[Discuss] Mouse vs Click Broadcasting

[Vyndree]

My accidental misinterpretation in the first post was unfortunate, yes. But I don't think the CSF reps are dumb enough not to realize when someone says "hey, I made a mistake". I've already started a new thread for additional and non-product-specific questions.


Still working hard on the CSF....

1) What is an "Addon"? Is there a general guideline or document on what Addons can and cannot do?

I would classify an "Addon" as any legitimate addition to the "Addons" folder within the "Interface" folder.

2) Are "Addons" only applicable in-game (i.e. under Interface\Addons) or does the term "Addons" also apply to out-of-game hardware and/or software (G15's, Keyclone software, Voice-To-Text, etc)?

As always, be wary of third-party software (and hardware); but they wouldn't necessarily fit within the term "Addon".

3) In the following post, Slouken (Blizzard poster) makes a comment about Minimap:PingLocation and "Addons"? What is the definition of "Addon" as he mentions in this post? Does it include out-of-game programs?

See my above two answers, and an outside piece of software or hardware changing targets, or casting spells on a certain location on the minimap may be considered exploitation (or hacking).

4) When Souken specified AddOns, he meant it as "in-game AddOns cannot perform this action" or he meant it as "third-party software or hardware of any kind cannot perform this action"?

Generally speaking, if we've disabled the ability for an Addon to do it, we don't want you to do it.

I believe that the rest of your questions follow the same guidelines.

Those of our staff (i.e. Slouken) that post on our UI/Macro forums would more than likely be able to clear this up more for you as they're the ones that deal with these determinations and issues. =)

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...319756&sid=1#2

Lax, I added your questions as soon as I got them, but Reythur was mid-post when I edited my original.



One tiny tidbit as I don't mean to nitpick your post -- If repeater is a prerequisite for multiboxing with ClickBoxer, then ClickBoxer (at least the way I see it) requires Repeater and inherits responsibility for the functions it utilizes.

Much like how Keyclone is bundled with Maximizer -- if anything iffy is going on with Maximizer, then Keyclone is thrown into the boat with it until the Maximizer functionality is removed or clarified.


I'll admit -- this thread was spawned BY the debate going on about ClickBoxer, but was certainly INTENDED to be more general about mouse-clicks. We did rather snowball off-topic and for my part in that, I apologize. I realize you're going on and on about what ClickBoxer does/doesn't do, and I've already stated my opinion that CLICKBOXER doesn't appear to have any nefarious INTENTIONS (which I think we agreed on in the other thread). During the majority of this thread (prior to you bringing up ClickBoxer specifically), I have been largely speaking in general about mouseclicks on x,y locations -- not mouse multiplexing (sending relative movements -- though it has come up in comparison). Just FYI, this thread was not intended to be specifically directed at ClickBoxer -- if it had, I would've left the discussion in the ClickBoxer thread. If Repeater is the one actually doing the clicking then this discussion APPLIES to Repeater, though isn't specifically ABOUT repeater.

I moved this thread because, while the discussion started with ClickBoxer, it certainly brought up additional gray area about mouse multiplexing/click repeating in general.

[Lax]

ClickBoxer and Repeater are separate and can be used independently of each other. They just require Inner Space.

Also, I would like to point out that Reythur's statement here is ambiguous:

See my above two answers, and an outside piece of software or hardware changing targets, or casting spells on a certain location on the minimap may be considered exploitation (or hacking).

We can replicate pressing Tab to change targets, or use a macro that does assist, etc, but my BELIEF is that he meant picking a specific mob without regards to assisting or using the target cycling available via in-game keybinds or macros. "A certain location on the minimap" could be taken to mean minimap coordinates (0,0 to 100,100 sound right? these are percentages across the zone) or non-game, window client coordinates (e.g. mouse cursor position 123,456 on the window). These can both obviously be seriously misinterpreted and it would be a pity to have taken it wrong, but my belief is that he was referring to coordinates only available from the in-game systems, which ClickBoxer nor Repeater are doing.

[Vyndree]

Also keep in mind this is your exact question as you phrased it to me (I only changed grammatical/capitalization issues) -- the first question (which you quoted) was my interpretation:

4) When Souken specified AddOns, he meant it as "in-game AddOns cannot perform this action" or he meant it as "third-party software or hardware of any kind cannot perform this action"?

