MultiBox (software) [Archive]

Micah

01-10-2007, 01:51 AM

MultiBox Client & Server: http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/ffeff6c466/
MultiBox Client & Server & Source: http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/7648e6e966

Features:
* One mouse/keyboard can control multiple computers without any additional hardware.
* Specifically designed to allow you to play 3D games that use the mouse for looking around.
* Ability to toggle "broadcasting" with a hotkey that will allow your keystrokes or mouse movements to be broadcast to all connected computers.
* Simple UI: Setting up monitor layout is very easy.
* Runs in the taskbar so it's out of the way.

Run MultiBoxServer.exe on the machine with the mouse/keyboard. Run MultiBoxClient.exe on every machine (including the one with the mouse/keyboard). Set the port on the server machine to something and match it on all the clients (including the one with the server software running on it). On the clients, enter the hostname of the server into the Server Name (this is the name of your computer if you are on a local area network) and press enter.

Note: Be sure to connect the client on the same machine as the server first, otherwise you won't be able to get back to that machine without quitting all the others first. :p

Pressing escape 8 times in a row will exit the server in case something breaks and you have lost control of the mouse/keyboard somehow.

There are a few things that need worked on but on a whole it should work pretty well. This version is fairly large because it's compiled in debug mode (release mode crashes for some reason) but I'm assuming anyone multi-boxing has a big enough internet connection to download a 10MB executable. :)

The source code requires wxWidgets 2.8.0 to compile and run as well as the Windows SDK. It currently only works on Windows XP (95/98 probably won't work and 2000/Vista are untested). It definitely won't work on a Mac or Linux but it is mostly written with portability in mind (wxWidgets API instead of .NET) so if someone is interested a port isn't terribly unrealistic.[/list]

Ellay

01-10-2007, 02:14 AM

This is greatly Appreciated, I'll be moving this over to the tools section when I test it out :)

nemesis

01-10-2007, 02:41 AM

Sounds useful! I am curious however if you did any research on Warden. From what I gather, it searches processes running on the system an if one is flagged as illegal 3rd party, bang ban.

MultiBox Client & Server: http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/41b6bbca3c/
MultiBox Client & Server & Source: http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/f148a7baff/

Features:
* One mouse/keyboard can control multiple computers without any additional hardware.
* Specifically designed to allow you to play 3D games that use the mouse for looking around.
* Ability to toggle "broadcasting" with a hotkey that will allow your keystrokes or mouse movements to be broadcast to all connected computers.
* Simple UI: Setting up monitor layout is very easy.
* Runs in the taskbar so it's out of the way.

Run MultiBoxServer.exe on the machine with the mouse/keyboard. Run MultiBoxClient.exe on every machine (including the one with the mouse/keyboard). Set the port on the server machine to something and match it on all the clients (including the one with the server software running on it). On the clients, enter the hostname of the server into the Server Name (this is the name of your computer if you are on a local area network) and press enter.

Note: Be sure to connect the client on the same machine as the server first, otherwise you won't be able to get back to that machine without quitting all the others first. :p

Pressing escape 8 times in a row will exit the server in case something breaks and you have lost control of the mouse/keyboard somehow.

There are a few things that need worked on but on a whole it should work pretty well. This version is fairly large because it's compiled in debug mode (release mode crashes for some reason) but I'm assuming anyone multi-boxing has a big enough internet connection to download a 10MB executable. :)

The source code requires wxWidgets 2.8.0 to compile and run as well as the Windows SDK. It currently only works on Windows XP (95/98 probably won't work and 2000/Vista are untested). It definitely won't work on a Mac or Linux but it is mostly written with portability in mind (wxWidgets API instead of .NET) so if someone is interested a port isn't terribly unrealistic.[/list]

Ellay

01-10-2007, 10:37 AM

Micah

01-10-2007, 12:26 PM

As Ellay has stated, they ban for automation, not just any program that injects input. There are a ton of legitimate uses for programs that inject keystrokes. In fact, your mouse driver and/or keyboard driver will likely inject keystrokes and mouse clicks into the system and playing WoW on a secondary machine through the use of Synergy would also inject mouse/keyboard input.

If they just banned anyone injecting input then they would likely ban 50% or more of their user base. The only people that wouldn't get banned are those using a standard 104 key keyboard and a standard 2 button + wheel mouse. Anything extra like special keys on your keyboard or extra mouse buttons would be caught by something like that.

Also, there are other 5-boxers out there that have been reported probably thousands of times (especially 5-boxing in BGs and Arenas) but they have not been banned so you don't have to worry about multiboxing getting you banned.

Rowan

01-10-2007, 04:19 PM

Micah, just got your software installed and tested out with my 2-box setup and I must saying I've very very happy with it. It solves that stupid mouse-look issue Synergy has, and the keyboard/mouse broadcast works flawlessly.

The one thing I'm really having a hard time managing is the deviation between the two characters that is always going to happy even if the viewports are just 1 degree off. Is there an easy way to deal with this? Are there any WoW settings I should use to help with this problem?

Thanks again for the software!

Micah

01-10-2007, 06:22 PM

I don't use mouse broadcasting for that exact reason and I don't know of any solution for it either. In fact, the only reason I added mouse broadcasting was due to popular demand by the people that I gave my synergy keyboard broadcasting modification to.

My technique is to have 4 characters on auto-follow and keyboard broadcasting almost always on. I then unbind movement keys on all but the primary character. If I need to micro-manage one of the characters I just mouse over to that window and use the mouse to control the character and when I'm done I move back.

Rowan

01-10-2007, 08:20 PM

My technique is to have 4 characters on auto-follow and keyboard broadcasting almost always on. I then unbind movement keys on all but the primary character. If I need to micro-manage one of the characters I just mouse over to that window and use the mouse to control the character and when I'm done I move back.
I must be doing something wrong then. If I have one of my guys on follow he will eventually fall far enough behind that he stops following. What's even worse is if I suddenly stop and start attacking something, the guy following will take 2 or more seconds to finally stop running but in the mean time he's not casting anything since he's still in motion.

Micah

01-10-2007, 08:47 PM

The guy stopping autofollow is likely because one of your characters is faster then the other. Do you have any enchants or gear that gives your primary character a run speed increase?

The second issue is just lag. Watch the guy on the second screen to see when he really stops, he will always stop later on the primary screen due to latency. You tell the server you are stopping, then the server tells everyone around you that you are stopping. So the message takes about .5 seconds to get to everyone sometimes.

Rowan

01-11-2007, 02:38 AM

The guy stopping autofollow is likely because one of your characters is faster then the other. Do you have any enchants or gear that gives your primary character a run speed increase?

I'm pretty sure this is due to lag as well (250 ms is a typical ping time for me). My mages are only level 12 so it's not gear for sure. :-)

The second issue is just lag. Watch the guy on the second screen to see when he really stops, he will always stop later on the primary screen due to latency. You tell the server you are stopping, then the server tells everyone around you that you are stopping. So the message takes about .5 seconds to get to everyone sometimes.
Do you know of a macro command to force a character to stop moving? I've already replaced all of my 2nd mage's spells with macros that first do an "/assist mage1" to pick up the target my main guy has. If I could preface those with something to make them stop moving I could at least avoid the "can't do that while moving" messages the 2nd mage keeps getting while following.

nemesis

01-11-2007, 03:01 AM

I haven't had a chance to try this (at work atm), will this broadcast to multiple wow instances running on a secondary computer?

Micah

01-11-2007, 01:18 PM

nemesis
No, WoW will need to be in the foreground of every computer. While it is possible to inject input into a background process it gets ever closer to automation and crosses a line that I am not willing to cross. Playing a game that isn't the active application looks way too much like a bot for my taste.

Rowan
One option for stopping movement is to bind a key to stop on each of the client computers that you can press when you are ready for them to stop. Unfortunately you can't put it into a macro that I know of. :(

Los

01-13-2007, 12:00 PM

Their opinion on banning for 3rd party software involves anything that is automated or does actions on its own. Broadcasting keystrokes is perfectly legal.
Although it is up to Blizzards discretion on what they run through their system. They have made it known that hardware devices that broadcast keystrokes are fine, and I've sent messages to GM's inquiring if using software to broadcast keystrokes was legal. It was sent to a supervisor who approved it and said as long as it does not automate or think on its own your fine.

So overall I think the risk chance is extremely low, but this is just my opinion.

Still, if there is a risk of losing characters with 60days game time is dangerous to say the least. I was bored a bit, so I asked a gm (eu realms).

http://www.dutchpeanutforce.nl/WoWScrnShot_011307_165446x.jpg

I got a bit annoyed of the automated answering gm's are doing these days so i stopped herassing him/her. Guess I will write an email to that address and see what i get in return.

Also i read once that blizzard installes software that detects, or trys to detect software interfering with their processes? (btw excuse my english, not my native language, and am a bit tired ;))

kaladis

01-15-2007, 02:04 PM

Hi :).

So i've been tinkering with this and i cant seem to get my clients to see the server. Any ideas what would cause that? or how to get it to work. the software sounds amazing like old xilophone.

Maturin

01-15-2007, 11:48 PM

Amazing program, and it is working flawless for me for about 5 minutes at a time, just curious if anyone has a similar problem.

I'm using a desktop & laptop on my home network, both connected to each other. They are both rather high end, and I'm playing WoW on both.

I can setup the server & clients and dual box perfectly for about 5 minutes. then while on my main display, I move the mouse over to the laptop, but it just stops at the edge of my main display. Then when I move it around, it lags badly, jerking all over the screen. After a few seconds it is fine, but I'm unable to switch over to the laptop.

The only way I've found to fix it is to restart the server, reconnect both clients, then I get another 5 min or so of good use. Any suggestions I could try?

Ellay

01-16-2007, 01:53 AM

Hopefully Micah knows a possible fix, for the time being I'll do some testing and see what I come up with.

Also to add, try out Synergy with broadcasting and see if that works for the time being.

Maturin

01-16-2007, 02:14 PM

I tried Synergy, however the service would have some kind of critical error on the laptop when it tried to connect. I'll give it another go later.

