MultiBox (software)

[shockbeta]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[shockbeta]

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 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

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]

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]

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]

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

[Buruan]

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.