the command line.

I use keyclone now so can't remember the options off the top of my head but a search on "command" and "maximizer" should yield resultswhen you say that you use "keyclone" is there a function in keyclone that automates this process?

[Method]

I run 5 WoW's on 1 box using Maximizer. My desktop res is 2560x1024 which is two 1280x1024 monitors in Stretch mode on an ATI x1650 PRO.
I have 5 separate WoW installs so I just copied Maximizer into each and set up the configs like this:

#copy 1
margin = 0,512,0,1920

#copy 2
margin = 0,512,640,1280

#copy 3
margin = 512,0,0,1920

#copy 4
margin = 512,0,640,1280

#copy 5
margin = 0,0,1280,0

This puts 4 small instances of WoW onto my left screen @ 640x512 each and 1 large instance of WoW on my right screen @1280x1024. I'll stitch up a quick screenshot and post shortly to demonstrate.


Works great I just have to launch them one at a time and wait for Maximizer to resize and relocate each WoW window before launching the next one. I'm also able to close one and then reload it at any time without any problems.I'm planning to run two seperate monitors - right side will be for the main screen - then 4 slaves on the right side. My monitors are not stretched at this point, so they are independent. I tried plugging the values above to get the right combination and it worked for my first screen, but it did not work for the 2nd one. I came up with 0,600,0,800 for the first and 0,600,800,1600 for the second. What am I doing wrong? Thanks for the help, much appreciated!