Basically the functionality of Multibox is exactly what I'm looking for (when it works for me). Being able to just mouse between monitors, no alt+tabbing, and without broadcasting.

Has anyone had experience using something like a firewire cable to connect 2 pc's and having Multibox communicate that way? Is it any faster/more reliable?

Thanks in advance for the help.

Micah

01-16-2007, 05:23 PM

I fixed a crash bug caused by having too much data in the clipboard. I have updated the link without source in the original post, the link with source is still outdated. Try this version and let me know if it fixes the problem for you, I had a similar problem and this did the trick.

Maturin

01-16-2007, 05:57 PM

Thanks so much, I'll give it a try as soon as I get home. I thought I'd unchecked the clipboard option, but I may not have.

This may be completely wrong, but the impression I got when the problem occurred was that it only happened when I didn't move the mouse from one PC to another for a few minutes. For example, I never noticed the problem while going back and forth - only after I'd been on my primary for a few minutes, then tried to move the mouse back to the laptop. Is it possible that there is some kind of inactivity timeout going on?

Thanks again!

Micah

01-16-2007, 08:03 PM

It is possible that it has to do with Windows caching, though I'm not sure why that would have an effect. Let me know if the updated version fixes the problem or not either way.

Nyugen

01-17-2007, 10:14 PM

For some reason I can't move my mouse between screens using multibox, it works fine with Synergy tho, so I deleted the screen links in Multibox, used synergy for that, and just keep the mouse on my main screen which runs multibox and synergy, (multibox for the key broadcasting, synergy for the screen switching) any reason you can think of Micah why this would happen?

Micah

01-18-2007, 07:35 AM

Most likely something just isn't setup right such as monitor placement or something. Are your monitors left/right? If so do you have the layout setting as 1,2?

Nyugen

01-18-2007, 05:25 PM

Ya its left right, and 1,2. Correct placement I assume too, although when one of the computers connects it gets a weird surname, so I don't know if that's it.

Micah

01-18-2007, 09:31 PM

The 'surname' is your domain name, most likely assigned by your router if you have one or your Windows networking setup. Just to clarify, keyboard broadcasting *does* work but you can't mouse from one computer to the other? Does mouse broadcasting work? If yes to those two questions, do you think you could take a screenshot of the MultiBox Server window so I can see all the settings you have?

elaren

01-18-2007, 11:52 PM

Great program!

The only major flaw I'm running into is the key mappings. Things like the right shift key aren't registered when I have the program enabled (i.e. so pushing right shift is ignored, left shift works fine) even on the server. Also I'd like the additional mouse buttons besides 1 and 2 to be carried over. For example mouse button 4 I use for auto run in WoW and even when on the client, pressing button 4 moves only the character on the server. I don't expect the volume keys of my MS Natural Keyboard 4000 to work on the clients but I'd figure they should still work on the server but they too are ignored although the other multifunction keys like calculator and play/pause work. Other than that, great application. I look forward to the Mac version so I can run WoW native on my MacBook Pro instead of using Windows XP.

Micah

01-19-2007, 02:17 AM

I never noticed the shift problem but I get it as well, If I get some time I'll try to figure out what is happening. As for the mouse buttons, it's a known issue and one that annoys me but I can't figure out a solution for. The problem is that mouse buttons beyond the initial two and middle one aren't actually understood by Windows XP so your mouse driver software has to inject them. The software handles injected clicks different from normal clicks so it just let's them fallthrough to the OS.

As for a Mac, unfortunately I don't own a Mac so development on a Mac version is at 0%. :p

elaren

01-19-2007, 06:18 AM

I'm not so sure it relies on the mouse driver to inject the events. I specifically don't install the vendor's drivers because they get remapped away from "mouse button 4." I believe it falls on each application individually to figure out what to do when it receives a "mouse button 4" event.

In synergy I'd see that same sort of odd mouse button behavior on both Windows XP and Mac OS X. The server's binds in WoW would say "mouse button 4" but when binding on the client it'd report "alt-leftarrow." It's odd, but the button worked.

Hope that info helps.

Micah

01-19-2007, 05:30 PM

Windows XP only understands Mouse Button 1, 2, middle, wheel and 2 X buttons. I handle all of the above except the two X buttons because I can't figure out what they are for the life of me. If you see "Unhandled event: #" in the server log window let me know what it says (and what number you see). If you get that it means that your mouse is sending an event I don't catch (the N buttons likely) and I would appreciate knowing what you did to get it. If you don't get that it means that some software injection is going on when you click the mouse and because of that synergy drops it.

kadaan

01-19-2007, 08:56 PM

Their opinion on banning for 3rd party software involves anything that is automated or does actions on its own. Broadcasting keystrokes is perfectly legal.
Although it is up to Blizzards discretion on what they run through their system. They have made it known that hardware devices that broadcast keystrokes are fine, and I've sent messages to GM's inquiring if using software to broadcast keystrokes was legal. It was sent to a supervisor who approved it and said as long as it does not automate or think on its own your fine.

So overall I think the risk chance is extremely low, but this is just my opinion.

Still, if there is a risk of losing characters with 60days game time is dangerous to say the least. I was bored a bit, so I asked a gm (eu realms).

I got a bit annoyed of the automated answering gm's are doing these days so i stopped herassing him/her. Guess I will write an email to that address and see what i get in return.

Also i read once that blizzard installes software that detects, or trys to detect software interfering with their processes? (btw excuse my english, not my native language, and am a bit tired ;))

Never trust a GM for any type of rule information. All they're good for is reporting bugs. I've seen so many posts on GM's giving conflicting information :(.

The one you talked to never said anything other than the vague "Third party software" line. Nothing about the fact that's it's only third party software that interacts with WoW that is banned. So according to him, running FireFox or your favorite IM client while playing WoW is using 3rd party software and can get you banned! Oh noes! :)

Nyugen

01-21-2007, 04:07 PM

Micah, I got it semi working, it lags alot when I move my mouse from screen to screen for some reason. With Synergy I don't have this problem so I don't think it's a connection problem.

Micah

01-22-2007, 03:19 AM

Synergy may use UDP when switching or there could be something wrong with the way I'm implementing it. How much is "a lot" and does it continue to lag if you move back and forth regularly or just the first time?

Nyugen

01-22-2007, 12:24 PM

A lot, like 10 seconds before I can move the mouse on the secondary screen regularly, and it happens everytime I move from the main to the secondary screen. =\

Micah

01-22-2007, 04:46 PM

I switched over to UDP packets for screen edge switching and also removed the "hide cursor on screen change" feature, both of which may help with the screen changing problems. If these don't fix the problem try disabling "move clipboard" on the server to see if that resolves the issue.

New version is uploaded and the link in the original post has been modified.

Nyugen

01-23-2007, 12:07 PM

Awesome I'll try this out when I get home, and just for reference, I had turned off the clipboard function before to see if it would help.

Cheers to creating a great program Micah!

zopal

01-26-2007, 03:47 AM

Blizzard's stance about using more than one account.

http://blue.cardplace.com/newcache/en/120672188.htm

Nyugen

02-02-2007, 10:55 PM

Micah

02-03-2007, 09:56 PM

Still getting the lag Micah =\, I can't really use synergy with key broadcasting either, because I learned it minimizes the instance of wow running on the main computer ("server") when I switch to my second computer.There is an option you can set on the Synergy server that will stop that. Something like "bring synergy to foreground". As for the lag, I am at a loss. I don't get anything like that.

wougoose

02-06-2007, 03:47 PM

I am getting the lag after around 5-10 minutes as well. Has anyone figured out the cause? I am running multibox on 3 machines. For now I have been using Synergy w/broadcasting, but having the ability to mouse look would be great :)

Torrid

02-06-2007, 05:54 PM

I'm using only Multibox (no Synergy or Multiplicity) and have zero lag issues. I have a few quirky/intermittent problems with keys on my secondary computers but haven't yet figured out if it's my setup or Multibox. :/

kadaan

02-06-2007, 09:32 PM

If you see "Unhandled event: #" in the server log window let me know what it says (and what number you see). If you get that it means that your mouse is sending an event I don't catch (the N buttons likely) and I would appreciate knowing what you did to get it. If you don't get that it means that some software injection is going on when you click the mouse and because of that synergy drops it.

523 for mouse down and 524 for mouse up, on both button 4 and 5.

The right shift button not working on either computer is a little annoying too ;), any progress figuring out why that's happening?

Micah

02-06-2007, 10:05 PM

If I have some time when I get home tonight I'll try and look into the mouse buttons 4 & 5 working as well as the right shift key.

For the lag problem you mentioned after 5-10 minutes, is this 5-10 minutes of use where you don't move the mouse onto one of the off-screens then when you do you get lag, which goes away for another 5-10 minutes after that? If so I think it has to do with the way Windows XP pages to disk and I have a potential solution for it that I want to try out. If I get time I'll add it into the next version and see if it works.

wougoose

02-07-2007, 03:27 AM

Thanks Micah, if I get time I'll do some testing with it to see what is causing it and get back to you.

Micah

02-07-2007, 04:04 AM

Tried to fix the right shift bug and after several hours of searching there is no light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, the light that I thought I saw turned out to be the headlight of a fast approaching train.

As far as I can tell it's a windows bug. I am sending a perfect right-shift key to the OS and the OS is ignoring it more or less. I even tried to write a cheesy workaround hack and windows ignored that as well! I have posted on the win32 newsgroup to see if someone there can help me but I'm not hopeful at this point.

Edit: Got it fixed, turns out it is a Windows bug.

Micah

02-07-2007, 04:29 AM

New version updated in the first post of this thread. Right shift should now work and mouse buttons 4 & 5 *should* work (untested since I don't have a 5 button mouse). Let me know if buttons 4/5 work properly or not and if not what the symptoms are.

kadaan

02-10-2007, 04:45 PM

Both mouse4 and mouse5 buttons work fine on my second computer, and the right-shift button is fixed as well.

