Keyclone - Unsent Keys 5 WoWs 1 Box

/wave
Ello to one and all!

I've been lurking the forums for a few days now while setting up my own mutliboxer. Love what I've seen of the community so far, very helpful all around. Thanks especially to keyclone, love the program, definitely worth $10. There are a lot of multi-million dollar companies out there that could learn something from your prompt and courteous customer service skills!

Anyhoo, enough with the intro and the thanks, down to business.

The problem:
I'm 5 Boxing on one computer and for some reason, key presses aren't always sent to all 4 of my alts. Letter keys, spaces, it can happen with any type of key stroke. The issue is intermittent. I can type out the same thing four times and it works just fine, then a couple more times and it will miss a key or two on a random alt or two or three.

What I changed in my setup:
I started off using keyclone with 3 instances of WoW on my monitor and it worked wonderfully (version s.) The other night I upgraded to the latest version of keyclone (u) and also decided to try my hand at running 5 instances of WoW.

I added a second monitor to my second graphics card. So I now have a 1680x1050 for my main instance of WoW and then a 4 by 4 grid of the alts on my 1440x900 monitor. I've crawled around on the forums a bit and I gather that dual-screen mode causes problems with DirectX. However, I'm guessing that by using 2 graphics cards, one monitor on each, this shouldn't be an issue. The graphics rendering is just fine for all instances of the program, and frame rates are very smooth for both the front and background instances.

My computer:
-Windows XP Pro SP2
-AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ (~2.4GHz)
-2 GB Ram
-Two Nvidia Geforce 7900 GTXs (512 MB Vid Ram)
-Two 80 GB Raptors (one WoW install on each; one for main, one for alts)

Any help would be greatly appreciated. If I've missed a post somewhere in my searches that would explain this, feel free to point me toward it (and sorry if so!)

-Cheers

Hi Exuno and welcome to the forums!

first off... does it actually work to have 2 video cards piping video into 2 different monitors?? i wondered about this, this weekend.. was told it wasn't...

back to the issue... keys can start to get dropped if your system gets over taxed. here are some things you can do to improve your cpu/gpu performance:

o try dropping the video resolution
o try dropping the video quality on your clones (you don't need the detail anyhow)
o set maxfps to 40, and set maxfpsbk to 15 (adjust to find balance point)
o get more system memory.. 3G is about all XP can recognize

keep in mind, even if you cpu says it's only at 80%, on a dual-core you could have 1 cpu at 100% and the other at 60%.

if you can run with 3 without a problem... and adding 2 more starts to lose keys.. odds are its the weight on the system

let us know how it goes. g'luck

Happens to me sometimes aswell, most noticeably on the login screen.

I use the lazy approach with the same password for all my slave accounts and sometimes one of them get a failed login while the rest work.

I wouldn't expect the machine to be taxed at that point.

(quadcore, 4gb ram, vista64)

On Vista, X2 6000, 2GB Ram...

I can run 2 copies of wow with zero performance hit. Using the /timetest I got identical results. Both @ 1280x1024 on separate heads of the video card.

Adding a third gives a significant punch to performance. Since I know Vista takes more ram to run base OS than XP I'd say that anything over 3 will likely cause problems on XP and 5 would be really pushing it with only 2gb of ram.

I can get 5 up and running but if I try and do anything significant I have major issues.

Just want to say Welcome to the forums.

/wave Diamnd (your avatar is priceless, it really speaks to me and my relationship with computers)

As far as 2 displays running, one on each of two cards, it works just fine. The issue as I understand it is running SLI with dual monitors.

I took your advice on tanking down the graphics settings on the slaves. It seems to have cut each instance's system memory from 240k down to 160k. Not a trivial improvement, but I'm still not sure that the memory was the issue (had 240 some megs left over before I turned down the graphics.) The visual performance was always fine and it still is.

CPU usage seems mostly unaffected, not that I did extensive in-game testing though. What would be CPU intensive in game? I have both cores separated out in Task Manager and the only time they both go above %80 is a brief peak when I'm starting up all of the WoW instances.

http://static3.filefront.com/images/...svzkutaxda.jpg

I've had the MaxFPS on the slaves set at 10 since I began using keyclone. That should be low enough to ease performance without creating a seizure inducing image in my peripheral vision.

I've also noticed another interesting behavior which may or may not be related. Sometimes keyclone will send erroneous extra commands to the other instances of WoW with specific keys. For example I type out "/dance" and the clones type along fine until the "a" at which point they clear the chat box and type a single a. Then when I hit "n" and the clones scroll up to the previous command (which is alt + up-arrow I think) and then type an "n." The "u" and "p" keys have similarly strange effects. This may only occur if I've quit and re-launched (using keyclone) the alt instances. Not positive, I'll keep messing around with it.

This is doubly strange as I have only bound a couple commands using the keymap editor, none of which have anything to do with the "a,n,p,u" keys. This definitely didn't happen with the previous version of keyclone.

Out of curiosity Keyclone, how does the program transmit the key strokes? Is it actually 'tabbing' between the program windows in the blink of an eye and sending the key stroke? Or did you find some sort of back-door method of getting them sent simultaneously?

Not sure why I didn't do this earlier ... /bonk.

I launched my main WoW instance, and then only two alts. I did the same types of tests. Type out sentences, do various slash commands, etc. I got the same missed key strokes here and there. EG: "/dance" gave me "/ance" on both alts. (No sign of that really weird "a,n,p,u" issue I described above as of yet.)

Well that eliminates system resource taxing as an issue. Now the only other variables I can see are dual-monitor with two graphics cards and the version change of keyclone from S to U.

make sure your do-not-pass and round-robin lists are empty

Quote:

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Originally Posted by keyclone

make sure your do-not-pass and round-robin lists are empty

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id bet money that is what it is, I made that same mistake at first. and after all WASD are movement keys. so there goes your /dance

Both are definitely empty and unused.
edit: (I also disabled the W,A,S,D for my alt accounts long ago via WoW's keybinds)

Also, I think I've narrowed down that odd secondary bug I mentioned. It seems to be occurring after closing all instances of WoW, leaving keyclone open, then using keyclone to re-launch them. The "a,u,n,p" keys cause strange extra strokes. (I can list 'em out if you think it's worthwhile.)

Oddly enough, it can be easily fixed by simply focusing in on each instance of WoW and pressing a key. This isn't a very large bug, but I figured as the programmer you might wanna know about it.

Need to head off to work. Lemme know if any of this minutia is helpful to you, or if I should just keep it to myself :lol: