[Discuss] Mouse vs Click Broadcasting

[Lax]

Probably the best example is people who click skills. You press 1 and you get chain lightning or with a multiplexer you press 1 and 5 clients press 1 to get chain lightning. You click 1 you get chain lightning or you click 1 and get 5 chain lightnings.

Right -- but if you allow people to send mouseclicks to x,y positions, then the precedent is set for them to click on any x,y position on the screen (or potentially even send one x,y click on one machine and convert it to a x1, y1 location on another screen). The only difference between "clicking on teh ground" and "clicking on the lightning bolt button" is the location of the x,y click -- and since that's movable through UI mods (bartender, macaroon, etc) you can't prevent them from clicking on any x,y coordinate they like (in the center of their screen for mass dispell, for example, which is in direct conflict of the removal of Minimap: PingLocation)

If I understand the issue with Minimap PingLocation correctly, it's that this API was not intended to be used for spell targeting, not that Multi-boxers should not be allowed to click on the ground in some fashion. The Blizzard post that the Minimap_Ping is referring to does back this up (and Souca appears to interpret this the same way I do):
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...sid=1&pageNo=1

Yes, allowing AddOns to target spells via the minimap ping was not intentional and was fixed. AddOns may not directly cast spells or change targeting.

<I think> Slouken is NOT implying that multi-boxers cannot click on the ground to target spells, just that Minimap: PingLocation being used for spell targeting was an unintended bug, and it was therefore fixed. He does specifically say AddOns, which to me would imply just that, you can't download an AddOn that is capable of turning an in-game macro into a way to cast Blizzard. However, with click replication, <I think> the new worldofwarcraft.com thread DOES imply that you CAN replicate clicks anywhere you like, as long as it keeps with the one key to one action rule. Since the demonstration in question is 100% human powered (no delays, no automation, just pure duplication of the user's actions), it should actually be well within the rules to use click replication to do ground spell targeting.

There are caveats to doing this. There is no easy way to guarantee that your screens are all aligned well enough to click on the same location, for example. You can get close, most of the time, but if one session has a hiccup it might be facing elsewhere and the click will be too far off. In order to do it, you would have to manually adjust before clicking. Clicking on UI windows (I said dialogs before but meant any UI window really -- bad choice of wording the first time around) is far more reliable, as long as the window in question is in the same location on all screens.

The question sort of remains as to whether adjusting the mouse position based on resolution is allowed, but this is not done by the software in question at this time (but yes, it could, and without relying on game information -- it would use DirectX API to handle the resolution). The green poster suggests that it should be fine as long as it's not using in-game information, but Reythur's response leaves that question open and of course carries more weight than the green poster.

As far as standard hardware, I think the tablet idea is sound -- in order to work properly for artists to draw, they have to use an absolute x,y. The same is true for touch-screens (except less about artists). I know nothing about the underlying implementation, but these things ARE available and could presumably be multiplexed to other PCs.