Thank you, I love you! :)

Steph

02-12-2007, 11:11 AM

Micah,

I have tried your MultiBox as part of myself carefully getting into the multiboxing and testing the potential setups. I must say that I was delighted to find it work controlling my three test characters as intended, in a way that was very promising indeed, with some difficulties regarding the mouse.

Thank you for that!

My testing setup was two notebooks and one desktop with two displays. Notebook1 (1280x800), Notebook2 (1024x800), Desktop (1280x1024, 1280x1024) being the displays from left to right. I put Notebook1, Notebook2 and the Desktop next to each other from left to right in the drop down boxes in the MultiBox server window.

I could move the mouse over to Notebook2 and use it normally. Thanks to your modifications, without any of the sickness inducing spinning experienced with Synergy. I could not, no matter what I did with the mouse, move it to Notebook1 on the far left.
Getting the mouse from Notebook2 back to the desktop's display was a very frustrating ordeal at numerous times while it worked flawlessly at other times. I dont know more details about this one yet, but when I do I will supply them.
All in all, I hope to be able to use MultiBox instead of a cumbersome hardware input devices solution. Ideal for me would be having the mouse working for simple clicks - to taget a warlock AoE for example - or if that does not work out to have an option to disable mouse broadcasting and mouse movement to the other computers.

jah76de

02-12-2007, 12:01 PM

Micah,

I've been using your software for 2 weeks or so and it has been working GREAT.

I just am getting around to registering for this site but just wanted to thank you for this really amazing software.

Micah

02-12-2007, 01:24 PM

Steph: I have a new version that works with horizontal dual-monitors. I use dual-monitors on one of my 5 computers as well so I added some code that handles it. If you have dual-vertical monitors it still doesn't work, though I could modify it if necessary.

When I get home tonight I'll try to remember to upload the new version with dual-monitors fixed.

Jah76de: Glad to hear it, thanks for letting me know it's working out for you. :D

ytrehod

02-21-2007, 01:30 PM

I just wanted to say a quick thanks to Micah for creating this very helpful software and Ellay for setting up this site. I've been dual-boxing for a couple weeks and have been really struggling to control both characters at the same time. Once I got MultiBox installed and configured and I got used to it, it made things SO much easier.

My wife may not be as appreciative as dual-boxing has re-awakened my desire to play WoW all the time. :lol:

Steph

02-21-2007, 10:51 PM

Micah,

this is my new desktop setup. I would love to have that new MultiBox version with the horizontal dual monitor fix :wink:

http://www.emerald-knights.com/guildhall/desktop2.jpg

Cheers, Steph.

Ellay

02-22-2007, 02:03 PM

Micah

02-22-2007, 02:12 PM

Micah,

this is my new desktop setup. I would love to have that new MultiBox version with the horizontal dual monitor fix :wink:

http://www.emerald-knights.com/guildhall/desktop2.jpg

Cheers, Steph.The new version supports horizontally spanned monitors, download the latest one and if that doesn't work let me know and I'll upload a newer version. I thought I already did though...

Micah

02-22-2007, 02:18 PM

Wondering if this is a simple addition or not.

Is it possible to choose a set of keys that you want broadcasted to all pc's instead of having every single key sent over? or is the only way by turning on/off the broadcast hotkey.

Thanks :)

Edit: Steph you should post your pic in the screenshots section :) give it more flavor, it's empty ><It is possible and somewhat simple but it would take a lot of work to add so don't hold your breath for that feature. The main slowdown would be the UI, the best way I can think would be to display a picture of a keyboard and you can click on keys to toggle whether or not they broadcast.

Steph

02-22-2007, 06:17 PM

Hmm Micah,

http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/ffeff6c466/
at the top of this thread still shows the same version as I originally downloaded, as far as I tell tell by the filename.

Should I be using a different link?
Have you put the new version into an archive file with the same exact name?

I see no 'about' with the version in MultiBox, so its a bit tough to tell.

Cheers, Steph.

Micah

02-22-2007, 07:47 PM

If the file name is the same then it's the same, each version has a new filename. What that means is I forgot to post the new version that has horizontal dual-monitors working, I'll try to do that when I get home tonight.

Steph

02-22-2007, 08:24 PM

Thank you! :D

shockbeta

02-28-2007, 04:13 AM

First off, Thanks to Michah for writing this software. I had emailed you back in January about modding the synergy source, and you had directed me here. I'm currently using your software as opposed to the modded synergy and it's awesome.

One feature I find lacking on it is the ability to bind mouse buttons to the broadcast feature. I have a mouse with extra buttons on it. With how I have my keybindings set up(and the lack of using multiple keys to broadcast) I find myself constanly reaching from one side of my keyboard to another, or letting go of my mouse. I think it would be really convenient to be able to bind the broadcast features to mousebutton 4 or higher. Not sure if it would be that difficult, but maybe if you had time you could add that in. The multiple keys would be a nice touch to.. so ctrl + "`" could be bound. That's just an extra feature I thought of for anyone who does use both broadcast features.

Anyways, Thanks again for writing this wicked software, and I hope you do find time to add the mouse bindings feature if you could.

Thanks

ytrehod

02-28-2007, 03:22 PM

One work around would be binding a mouse button to your broadcast key. Not perfect, but it would work.

I wish there was a way, preferably visually, to know if you're broadcasting keyboard/mouse. I can't think of how you could reliably program that, especially to show up in game, though. I had thought about binding it to the shift state of my Nostromo gamepad, but you can't bind a state shift and a keystroke at the same time. So for now if I'm unsure I hit my jump button and see if both characters jump.

Micah

03-01-2007, 12:20 AM

Micah

03-01-2007, 12:23 AM

Micah

03-01-2007, 12:26 AM

shockbeta

03-01-2007, 01:00 AM

Steph

03-01-2007, 10:05 AM

aaah!

Only a few more hours then I will head home and test this.

Thank you, Micah!

Micah

03-01-2007, 01:08 PM

Just wanted to have the ability to bind the broadcast keyboard toggle key to a mouse button. That way I can click mousebutton 5 on my mouse to toggle keyboard broadcasting on and off. Just would be nice to be able to control broadcasting at a thumb press rather then changing my regular keybinding layout.I've been pretty busy lately but I'll try and take a look at the code this weekend to see how hard it would be to add something like that.

Steph

03-02-2007, 07:52 AM

Oh. I suppose I should explain how to use horizontal spanning feature. :D Use the pull-down menus to enter that computer twice (the one with dual-monitors).

So mine looks like:
Comp1 Comp2 Comp3
Comp4 Comp5 Comp5

Notice that Comp5 is listed twice, that is how it knows there are two and to handle it as such.

Hi Micah,

I have tested this and it does work - a bit. I encountered two issues that appear to be connected.

1) When attempting to leave the primary screen, comp5 in your example, sometimes the mouse cursor will not go. I have noticed that now, after setting up as you show it above I also get client disconnections. I find it interesting to note that I had no client disconnections when setting up MultiBox to 1 by 1 screen and choosing the primary computer as that screen, effectively disabling use of the primary systems mouse on the client computers. Therefore I doubt that this is a network issue.

2) If it goes and I return it to the primary screen, the mouse cursor moves sluggishly a couple of seconds behind where it should actually be. This state happens for about 5-6 seconds. If at that time I try to move the mouse cursor anywhere, I risk crossing the screen boundary and creating more problems.

Both issues are pretty much disaster when fighting. =/

Instead of comp1, comp2, comp3; comp4, comp5, comp5 I have set Comp5 and live without the mouse now. Naturally prefer MultiBox as full solution. I am reluctant to run Synergy just for the mouse.

Just keeping you informed, I dont mean to nag you to solve my problems =]

Cheers, Steph.

Micah

03-02-2007, 12:56 PM

Are you running a 3x2 monitor array or some other layout (hard to tell in your image).

shockbeta

03-02-2007, 11:05 PM

Just noticed another thing, I use the G15 keyboard. It has media controls on it, but they fail to function while using multibox. So here I go with another feature request:p Would it be possible to allow the media controls be sent to the server computer? I don't know how you coded it, and how difficult, if at all possible, to always send the media controls to the server computer. If you could work that in it would be greatly appreciated:)

This has happened a few times so far tonight, and I'm not sure what causes it. I lose the ability to type anything on the computer with the server on it. I'm not sure exactly how I get it to this state, but the server computer will not accept typing, and sometimes they simulate wrong button presses. Everytime it's happened though I am unable to type in the chat window of wow. I can mouse over to the other computer and it works fine. I'll see if I can figure out what exactly it is I do when this happens and let you know.

The end result is I can still play the game fine, all my hotkeys work, and everything brings up and acts like it should, until you open a chat window. Then it doesn't accept anything except an enter to close it. Also the esc key doesn't exit menu, but opens the windows start menu. If I shut down multibox the problem doesn't go away, it persists until I restart WoW. It seems if I shut Multibox down and I wait about a minute it all goes back to normal without having to restart the computer or WoW. I still haven't figured out what I do to begin this behavior yet.

Micah

03-03-2007, 01:49 PM

It sounds like a conflict between the keyboard drivers and MultiBox and unfortunately without such a keyboard it would be very hard to figure out what is going wrong. :(

As for the not being able to type, try pressing cntrl, alt and shift once each to see if it solves the problem. Sometimes those keys can get stuck in the pressed state and will cause some wierd problems.

If anyone knows exactly how (on a programming level) the G15 works it could help solve the problem with it.Does anyone else with a G15 have trouble?

shockbeta

03-04-2007, 11:14 AM

Still haven't gotten input to freeze on me like it did before. I have another media keyboard, and it never dawned on me to check how that keyboards media controls behave with Multibox, as you probably already know, it works seemlessly with Multibox. So your assumption on the G15 was correct. I will try asking on some G15 forums about how it handles the media controls and see if anyone knows how to get something working. After I find out I'll let you know so we can see if it's feesible to do easily. I do know there is an LCD dev kit for the G15 and you're able to remap what the buttons do, so that may be a good thing for me to look at. Anyways I'll let you know what I find out.

shockbeta

03-05-2007, 09:48 PM

Alright so the G15 is a USB keyboard, I'm starting to think that has something to do with the media controls not being passed to Multibox properly. Apparantly USB uses a different standard possibly then ps/2 keyboards. I could be completely wrong on this, but it's just what I've been reading. I do know that all "extended keys" come back as 255. It's been so long since I've messed with scancodes I can't recall how to get what was actually pressed. I had found this post that is about the g15 and the media keys though

http://www.g15forums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=558

I'll keep looking into it. I did have an idea on how to utilize the lcd with Multibox. I have a simple lcd app that flashes the screen when I want it to, currently if bIsBroadcasting the program flashes Broadcasting every few seconds. Not sure if that's handy for anyone, but if it was maybe we could get Micah to add it to his build.