Generally speaking, if we've disabled the ability for an Addon to do it, we don't want you to do it.

I believe that the rest of your questions follow the same guidelines.

Since Minimap:PingLocation only really WORKS on the minimap (it is a minimap function), I cant' really say whether Reythur intended that it apply to all in-game coordinates. Actually, I can't really find much value in that response other than my inference (yes, inference) of "If we say 'don't do this SPECIFIC minimap ping with an addon' then you also shouldn't do that same functionality using out-of-game methods". *shrug*

I'm still waiting to see if he'll respond to your questions.

[Lax]

Well, PingLocation would be used by an Addon to specify exactly where, zone-wide, you would cast a spell. Assuming that manually clicking on the minimap works for spell targeting, the difference is that clicking is always relative to your position (being in the center of the minimap), but using PingLocation is an absolute zone-wide coordinate, and this is why (i believe) it would be considered cheating to use. Performing an actual click, on the minimap, obviously is okay. The question then is, is it okay to replicate that click, at a specific point on the minimap window -- based on your mouse cursor position (with relative movements OR absolute position) -- as opposed to a specific in-game location as would be used with PingLocation.

It's important to understand the difference because one is obviously cheating and the other would appear to reside entirely in the "is mouse replication okay?" gray area.

[Vyndree]

Assuming that manually clicking on the minimap works for spell targeting, the difference is that clicking is always relative to your position (being in the center of the minimap)

I don't think it does, but I can certainly test it... All I know is in the specific case of MINIMAP:PingLocation, the ping only happened on the little circular minimap, which caused your mid-cast AoE spell to target that location. The actual coordinates fed into Minimap:PingLocation were indeed relative (I recall doing something along the lines of 0,5 ; 5,0 ; -5, 0; 0, -5 on my warlocks to cast my anti-rogue rank1 rain of fires all around my location).

[Lax]

I don't think it does, but I can certainly test it... All I know is in the specific case of MINIMAP:PingLocation, the ping only happened on the little circular minimap, which caused your mid-cast AoE spell to target that location. The actual coordinates fed into Minimap:PingLocation were indeed relative (I recall doing something along the lines of 0,5 ; 5,0 ; -5, 0; 0, -5 on my warlocks to cast my anti-rogue rank1 rain of fires all around my location).

If it was indeed relative then I concede on that, I thought it pinged a specific location. And if it doesn't do it with a manual ping then yeah, it wouldn't matter about replicating clicks on the minimap, and the question would revert back to whether or not it matters where the click is.

[Vyndree]

Yep, which is why I concede that the question/answer is pretty fail for everything except that specific scenario. >.<

[Ughmahedhurtz]

In the interests of keeping this discussion factual, I've added my own very specific scenario questions to the thread over on the wow forums. To wit:

At the risk of repeating something, we got some good answers on multiboxing keystroke-replication a while back by being very specific with the capabilities possible in some of the software and asking about those specific cases and, with regards to particular mechanics, how they could be inferred to cover some obviously related activities. Anyway, to ensure the continued attention of the TL;DR folks, here are a few basic software click-replication scenarios and whether I believe they should be OK with Blizzard:


##################################################
########## Case 1: Pure dumb clicks. ##########
This is where you have all game clients set to the same aspect ratio, the software can tell the size of the WoW window, and it will simply click <button1/button2/etc.> at approximately the same relative position in the child windows as in the main window. To clarify, let us assume two WoW windows. The main is set to 1600x1200 and the second is set to 800x600, giving both a 1.33~ aspect ratio. The software sees a mouseclick on the main screen at 1000,120. It determines that this click is about 62.5% across and 10% down from 0,0. It calculates that the same relative point on client 2 would be at about 500,60. The software moves the cursor to that point and replicates the same button click as the main client got.

