My 5 box experiment

[cubbs80]

After much tinkering and a few PMs back and forth with Crack (thanks) I managed to get more than one WoW client running on my Ubuntu machine.

Once I got two going? You can imagine what happened next:

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/8946/screenshotob6.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Shot at 2007-07-27

Now that I've seen this in action and had a taste of what's involved in even setting up 5 characters to work together with one player... my hat's off to all of you guys for doing as well as you do.

P.S. Sorry for stealing your naming convention Xzin :) Heck, I even rolled them all on Mag! ha!

P.P.S. Also sorry for the big pic. This is the first I've hosted somewhere and posted in a forum, I didn't think to resize it.

[Xzin]

I love it! Roll on Mag, join us!

[cubbs80]

haha... This is a lot of fun, definitely more involved than playing one character at a time. The bad (?) part is that it's totally stoked my fires for buying/putting together 4 other machines so I can do this properly. Clicking around between the windows is a bit of a pain. I've also got a lot to learn about macros and scripting.

But yes, the first time a mob went down under a hail of imp fireballs and shadow bolts, I couldn't help but lol and mumble something about how totally imba it was.

You've created a monster.

[Kruiik]

How do you multiply keys with screens?
xvkbd / Sinergy or something?

[cubbs80]

How do you multiply keys with screens?
xvkbd / Sinergy or something?

At this point? I don't... and it's a bit of a pain. I'd pull with the priest and then select each warlock individually and hit my /assist /petattack /cast shadow bolt button.

Really, running 5 clients on one box isn't a viable solution as Xzin has said several times in the past. I could use it in a pinch if my machine was a lil beefier.. in that shot the desktop is at 1680x1050 and each client is at 800x600. I thought it was reasonably playable until I went back to my single client at 1680x1050 and my eyes relaxed. Playing those five clients at that resolution for any length of time would result in some pretty bad eye fatigue.

[Xzin]

You might could use/compile AHK to make it run with linux. It is open source after all.

[cubbs80]

I'm running into the glass ceiling with my setup at the moment. My graphics card is starting to have some issues (ATi) rendering some things at playable frame rates. Especially the expansion zones where things are more detailed.

I've about resolved to use a windows box for all of my gaming now, it's just easier to get things working.

[Kruiik]

How do you multiply keys with screens?
xvkbd / Sinergy or something?

At this point? I don't... and it's a bit of a pain. I'd pull with the priest and then select each warlock individually and hit my /assist /petattack /cast shadow bolt button.

Really, running 5 clients on one box isn't a viable solution as Xzin has said several times in the past. I could use it in a pinch if my machine was a lil beefier.. in that shot the desktop is at 1680x1050 and each client is at 800x600. I thought it was reasonably playable until I went back to my single client at 1680x1050 and my eyes relaxed. Playing those five clients at that resolution for any length of time would result in some pretty bad eye fatigue.

Just thinking here - but it might actually be viable to play on one comp, IF - and only IF, processor wouldnt cap it.
you might run 1-4 Wine Screens on another X server and "main window" on another - thus you'd save on comps power but you'd lack on visibility. Other possibility would be using SLI MB to get 2 separate x-servers where in another you'd run 1-4 and rest on another.
Allthough - i have no experience on Nvidia's or Ati's driver that would it support this.

[Xzin]

ATI's linux support is miserable.

[cubbs80]

Kruiik:

Setting up a separate X server might allow the different wine instances to run different resolutions. For this to be playable (at least as far as I've been thinking) I'd want the main window to be a much higher resolution than the secondary ones. It's tough on my eyes to play with them all at 800x600 on the 1680x1050 desktop.

That being said, if I could run the one client on my 22" LCD and offload the other 4 clients to the CRT that's sitting next to it (also 22", 1600x1200 native resolution) that's currently unused, I could probably solve the problem. Also, 4 800x600 clients would fit perfectly with no unused real estate.

Then, all that would remain would be to find some sort of key broadcasting solution for the other 4 clients.

Xzin:

Agreed, wholeheartedly. I'm really starting to see some issues and I'm having trouble pinning them down. At this point I'm ready to go to CompUSA and pick up:

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?pfp=BROWSE&N=200005+400756&Ne=400000&product_code=346112

plug a new graphics board into it and go. Oh, and before anyone frowns on buying an off the shelf machine (myself included) I did some research... I can't build that machine for that money. Pricing similar components on newegg put me several hundred over that price, without considering a number of needed items. I also found a forum post where someone had bought that exact machine and stated that it came with a 400W power supply, which would probably work with a graphics card upgrade. I'm wondering though how the 8500 would fare for WoW... the only benchmarks I can find complain about how it stinks for modern games. With WoW being a couple of years old, it may work ok. The 3D mark scores put it a little above the card I have now (x1600).

[Xzin]

6600+, 7600+ all work great.. 8500 I think you will be disappointed with. 8600 or better, especially if you want to run 4 WoWs on 1 machine - WoW is mostly GPU limited.

[Kruiik]

Kruiik:
That being said, if I could run the one client on my 22" LCD and offload the other 4 clients to the CRT that's sitting next to it (also 22", 1600x1200 native resolution) that's currently unused, I could probably solve the problem. Also, 4 800x600 clients would fit perfectly with no unused real estate.

Then, all that would remain would be to find some sort of key broadcasting solution for the other 4 clients.


Actually this could be done with 2 monitors, and with some shell-bashing.
Nvidia-display card most likely required,though - but who buys CrapAti's anyway :)

X1 = Desktop + main WoW
X2 = 2nd X-server with 1600x1200 resolution on another monitor with 4 clients.

Hardware needed - Logitech G15-keyboard, or something with extra keys and Linux support.

Software XVKBD (case1) or Synergy (case2)

Case1:
Set up your normal single player stuff on X1, and do macros for everything you need on X2. Configure G15 (and G15 listener would be started in X2) keys to start xvkbd -text from shell (i.e. xvkbd -text AA - which would press shift+a twice in X2).
Create shell script so that you command actual script from G15, and script sends xvkbd-command to each 4 screens separately (-windowname parameter)

Make shellscript "pushkey" what takes keystrokes as parameters and send them to corresponding window.

voila, you can control your primary char normally - and use G15 extra keys to control each and every one of the dps-group you have behind you.
This is very similar to method i used to dualbox.

Case2:
I'm a bit unsure about this but you could install synergy on X1 and X2-5 - and use it to multibox, just give X-server different IP.

Case1 is definetly doable with 1 linux PC and with 1 or multiple monitors.