__________________________________________________ __

Alright, so I feel stupid now. I had multibox on this whole time while I was trying to poll keyboard input and codes. So without multibox on all VK codes are correct. I downloaded your old source and going to try and look at it to see if I can see whats up. If I can see what my problem is I'll let you know.

__________________________________________________ __

Just poured over the code. I have no way of easily testing this, but is it possible that since you send the flag KEYEVENTF_SCANCODE it somehow isn't able to poll the proper key from wScan. I do notice with all media controls on either of the USB keyboards I have it returns 80ff. Although when I use my ps/2 media keyboard it returns proper codes and behaves normally. I can see the benefit to using KEYEVENTF_SCANCODE if you had mapped keys differently on seperate computers. I think that's the purpose of it at least, but if we could get it to use the vk code instead of the scan code it may prove to solve the problem. Of course it could be wrong but at least we would know.

I've been up entirely too long now, so I could be way off base with this, but my reasoning for it is simply because they're usb keyboards that are failing. I had read USB scancodes are different then ps/2. but I could of been confused on that form everything I've been reading. It makes sense as every usb keyboard I've tested has failed, while all ps/2 have worked. Anyways, if you have time, Micah, maybe we could check it out.

Glencannon

03-05-2007, 10:43 PM

Edit: Finished reading the entire thread and noticed the suggestion has already been made. but still seems like something people want.

It is possible and somewhat simple but it would take a lot of work to add so don't hold your breath for that feature. The main slowdown would be the UI, the best way I can think would be to display a picture of a keyboard and you can click on keys to toggle whether or not they broadcast.

I don't think it needs to be so complex, though that would be very nice and intuitive. It could be a simple list of all the keys with a check box next to em.

Or even a text CFG file with all the keys and an = 1 for broadcast 0 for no broadcast. It may not be user friendly but i think anyone who is dual boxing has enough computer skills that they can edit a simple text file.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Original:

Awsome job Micah, your my hero!

Having finished showering you with praise, now I have a request or more accurately a suggestion.

would it be possible to create a button exception list for the broadcasting, or just to broadcast certain buttons. For example just broadcast WASD for movement but leave other hot keys unbroadcasted.

This way if I'm dual boxing a warrior and priest. I can have them move the same but if i hit my F hotkey, moused on my warriors screen, he will sunder and my priest wont hit whatever ability is bound to F on his screen.

Steph

03-06-2007, 08:54 AM

Are you running a 3x2 monitor array or some other layout (hard to tell in your image).

Hi Micah,

I was reasonably sure that I did test different layouts already, including 3x2. To be certain I did specifically test it, but this did not change anything. The MultiBoxClient disconnecting and mouse lag issues remain. I wonder if it is because of the different resolutions in play.

Adding the resolutions to the picture it is not a continous screen area like you have with your six identical or similar monitors. My setup with the two displays of the desktop in [ ]. As you can see there are gaps due to the notebook displays having a lower resolution than the desktop displays.
[code:1]1024x768 1024x768 1024x768
1280x800 [1280x1024 1280x768] [/code:1]

Besides the above, I have a few bits of feedback for you:

It is not fully clear to me when MultiBoxClient or Server actually do save changes made to their GUI. A [Save] or [OK] button and a message in the log would be extremely helpful when troubleshooting.
While I appreciate the GUI as overlay over the fullscreen game window, it would be even better to have it moveable so it can be put on the spare monitor with the log visible during use.
A status display for keyboard and mouse broadcasting would also be very handy, either on the task bar icon, or in the main GUI.
I understand you apply mouse movement differently from the way Synergy handles it absolute/relative to avoid the wow camera spinning issue. Since it can be confusing with the mouse cursor being left on the borders of a display while exiting its range and still being there at the very edge where it was left rather than appearing where it is being moved into the display, I was wondering: Would it be possible to maintain the synergy way of moving the mouse up to the point where mouse buttons are being pressed? The spinning does not occur unless you are in that movement mode and click, if I recall correctly.

The above are just some ideas that might be handy, I wont play crybaby if you dont like any of them :wink:

Cheers, Steph.

Micah

03-06-2007, 01:21 PM

It sounds like I'll have to take a day and do another code pass on MultiBox in the near future. I'll be out of town until Friday but I'll try to do it this weekend.

Some quick answers:

Yes, I pass scancodes instead of virtual keys. I don't remember why but I had a good reason at the time. :D I think it has to do with the fact that scancodes are what the computer receives, then the OS/drivers convert those to VKs and I wanted each computer to handle the VK conversion on their own for simplicity and what I thought would be more reliable. Perhaps I can make it a user-option as to which is passed along so those wanting to use media keyboards can do so.

MultiBox saves changes immediately upon changing them, hence the lack of save/OK button.

The overlapping GUI was actually a hack to fix a problem with the GUI locking (and the whole program breaking) when you tried to drag the window. There are far better ways to handle the problem such as putting the GUI in another thread or better yet, fixing the API I used (wxWidgets) but I opted to simply have it un-draggable. Perhaps I could change it so it pops up just above the system tray instead, it may be more intuitive and then you could at least have *some* control over where it showed up. Again, not an ideal solution but the "right" way would be a lot more work.

If someone wants to make me some different icons for different status's I'll use them. The two icons I use for server/client right now are just the first two I found when googling the web. :D I don't remember the format I need for them, I think it's some ascii art thingy used specificly for icons... I'll try to look it up later (or check out the source code if you are curious).

The mouse cursor staying behind on the other screen is another hack fix I put in. For a while, the mouse "disappeared" (moved to the lower right corner of the desktop) when you left a monitor but that was causing problems sometimes when a packet was dropped at just the right time. Again, the proper fix is to fix the problem but the easy fix was to leave the mouse behind. Perhaps I can go over that this weekend.

kamon

03-11-2007, 04:48 AM

Great program. I only have a couple problems.

I use a G15 Keyboard and my media keys and my NumLock do not work after I activate the server.

Another problem is that if I am holding down a key and I move my cursor to another screen it acts as if the key is still being pressed. This isn't normally a big deal but it also does it with my mouse if I jerk it in a fast manner while holding down a button. This is kind of annoying while PvPing and stuff, as I have to make quick motions with my mouse very often.

shockbeta

03-11-2007, 02:00 PM

Hey Kamon,

I also use the G15 and was hoping to find someone else to confirm it was usb keyboards that were giving the problem with the media keys. This is a bug in the code somewhere that has yet to be discovered.

As for the button being pressed constantly when you're off the screen, it kinda needs to work this way. I personally like it. I have no need to hotkey and autorun button. The reason though that it happens is when you mouse to the next screen over and the release the key, that computer gets the keyup message not the computer you were just at. Now you could make sometype of memory system to check where the keyup message needs to go, but I highly doubt micah has the time or feels the need to do it. Also like I said some of us may like that it keeps pressing the button down so we owuld prefer it not to be changed. If you didn't know yet to get the button to relases on the one it's stuck down on, just press the key and it will recevive the keyup message that releases the key.

As for the numlock key, mine works on my g15, I just can't bind anything to it. It doesn't change the light of whether it's on or not, but numpad and numlock work as expected.

darkangael

03-11-2007, 05:14 PM

Is there a possibility in the future of adding hotkeys not only for broadcast, but for sending mouse/kb to individual screens? (e.g. I want to control box2 but don't want to have to move my mouse all the way over there).

I would add it myself but I don't have visual studio installed (if I do get it installed I may have a look though ;) )

Ellay

03-12-2007, 03:05 PM

The above mentioned feature would be huge, I'd love to completely switch over to Multibox from Synergy, please oh please let this be a reality :)

Buruan

03-13-2007, 03:35 PM

I am also putting my vote down for this feature :)

Hold key X and it controls Screen1 only
Hold key y and it controls Screen2 only.

This is great stuff.

Thanks for your hard work on this Micah.
It is really appreciated

Micah

03-13-2007, 09:35 PM

I have been overly busy lately with an out of town work thing for 2 days and jury duty but I should have some time freed up in the near future to take a look at MultiBox. Unfortunately, MultiBox works "well enough" for me which makes it a hard sell over playing WoW for 4 hours but I really will try to put some more programming time into it and get some of the suggested features in.

As for the recent feature request, do you want the mouse/keyboard going to separate screens or just the ability to hotkey switching between screens? That is, press the letter 'a' and you are now controlling screen 1 (mouse + keyboard). Press letter 'b' and you are now controlling screen 2 (mouse + keyboard).

Creating a hotkey to switch computers is easy, having the mouse and keyboard go to different computers at the same time is not in the current design.

Buruan

03-13-2007, 09:54 PM

Hotkey switching.

If possible similar to the following scenario.

I have only Keyboard Broadcasting enabled, I am playing my low level character on the main computer and following with my high level character.

A situation arises where I need to control my high level character quickly and i want to take control of machine #2 (Mouse and Keyboard)

I press a key and boom I have full contol over machine 2 while losing control over machine 1.

I press the key again and all is back to normal.