IMO, case 1 would be fine.
------------ Case 1 rationale; skip this if you're bored already ----------
You could set up hardware to do the exact same thing. Further, the most popular software tools in use for the last year or more already have this capability. It does not lend itself to the argument of automation as it makes no intelligent decisions about where to click, when to click or any "conditions" associated with the click. This is also no different than having 5 of the same sized monitors, set to the same resolution and using a wireless mouse to replicate your click (yes, you must zero the mouse every so often if your setup sucks, which is no different than remembering to press a modifier key). I have successfully used both the hardware and software versions of this with almost identical success. With regards to clicking on the ground to target an AoE spell like blizzard/flamestrike, it will work passably with rather involved measures to ensure your alts are close to you, have the same camera angles and are facing the same direction. Any misplacement or movement on the part of your "target" area completely screws the whole thing and makes it such that it just isn't practical for anything but pre-planned, pre-positioned targets. In PVP, it just isn't worth the trouble even putting the spells on your hotbar. (NOTE: spells that have inherent intelligence such as Force of Nature [TREES! RUN!1!] obviously lend themselves more to this as exact positioning is largely irrelevant.)


################################################## ##########
########## Case 2: Pre-programmed click offsets ##########
Same as above, but you can pre-program each client to click offset x,y distance from the main click. This would basically allow you to, with careful planning and execution, set up your clients to cover adjacent and possibly overlapping areas of effect with the targeted AoE spells.

IMO, case 2 would probably be OK as well, as the software still makes no dynamic decisions about where/what to click.
----------- Case 2 rationale --------------
This one is a bit trickier. It's still dumb replication, basically giving you the identical capabilities as Keyclone gives you with keymaps (clicking a different key on a follower than you clicked on your main, including clicking SHIFT+<KEY> even if you only pressed <KEY> on your main) though, technically, alternate keyclicks can be similarly setup by changing keybinds on your alts where mouseclicks cannot be configured to click "offsets." Currently, no software that I know of implements this "offset" click location mechanic, so it's still theorycrafting.


################################################## ########################################
########## Case 3: Intelligent click locations based on in-game UI elements ##########
This is where some piece of software determines the location of an in-game UI element through whatever means available and when the user clicks on a UI element on their main, the alts will click on the same UI element, even if that UI element is in a different spot on the alts.

IMO, this is verboten because this is basically what the current unattended bot software already does for single-client unattended bots.
------------ Case 3 rationale ------------------
There is NO WAY to tell where a UI element is in the game at runtime unless you either examine color/pixel patterns on screen and match them or decompile the process memory space to decode UI information. I cannot imagine any possible implementation of this that wouldn't require actual on-the-fly software knowledge, which puts this method firmly in the "bot/automation" group. No current legitimate multiboxing software has this capability.


================================================
That's the main three examples. The dividing line is knowledge of the client. All current approved multiboxing software (and hardware that does the same thing) has no knowledge of anything in-game. As such, everything they do is purely replication of human events. Mouseclick replication through software is only different from using a wireless mouse paired to <N> receivers in two ways: 1) software does not require you to "zero" the cursors by dragging them to the top-left corner of the screen to guarantee you'll click the same spot, and 2) software will work with multiple clients running on one machine where a hardware mouse requires an individual machine/screen for each cursor.

Considering the vagaries of cursor positioning lag, click duration causing wild/uncontrolled spins of the camera at times and the difficulty of getting 4+ followers to face the same direction with the same camera angles, it is no wonder to me that you don't see multiboxers all rolling up 5x frost mage Improved Blizzard AoE farm groups. Sometimes it works well enough to be worth the trouble but most of the time, it is grossly inefficient due to targeting being 50% or more out of alignment which wastes at least half the spell's channel time. While it is possible to zoom the camera in and point everyone so they're looking at the ground so as to make the click location >90% effective, the neccessary movement of squishies into melee range of enough mobs to get into effective position ensures that you will spend much more time running back to your corpse than looting dead mobs.

I look forward to hearing some more information from the Blizzard folks, though I would certainly understand a certain amount of delay as I'm sure you guys are busy beavers with the xpack coming up in a few weeks.

Regards,
Don

[Suribusi]

the thread over on the wow forums.[/url] To wit:

Nice post, I tend to agree with your assessment as well.

Side note: I'm glad this thread has turned around.

-S

[olipcs]

Ughmahedhurtz, you nailed it!
I think giving examples, was a very good way to clarify what we're are talking about.
I would see it the same way as you:
Example 1: i'm perfectly ok (and honestly all i would use for clique-healing and maybe aoe-targeting, although i can live without the last)
Example 2: seems ok, because the software doesn't konw anything about any ingame-enviroment, but still is a very 'grey' and should be clarified
Example 3: strictly forbidden