Ellay

03-13-2007, 11:50 PM

Basically the same functionality Syngery has with the hotkey switching to different Pc's, appreciate all your hard work Micah :)

darkangael

03-23-2007, 08:33 PM

What buruan describes is exactly what I meant :) And an echo of all the thanks to you, this is great software :)

darkangael

03-31-2007, 11:04 PM

A couple more suggestions for features:
* Mouse broadcast with absolute positioning rather than relative (e.g. mouse in same place on screen on both boxes. Bonus points for multi resolution support
* If not the ability to not broadcast keystrokes based on a user-specified set, perhaps just a tickbox to not broadcast the qweasd keys(standard movement keys) .
* The option to filter out the broadcast and mouse toggle hotkeys so that they don't interfere with the game (e.g. you decided you want to chat, started typing then realised halfway you want to turn off broadcast and now you have a ` in the middle :P )

If you don't mind and you can post the latest source I can help with the coding of some of these.

Qcybershop

04-01-2007, 10:19 AM

to not broadcast the qweasd keys
just go to key binding on 2nd ( -> 5th computers) and unbind qweasd keys :)

Zaylek

04-02-2007, 06:16 PM

I tried using multibox for the first time today and I encountered an issue with my Num Lock key.

I tested multibox while in windows and found that the num locks key worked on the server computer, but not the clients.

The other issue is while in WoW, my num locks key was not recognized at all for auto run, but it does change the state of my keypad. So, by pressing num lock, it changes the '8' key to the 'up arrow' key on the server computer only, but auto run doesn't work.

This just adds a bit of confusion in my control setup, is there a work around for this issue, or shall I just change my keyboard setup?

ytrehod

04-02-2007, 06:52 PM

I always hated the default of NumLock for auto-run. I've had it as `(~) almost since I started playing. It was annoying to have to check my NumLock state to use the numberpad to enter prices in the AH, or use it for anything after quitting WoW. It was a REAL pain if I played on my laptop and forgot to check it before locking my desktop; passwords are difficult when the center of your keyboard is a numberpad and you don't realize it. :lol:

darkangael

04-03-2007, 09:31 AM

to not broadcast the qweasd keys
just go to key binding on 2nd ( -> 5th computers) and unbind qweasd keys :)

The problem with that is when you mouse to the other screen you then can't move (or have to use different keys which "wastes" a set of keybindings).

Qcybershop

04-03-2007, 03:37 PM

well i multibox differently :(
i use keyboard boardcast box and mouse for each of the computer :wink:
i move my 2nd to 5th computer with mouse :shock:

Micah

04-04-2007, 12:20 PM

Unfortunately I haven't really been maintaining the software of late. When I get home tonight I'll try to zip up the latest source code package so others can work on it and make changes if they like. One day I will probably get back into it but I don't know when that will be so don't hold your breath. Sorry. :(

shockbeta

04-05-2007, 05:56 AM

Just something I noticed about the numlock key on clients that the server isn't running. Just for fun try pressing the Pause/Break key and see what that does. In WoW this does Auto-run even though it's bound to the numlock key. I'm thinking it's back to the original problem with passing scancodes in some form or another. USB scancodes are different then ps'2 scancodes. Even without WoW running you can try this out. open notepad on the server machine and a client machine. Now type some numbers in using the numpad. On the server computer Numlock will function as it's supposed to, on the clients though you'll have to use Pause/Break as your numlock key. Now if you have broadcast enabled you'll have to press Pause/Break as your numlock key.

I'm guessing you're using USB keyboard as well. If you are you media keys probably don't work either I'm guessing. These are problems I've encountered with multibox myself and have looked Micah's code over and tried figuring out how to fix it, but haven't found a solution yet as I haven't had the time really to rebuild his source and test any of my theories. Since it all goes awry when you either 1) have broadcast enabled, or 2) are on a comptuer the keyboard is not directly connected to I believe it has to do with how Multibox passes the keyboard input, which it does VIA scancodes. I posted before about the a possiblity of changing the flag to use with scancodes that may fix it, but I'll have to wait for Micah to post the updated source before I can even get the chance to test it.

On a final note, my whole input freezing problem I beleive was inexperience with Multibox and beleive it's from holding keys down when mousing over to other clients. I've not been able to get input frozen for sometime now that I reconize when ALT, CTRL, or SHIFT is being pressed.

Micah

04-06-2007, 11:38 AM

Updated source code in original post for anyone interested in poking around in it.

kneeki

04-06-2007, 01:45 PM

If I only know how to program outside of LUA =(

thrillhaus

04-08-2007, 04:22 PM

First off, let me say what a great program this is :)

However, I had no luck in sending middle mouse button clicks while I was focused on the second screen. Am I missing something?

shockbeta

04-19-2007, 06:22 PM

In hopes micah will see this before to long, I'm trying to open up your solution file and it tells me "The selected file is not a valid Visual Studio solution file." I'm curious what IDE you use and what version if visual studio.

*EDIT*

So I just opened it with 2003 and it told me it was made with a newer version... So I don't have a newer version and am kind of partial to the versions I have. I could I guess get 2005 somehow, maybe express edition if it's still available will work. All that aside I could rebuild it in 2003 if you would be kind enough to tell me any special settings you made in the solution or project settings. Thanks in advance.

clothboxer

04-19-2007, 09:03 PM

is there a current project to port this to Mac?

I have started looking into it, but i am not a programmer so yeah, it may take a while.... but i think i am on the right track.

I found bakefile from the wxWidgets site - Bakefile is cross-platform, cross-compiler native makefiles generator. It takes compiler-independent description of build tasks as input and generates native makefile (autoconf's Makefile.in, Visual C++ project, bcc makefile etc.).

I also have access to the mac edition of MetroWorks CodeWarrior 8.0, and of course have Apple's XCode installed with the newest gcc compiler.

shockbeta

04-20-2007, 06:36 PM

Alright so I have both wxWidgets 2.8.0 and multibox building and running from my build. I created a 2003 project and used that to build everything with since 2005 was giving me headaches. Now I'm trying to learn wxWidgets. It's alright for the most part, but I find the lack of a graphical interface to create and place dialogs items a bit slow. I may end up porting it over to MFC by the end as I know MFC much better then wxWidgets.

daanji

04-22-2007, 10:17 PM

I have a multibox feature request.

How hard would if be to make Multibox also send keystrokes to multiple WoW instances on the same computer and across the network? I would love this feature as I would not have to bother with AutoHotkey.

I have 6 years of coding experience, so I can do it myself, but I'm not too familiar with Windows Programming. Could you point me in the right direction on how to get Windows/instances and send keystrokes to them?

shockbeta

04-23-2007, 11:29 AM

So I modified Multibox and have it so you can only broadcast keys you want, I'm still testing it a bit. It seems to work for the most part. There is a lot of useless bindings I show you, but it was easy and best way I could think of it quickly to not bog down multibox with lag. After I get home from work tonight sometime I'll test it a bit more then upload it for anyone who wanted that feature in.

Buruan

04-23-2007, 04:53 PM

shockbeta, thanks very much for taking this on.
I really appreciate that this is being continued.

If you have the time, can you also look into the hot switching fucntionality discussed earlier in this thread.

Upon keypress i take control of Machine 1 or 2 (Mouse and Keyboard) and when pressing the same key again it goes back to normal control.

Would a be fantastic feature.

Thanks again.

shockbeta

04-23-2007, 05:40 PM

That was the next thing I was trying to get in. I'm not to familiar with wxWidgets, so adding controls to the interface is becoming tedious for me. I was trying to mimic how Micah had the dynamic selection boxes to hotkey the computers. I'll come up with some way though for it to know which computer each hotkey is for. I know you don't want to rebind each time you run it. Anyways, it's all coder talk from here on so I'll spare everyone and work on it a bit. Later on tonight I'll post the new version, have a few things I need to take care of before I can get it taken care of. Oh, also only the server changed. The old verison clients can connect just fine to the new version.

shockbeta

04-23-2007, 10:22 PM

Alright... I had caught something I missed so it took me a little bit longer then I thought. The interface is scary for binding keys, but like I said I was going for speed and making it work. The "GIANT" list of all the possible bound keys was to hopefully allow it to work with any keyboard. Meaning any of your special keys that aren't on english keyboards. I also list even reservered key codes. Anything that is undefined is pointless to have on there, but it just made it work better in my code to keep them. I won't go into coding detail of why just I use arrays and the such and having everything match made it very easy.

Alright so pretty self explanatory when you open it, click the broadcastable keys button and you'll see a new window. scale it to fit the lists if you want. Should be 7 lists. last list should be shorter. Okay now click where it tells you and type away. Any key you press in that box will auto toggle it off and on. Checked = it will broadcast. Alternatively you can manually check keys if you prefer(I don't know who would). Last thing I was working on was I forgot when you hit shift the code is sent as shift. It doesn't differentiate[sic] between left and right, a seperate call had to be made to find what one it is. So in short ignore the SHIFT, CTRL, MENU in the first list. and look for LSHIFT, RSHIFT, LCTRL, RCTRL, .... in the 5th column I think for those. The first ones don't really affect broadcasting. Also if you don't know MENU = ALT, I don't know... I always though it was ALT too, but in the keycodes it came out to MENU so whatever. All cosmetic at that point anyways. I'll clean it up a bit and remove a lot of the excess when I have more time.

Test it as you will and let me know what isn't or is working...

Micah's Multibox w/Broadcastable keys: http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/8651cd8601

And again.. sorry for the HUGE key binding window.. I really need to make that smaller....

darkangael

04-24-2007, 10:08 AM

Thanks! Looks like I can now remap my arrow keys in game :P I may contact you in the future about what dependencies are there for a build (once I finally get VC++ going) so I can help out with feature updates.

shockbeta

04-25-2007, 12:06 AM

Alright so I got hotkey switching in. Initial testing proves to be working. Of course with testing comes ideas, which inevitably lead to problems or more coding:(

So, Here's what I noticed as pros and cons with how it's coded as it is:

Pros:

Able to switch instantly to said monitor.
Kills broadcasting so you have full control of one computer
Remembers last mouse position so can hotkey between and keep mouse position.

cons:

Remembers mouse position so if you mouse between your mouse is on the border of said monitor.
Kills broadcasting so if you just want to hop mouse control you're out of luck.

There's others but here's a start. As you noticed everything is pretty much two sided. It's good but also bad. Good news is anyone who uses a keyboard like me or anything really that has macros you can have your macros to swithc monitor and re-enable broadcasting. I think that is the better solution for the time being as you would want to be able to utilize both ways. Only thing I can think to add is maybe some checkboxes maybe or a keybinding spot for modifier to hit. I.e. 1-5 switch between monitors and give instant control of said monitor... bind left shift to modifier so shift + 1-5 instantly goes to that monitor but leaves broadcasting enabled. I'll probably do something like that if you think it would be better then not having the option at all to hotkey between and keep broadcasting.

Once I get this in and working, I'm kind of interested in making the mouse broadcasting better support different resolutions. Whether it's absolute or relative makes no difference really. I would believe it would be easiest when enabled it broadcasts to all clients absolute position. Then each client figures out it's own ratio to place the cursor, then takes relative movement and modifies it by it's ratio compared to the server..

Hmm I'll have to look at the code. I'm sure there is a nice slick way of doing it with low overhead. Should only need to happen once per connection. Then jsut needs to mousePos.x * xRatio everytime it got a relative movement. And if it ever got out of synch you could just toggle broadcasting on off and it would realign the mouse position. Anyways, I'll look into that, and any ideas on display hopping let me know. I'll see if I can post a build of it tonight, if not then it will be up here tomorrow after I get home from work.

*EDIT*

Uploaded:

MultiBox w/Display Shortcuts: http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/69107c171c

shockbeta

04-27-2007, 07:08 PM

Alright so with using multibox I find it useful in many ways, not just gaming. I have 3 of my 4 computers linked up with multibox currently. I only dual box right now so the third is more like a internet, chat, guides, whatever else machine. With that being said when I'm dual boxing I use broadcast at times and with only 2 of the 3 in game it didn't really allow me to use the third with multibox. I decided I wanted a feature to disable broadcasting entirely to a certain display. I added checkboxes below the display shortcuts to check if you never wanted it to receive broadcasted keys. As it is now when you have broadcasting on the checked displays will never receive keyboard input. You can mouse over to it and it still won't receive broadcsated input. If you toggle broadcasting off then it will receive input normally. I was considering making it so if that display has mouse focus it gets the input and others don't, but I'm on the wall about that. As sometimes it's still nice to be able to sent the other comptuers input while that one has mouse focus.

Anyways, if anyone else would like that I'll post a new server.exe. If not then I'll wait until mroe features and fixes are in it before releasing it.

Ellay

04-27-2007, 08:10 PM

Very nice! Thanks for adding that, will test it out Shockbeta and add it to our list.

shockbeta

04-28-2007, 01:58 AM

Alright first thing I need to say is thank you very much to Micah for doing the original coding of Multibox. He coded it very well and as eased my time with picking up on what the code was doing. With a little effort and time I have managed to get mouse broadcasting supporting multiple resolutions. I was unaware of the 65535 mouse position mapping. Don't know how I never knew that, never came across it always was screen resolution when I was coding games:p oh well you live and learn.

Anyways.. as I said I have multiple resolution support for mouse broadcasting. I'm still fine tuning it and getting the code more dynamic, currently it's hardcoding a few things that should be dynamic. Basically you enable mouse broadcasting and the mouse on the other computers synch to the server computer(this will change to which ever screen has focus if I can get it working). Then as you move your mouse the all move to the same portion of the screen I.e. you move to the upper right all are in the upper right at teh same time then you move to the lower left and all hit the lower left corner at same time. This will make using Targeted AOE spells and the such a little easier. Of course you'll still have to make sure they're looking the right way:p

After I get it tested a bit more and working more dynamically I'll post the new server.

*EDIT*

One more thing, I could use someone who has a dual monitor setup to test it for me before I post it for everyone saying it's working. I have no dual monitor setups and it may not behave the same way. If anyone is interested let me know and I'll send it to you or give you direct link.

Ellay

04-28-2007, 06:24 PM

Great modified app of it :) Only thing I would suggest is the ability for display shortcuts to have a control + key feature, instead of just a single key. If that is possible.

Also wanted to note I use dual screen on each pc, and it seems to be working pretty smooth.

shockbeta

04-28-2007, 08:20 PM

Hmm, so you want a hotkey to know which monitor to send input to? like pushing ctrl and any button will send the any button to the monitor with ctrl as it's hotkey? Or are you meaning like I said before giving the ability to map a modifer button to the shortcut so pressing ctrl+1 or whatver would activate the display with ctrl-1 as shortcut? I know it's probably easy mapping them by allowing you to type a key, but I was figuring if the modifier idea was wanted I would give you a checkbox or spin control to pick which modifier. The problem with all the ctrl, shift, and alt keys is that you can only test which one is down(left or right) by using a seperate call. It would just be easier to allow me to set the possible keys as a modifier.

If you want the modifier in I'll see what I can do to add that in somehow. I also am pretty much finished testing the multi-res support for the mouse. I encountered a small bug with it but I think I got it worked out. I also implemented if have displays checked to never broadcast, while broadcsating mouse the mosue will move around on the screen but no button presses will be sent to it. This had to be done as the mouse position is directly related to the server/client combo. If I didn't ever move the mosue on the server machine then absolute position wouldn't be able to be used. This is what I need a dual monitor setup to check. I need to make sure that it only mimics one screen, and not two as one. Like left is the left side of your first monitor. and the right side is the right side of your second monitor.

[code:1]
client computer Server(Dual)
__________ __________ __________
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
|_________x| |__________| |_________x|

__________ __________ __________
|x | |X | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
|__________| |__________| |__________|
[/code:1]

I'll upload the new version tonight so someone can test it to see if the above happens.. if so back to the drawing board with it. Quick fix would be to have you specify if it's dual monitor style..

shockbeta

04-28-2007, 11:01 PM

Buruan

04-30-2007, 12:36 PM

Haff mah bebes, Shockbeta!!!

I love you man.

I have dual screens at my server as well will test tonight, alongside with installing LOTRO on both machines.

If you have a paypal account ill gladly shoot you some dosh.
Same goes for Micah.

Now I just need to find a way to weasel out of work early.

daanji

05-01-2007, 12:39 AM

Any chance of getting you to add a Keybroad caster to multiple wow instances on the same computer? It doesn't have to be fancy. If I have 3-5 instances of WoW on the same computer, then the keystrokes would be sent to each instance.

Buruan

05-01-2007, 09:24 AM

I dont think that is easily possible.
From my understanding all multibox does is simulating keystrokes, which by default go to the window that currently has focus.

For this to work a whole lot more of complicated routines have to be added to send keystrokes to different windows.

It might be possible, but it also would move multibox more into the gray area where warden might disagree with it.

Maybe some coder can elaborate better.

shockbeta

05-01-2007, 03:38 PM

Buruan is right. Multibox is a simple hook program. It hooks to the keyboard and mouse and captures all input prior to sending to the OS. To code that in would be a lot more code that a lot of people actually won't ever use. I'm trying my best to keep runtime code to a minimal on multibox as to avoid any lag with keypresses. What you could do is use another type of software that allows you to send inpout to more then one window at the same time on one machine. I'm sure someone on the forum has mentioned one before. I can't recall the post or name of the software they used, but I remember reading something about it. Just poke around on the forum and you'll find it.

As Buruan has stated, right now there is nothing illegal in WoW sense to using multibox. It only hooks the keyboard and mouse and then sends them to all connected clients. I'm sure you could make it send input to all windows on one machine as well and it wouldn't be illegal, but it does add a lot more complicated calls and a lot more code. With me not even needing that feature I won't be adding that myself to multibox.

darkangael

05-02-2007, 03:46 AM

shockbeta you da man!

darkangael

05-02-2007, 03:53 AM

darkangael

05-02-2007, 04:15 AM

One problem I have with the mouse switching hotkey is this:

Set VK_NUMPAD1 to screen 1
Set VK_NUMPAD2 to screen 2

Pressing numpad2 will switch to screen 2 then send a 2 key to screen 2
Pressing numpad1 will switch to screen 1 then send a 1 to screen 1

I would think that not sending the hotkey to the screen you are switching to would be a better option.

thrillhaus

05-02-2007, 06:17 PM

Not sure if this was addressed or not, but currently, mouse clicks (not right/left click) do not send to another screen that you've pulled your mouse over to. Middle click, and side buttons (bound to Win4 / Win5)

sabot7726

05-04-2007, 05:44 AM

I was going to write a post about how annoying it is for these file download sites to artificially inflate wait times / file queues whilst spamming people with offers for a "premium membership".

And since the files we're downloading are less than a couple megs, I was going to offer to grab dualboxsoftware.com or something and just host it myself with no waiting since I doubt there's jillions of people cool enough like us to be into dual-boxing, yet.

But then I realized thats its 3am and I'm just tired so I decided not to rant and have people thinking I'm a ninnymugginswhinerpants.

sabot7726

05-04-2007, 06:53 AM

Hi Shockbeta thanks for all your efforts. You too Micah :)

I have a couple possible bugs, but perhaps I'm missing out because I'm not a coder and can't just read the code.

I have a desktop and a laptop from left to right. The desktop on my left is the main machine running the server and client, the laptop on my right runs only the client.

I downloaded and ran the latest link, I'm assuming I overwrite the first multiboxserver.exe I already had so I did. It seems if I create and then use a hotkey to manipulate only the laptop, it switches roles and assumes the laptop is running the server. I.E., when I disable all broadcasting and even if I hit the hotkey to be controlling my main, I can only control my secondary laptop once I switch to it. In my case I had ` set to control the left and page down set to control the right. If I hit page down I can only ever control the right unless I turn broadcasting back on. But that only works while broadcasting is on, once I turn it off I can only control my laptop even though my main desktop is the server.

------

Secondly, for a split second I was able to pan from one display to the next just by moving across the right edge of my left screen. I know this is what people use synergy for but I had no idea it was built into multibox, even after reading all 8 pages of this post so far :p

Is there a way I can turn that back on? I've tried tweaking and messing around with settings but there's really only so many I can manipulate and nothing seems to work.

In the server setup I have MAIN on the left and LAPTOP on the right. I'm assuming its supposed to automatically pan to the other display if broadcasting is off but it's not. Probably missing something here.

Perhaps someone can post a couple paragraphs as a HOWTO since there's no docs that I could find for multibox :)

In all likeliness I'm a moron and there's an easy fix for both of my issues, thanks for the neat software. Just gotta get it working for me.

sabot7726

05-04-2007, 06:58 AM

Sorry, is there a way to pick which network adapter it tries to use as default? I have to disable my hamachi and activesync adapters before it tries to use my actual lan nic.

shockbeta

05-04-2007, 08:05 PM

I'm not sure I udnerstand exactly what your settings are at, or what the problem is causing the problem. I'm trying to get the same effect you're having but am not able to. So I decided to make some images of settings...

http://www.eidoloninteractive.com/multibox/server.jpg
As you can see here, Server is launched, then client on the server. Finally the other clients are launched. I mimiced your layout I beleive... server and client combo on left. Only client on right. I have an extra layout box on the left as I use 3 computers with it.

http://www.eidoloninteractive.com/multibox/displayshortcuts.jpg
I used ` on the left display(display 0) and page down on the right display(display 1). The Never broadcast checkbox on this screen is to tell the server that the checked display never wants to receive broadcasted input.

The other button on the server "Broadcastable Keys" is used to tell the server which buttons never to broadcast. For now click the button and click reset button. This will check all boxes if any were unchecked allowing all keys to be sent to any client.

The mouse panning to other displays is handled by the layout selections above. You select the names of the clients as they appear to be connected. In the above scenario my computers would be laid out like this...

[code:1]
__________________ _________________
| | | |
| Multibox Server | | |
| | | Multibox client|
| Multiibox Client| | |
| | | |
|_________________| |_________________|
[/code:1]

With my settings as they are above I can not duplicate what you're experiencing. If you still can't get it to work let me know more about your system and more about your settings and anythign else you noticed about the bug.

sabot7726

05-05-2007, 01:48 AM

I think I figured some of it out. Turns out I had an additional computer name in the drop down menus that wasn't there initially. My computer name is MIGGITY (I didnt name it :P), but instead of choosing MIGGITY in the dropdown I have to choose miggity.hsd1.wa.comcast.net.

I'm pretty sure it has something to do with my network interfaces. I have a Hamachi interface installed which shows up first in my network connections, and was being used by default on the main computer's client to connect to the multiboxserver.

Once I disabled my Hamachi interface, the normal lan interface is default and the screen spanning worked.

So now the mouse moves back and forth across the screens, and the keyboard works in both places when in windows, but the keyboard does not work on the secondary computer when in WoW. I tried it in broadcast and normal mode but no dice using my desktop keystrokes on the laptop for some reason.

It lets me pan the mouse over there and back but never lets me use a keystroke when in either mode. I doublechecked and reset the settings so that nothing was excluded with no change. All keys work in windows but none work in WoW.

Thanks for your help btw :)

Beastiebabe

05-09-2007, 06:42 PM

For all those who needed Keys excluded from being broadcast, I've made an edit to Micah's app.

Get it here
http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/8f7c9c6015

No fancy UI, just a plain text file where you specify which keys you dont want broadcasted. the file you want to edit is "Exclusions.txt"
If you dont know what to put in there look in "ExclusionsREF.txt".

I'm using it and it works perfect for my needs, leme know if you find a bug

Buruan

05-19-2007, 12:44 PM

Shockbeta,

you you get this hosted somewhere else? I cant get it downloaded from ultrashare.

If you send it to me via EMail ill host it on my server.

buruan (at) buruan.com

shockbeta

05-19-2007, 08:48 PM

Alright new multibox server. If anyone with dual monitor setup *looks at Ellay* would be kind enough to test it out for me I would appreciate it. Looking for the above scenario with mouse broadcasting on.

Micah's awesome Multibox modified: http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/d3c104343e

I just tested that link and it worked. I just got really busy at work with a few projects so I haven't been able to do anything more with multibox currently. If I get some time this weekend I'll see what more I can do with it.

Buruan

05-22-2007, 10:29 AM

SB,

i finally got the download done. Works perfectly for the Keybroadcasting.

(a select/deselect all option would be nice to have)

As for mouse broadcasting, I have a hotkey to enable mouse broadcasting, both machines receive mouse movement.

The server machine doesnt receive clicks (which is fine), but dragging the mouse while having left or right button clicked (to adjust camera angles and movement directions) doesnt work, it gets all messed up thereby making it impossible to control the toon.

Any idea?

shockbeta

05-23-2007, 05:46 AM

(a select/deselect all option would be nice to have)

What do you mean?

The server machine doesnt receive clicks (which is fine), but dragging the mouse while having left or right button clicked (to adjust camera angles and movement directions) doesnt work, it gets all messed up thereby making it impossible to control the toon.

Any idea?

Think server doesn't receive clicks as you have the Never broadcast ticked in the Key bindings window. If you don't then I'm not sure why it wouldn't.

As for the turning characters with the mouse. In theory it should work perfectly... IF you have same res on both monitors. Notice the "In theory" There can be many problems that would cause this to fail. I haven't looked into it much as my primary thought on using this was targeting areas for AOE spells. Even with that it's still a little off, but they're AOE so close is close enough.

Checked the code and I beleive the problem is both monitors regardless of resolution have 65535 screen space. So a Higher res monitor will allow the mouse to move further. Since moving your character isn't dependent on mouse postion, but more of a sensitivity I Think that is the problem.

I use relative movement for the server, and exact position for passing the clients. So the difference in those could cause the problems. I'm testing on two instances of WoW and it doesn't seem to be consistent differences. I.e. I start looking forward pan 90 to the right, pan 90 back to the left. Should be in same spot as I started on both, but I'm not. I'll keep messing with it see if I can get it working properly.

Buruan

05-23-2007, 09:27 AM

(a select/deselect all option would be nice to have)

What do you mean?

In the screen where you can chose which keys to broadcast, it would be nice to have an option to select all keys or none of them.
I only want to broadcast a few and it took me a while to deselect the rest.
Its no big deal, but if its easy to add, why not?

As for the mouse, i dont know, the resultion is the same, it just doesnt work at all.

The mouse moves fine on the screen but WoW seems to get the information all wrong and its impossible to use.

But i am cool with just the keyboard for now.

shockbeta

05-23-2007, 06:32 PM

Looked more into the code, and tested it a bit more. It seems the absolute movement isn't the best for handling range with mouse. I.e. click and move mouse to get a distane it's traveled. If you move the mosue really slow you'll see it stutters a lot on the off screens. This is because it's passing absolute positioning. But this absolute positioning is what's giving the same relative mouse position. I can try to get them both to work as I believe they both should be possible, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to.

Buruan

05-25-2007, 10:05 AM

Hey SB.

Can you start a new thread for your modified MB?
I think new people on this board wont read this whole discussion here and might miss your download link.

Ellay

05-28-2007, 09:13 AM

Yes please create a new thread and I will sticky it with your latest version.

Xzin

05-29-2007, 08:29 AM

I am interested in fooling around with this software with some test accounts. I have 30" monitors and I intend to split them up such that I can have 2 copies of WoW running on each half of the screen with no seam down the middle. Right now I am using WoW Maximizer to do that - it does not work just yet but I know why and am working on it. Soon, it will - in effect removing the windows around WoW and basically using a dual core computer and an nVidia 8 series GPU to run two WoWs at once (at nearly 60fps each!) when previously it would have needed two separate computers to do so.

While I have always been a staunch hardware only guy, this may make sense to augment some of my hardware with in order to greatly simplify the amount of keyboards and mice I have to deal with as I segue into 10 accounts at once. I see this as being a quasi KVM combined with Synergy if I can get it to work as I think it can. It will make a handful of computers a large "cluster" of machines - enabling gaming at 25+ megapixels (even though there are multiple clients running and it is not all one HUGE game).

Not having read through all of the replies or tested it myself yet, my questions to you guys/girls:

Can you broadcast several dozen different keys or just a handful? I would need to broadcast a ton.
Can you hot key broadcasting to certain boxes only? Meaning hit say Alt+F1 and send commands to only boxes 1,2,3,4 and not 5? Or 1 only and not 2,3,4,5?
Can you setup multiple hot keys to broadcast to say, 1,2,3,4,5 or 6.7.8.9.10 or all 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10? Or more?
How well does mouse duplication work? Does it sync up perfectly (Even hardware mice don't do that).
How stable is it?
How exactly does it differ from AutoHotKey?
Is this being hosted somewhere? The link seems broken and the sourcecode out dated? Can anybody (Ellay?, Sourceforge?) step up and host it?

Buruan

05-29-2007, 08:57 AM

Ill answer as best I can.

1. You can broadcast as many keys as you like or as few as you like, its easy to set in SB's latest version
2. Yes You can set which boxes to broadcast to (I am currently testing this feature as I didnt have a 3rd machine until now)
3. It works pretty well as far as I can see for simple operations like clicking, but causes problems when you want to drag stuff or move your toon via the mouse.(at least on my setup)
4. No problems to report on stabilty, have a combo fo 2 to lvl65 with no problems whatsoever.
5. No clue, I dont use AutoHotkey, but i think ahk sends keys to multiple clients on one machine, MB just simply sends keystrokes to whichever window is in focus currently.
6. Link works for me. (First post), make sure to get ShockBetas modified versions (Sticky topic) for the server.

Xzin

05-29-2007, 09:47 AM

So, how exactly is this different from Synergy with mouse broadcasting turned on and the ability to hot key certain key sends?

Ellay

05-29-2007, 10:01 AM

It is close to the same functionality as synergy with key broadcasting. The difference is you can choose which keys you want to broadcast, on the overall layout.

Stability for me wasn't good, it would close out for no reason every 2-5 minutes. I have not heard anyone else have this issue though, so I assume it may be something on my end with my changes done to my network cards.

Except the coverage speed to be the same as synergy for mouse sync. Your multiplexers will most likely be more effective but this costs $0.

Buruan

05-29-2007, 10:02 AM

I have no idea. I tried both, MB worked for me immediately, Synergy didnt so I stuck with MB.
Both seem to do have similar functionality.

shockbeta

05-29-2007, 03:04 PM

So, how exactly is this different from Synergy with mouse broadcasting turned on and the ability to hot key certain key sends?

Synergy and Multibox are very similar. Multibox is not a modifed version of synergy. Multibox was wrote for the specific purpose of multiboxing games. With Multibox you have the ability to toggle broadcasting of keyboard key presses to all or some of the connected computers. The same for mouse movement and button presses. There is also a global list of keys to broadcast(intially all being broadcasted, but can change in the options). The mouse movement works now across different display resolutions. There is still a problem with mouselooking while broadcasting mouse movement, but screen position of the mouse is absolute. There is also key bindings to hop to specific displays. I.e. I have broadcasting on and want to control the far left display. I press my bound key and broadcasting is turned off and have immediate keyboard and mouse control of that display. Or I'm on the far right display and need to immedietly get to the far left.. again same as above. There is also an option to never broadcast to a specific display. This will never allow multibox to broadcast keypresses to said display. This was added as you may not always be playing on all your computers, I personally have an extra computer in my setup that has chat/guides/internet open and sending broadcasted keys to it was unwanted.

There have been other ideas and suggestions of what to add to the program, and that's the good part about multibox, it can be added. The source is fairly easy to understand and anyone with c++ knowledge is able to meld it to what they want. I tend not to put in stuff I don't see useful for the whole. This keeps a baseline for people to work with.

Again, any suggestions that have gone unanswered please post them in the new thread, so I can have a more concise list then having to parse through the 10 pages of this or the other posts.

Faladrath

06-09-2007, 07:34 PM

I got a mouse problem as to when I hold right or left mouse button on server and move it around for turning and viewing my client then just starts to spin a lot more then I am moving and are incapable of moving it up or down while holding either mouse button down on server

Is this a mouse incompatibility or software maybe

Xzin

06-09-2007, 09:25 PM

If it spins AMAZINGLY fast then thats a software issue - synergy allows you to change the mode as detailed in one of my other posts.

Faladrath

06-09-2007, 10:37 PM

Well it's probably not AMAZINGLY fast but fast

It ofc works fine outside using Multibox but when I am it does that

Faladrath

06-09-2007, 11:37 PM

Tested with doing it the other way around..setting my client up as server and that ended it it working correcting in terms of not spinning in a overlook view but it was much much slower in turning then new client(old server)

Ps: this is just in wow...outside wow it seem to work fine

Faladrath

06-09-2007, 11:59 PM

And then fixed :) or rather upgraded to a 1 day older version which apperantly didn't have this issue so all good :)

Thx a bunch for u're hard work put into this :)

Xzin

06-09-2007, 11:59 PM

Try it in another DirextX game. Any one really. See if it does the same thing. I really can't speak much to the software side - all of my stuff is done in hardware. Others here might be able to help though.

dknix

08-15-2007, 04:38 PM

How do I control the keys i post to the other computers?
it post alle key strokes, and you cant have char number 2 to follow, char num. 2 is going the other way ??

motzky

08-16-2007, 05:10 AM

any chance of re-upload ? (I'm especially interested in the source)

Team_Supa

09-20-2007, 11:56 PM

just played with this with 2x vista boxes as a test, works perfect with the following method.

-Leave the server and client in the zip folder and open it with winrar and run it, do this for both server and client on all machines (If its vista)

i found that when i tried to run it in vista extracted it just bugged out and errored all the time, also theres no options on the exe to change compatibility or the run as administrator mode.

Hope this helps you people who are using vista

Teebor

10-17-2007, 08:17 PM

any chance of re-upload ? (I'm especially interested in the source)

Seconded, would be very interesting to take a long look at

ahnubis

11-03-2007, 10:38 PM

I cant seem to get these to connect.

I run the host and the client and type in ryanslaptop and it said connection failed. am i missing something?

cepheus

11-05-2007, 12:02 PM

I cant seem to get these to connect.

I run the host and the client and type in ryanslaptop and it said connection failed. am i missing something?
if you havent done it: try disabeling all software firewalls on your systems. (including winxp's builtin firewall)

you could also try typing the ip-address of the machine instead of the machine name.

USC805

11-17-2007, 12:53 PM

palfas

11-18-2007, 04:41 AM

MetaControl

11-18-2007, 12:52 PM

x82nd

11-19-2007, 01:15 AM

MetaControl

11-19-2007, 03:31 PM

Is there a way to unbind keys? I finally got this wonderful program working but would like to make it so my WASD keys are only active on my main computer since the others are on follow...

Thanks for any advice!

sure there is

just look into the server settings (for those who didn't know it: leftclicking the server or client symbol in the taskbar opens the settings, clicking it again hides them) and look at "Broadcastable Keys". There you can un-mark the keys, you don't want broadcasted...

palfas

11-19-2007, 08:39 PM

Is there a way to disable broadcast of mouse keys but keep the movement of the cursor? Also, vice versa, broadcast the mouse key clicks but not the movement?

Sorry for the post in two threads, don't know which one is more active.

yes there is. depending on what you ticked in the server-menu under the "boradcast" option. Tick both, choose a hotkey for it and you can choose what to broadcast. If both are disabled, the keyboard works for the client, where the cursor is at that moment...

I think you misunderstood. I want to know if you can broadcast the mouse movement but not the mouse clicks or vice versa (ignoring the keyboard completely). I tried disabling Lbutton and Rbutton under broadcastable keys, but that seemed to have no effect.

MetaControl

11-20-2007, 09:44 PM

I think you misunderstood. I want to know if you can broadcast the mouse movement but not the mouse clicks or vice versa (ignoring the keyboard completely). I tried disabling Lbutton and Rbutton under broadcastable keys, but that seemed to have no effect.

My bad

But what you mentioned should do the trick, afaik. If it does not work, it might be bugged, but i am not sure, since i am not using those features.

AlfaStation

11-27-2007, 12:04 PM

Same question here:
I have a Zykon Z1 gaming mouse and would like buttons (4),5,6 and 7 to broadcast without broadcasting mouse-movement to both screens...
Any idees?

adso

12-19-2007, 01:39 AM

For those of you playing WoW with Multi-Box, how did you configure auto-follow to still work with mouse broadcasting?

Basically if you:
- Click right mouse-button on main PC

you will then automatically:
- Break Auto-follow on other characters

I cant find a clever way around this, but noone seems to be posting, so perhaps they just arent using the broadcast feature?

The Re-programing suggestion (above) would be one way of turning off say just the right mouse click, but it would have to be done in windows, and it would be a real pain when you do actually need to use the other PC's.

Hubble

12-25-2007, 02:48 PM

Hi all together
Did someone figure out how to toggle the broadcast out of Autohotkey!?
I use an AHK Script wich needs to toggle the checkbutton in the MultiBox Server by demand.

Mokrain

12-31-2007, 11:50 AM

Hi,

has anyone a new download for me?

The old link does not exist any more.

binkiebink

01-01-2008, 05:39 AM

QQ moar keyclone pl0x

Otlecs

01-08-2008, 07:05 AM

>QQ moar keyclone pl0x

What?

To answer the question, the first link in the top post (http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/ffeff6c466/) links to a working version of Multibox.

Only the "with source" link no longer works.

Ughmahedhurtz

01-15-2008, 08:56 PM

dRiN

01-17-2008, 11:17 AM

Seemed to work OK here after fighting with ZoneAlarm for a few minutes (exploring alternatives to Multiplicity) but with the left-to-right layout limited to only 4 machines wide, I can't use it with my setup.

Why don't you use the unmodded version of Synergy? I have used multiplicy in the past but it had many hickups at that time. That is when I started using synergy. The multiplatform works perfectly between mij XP's and Ubuntus.

Ughmahedhurtz

01-17-2008, 11:44 AM

Because it has the spinning-mouselook-on-crack bug.

I have octopus working exactly as needed, so no worries.

yoseph125

04-28-2008, 05:47 PM

I wanT too Duel-box but i dont wanna pay 20 dollars for Keyclone does anyone have the BEST alternative for it, but for free? :)

Dorffo

04-28-2008, 06:58 PM

I wanT too Duel-box but i dont wanna pay 20 dollars for Keyclone does anyone have the BEST alternative for it, but for free? :)

Time == money one way or another. If you find that you have more time than money, any of the software tools mentioned in this forum should do the trick. Just be aware that no one here can tell you the "best" option since it will vary a lot depending on your system, your level of willingness to tweak with [insert software here], your level of familiarity with programming and/or scripting languages etc.

Here's the way it worked out for me:
Figure out how long it will take you to come up with 20 bucks.
Figure out how long it will take you to setup AutoHotKey or Octopus or Synergy or Multiplicty or MultiBox.
Figure out if that time (and potential frustration) is worth 20 bucks.

For reference - I started multiboxing using AHK a long time ago. It took me close to a two months to get my AHK scripts worked out after I got passed the basic "send this keypress to all windows" and they still don't work nearly as well as keyclone did upon installing, I am a hobby programmer so I enjoyed the tinkering... but I sure didn't get much done in game. Later, I tried out Octopus on another set of PCs, and had it up and running in a couple days of tweaking (the tutorial was very helpful, issues I had were all user related).

so in short: If you don't want to buy a product, just start testing out the free ones... the only thing it will cost is your time and you may find one that works out to be exactly what you are looking for.

Sony

10-20-2008, 03:52 PM

Excuse my... idiotism.. if you will.

I have NO idea wtf im doing when i download and open this program. The server thing is just 3 blank boxes with an arrow that has more blankness. A port range... idk what to do with. A couple Layout boxes with some numbers and some more arrows. theres also a Broadcast and On screen change things with some options... the Client is just a little box with Server Name...blank... Mouse speed... Port Range... numbers... and Reconnect Timeout...

what i need is instructions on how to even...log into?.... a server... or make a server.. I'm not even sure. Im so lost right now its not even funny.... Gur.