Comparative analysis? HKN vs. GCP vs. ISB?

[Fuzzyboy]

• Virtual Files, which allow you to have ONE folder for performance reasons, while maintaining separate configuration files per character or per account (the Quick Setup Wizard and the Virtual File Wizard both set them up for you per character)

It's a nice feature, but is it significantly different from the functionality you get from simple directory junctions?

• Instant window swapping. Other products claim "almost instant" or "practically instant" etc. It's not the same thing. People coming to ISBoxer from other software will tell you the difference is night and day, and will say things like "it changed the way I play, because I now switch all the time instead of avoiding it like the plague because it could get me killed while I wait up to 7 seconds for it to switch". It's instant regardless of the framerate of the game, so even in Dalaran you're going to get an instant switch, and even on a slow PC it's still instant. (Note that some people prefer to disable window swapping or prevent it from happening most of the time, e.g. to click on a background window to cast a spell instead of switching to it, which is fine too)

That does sound good, but one thing that worries my though. What is the performance difference between a full-size window resized to for instance 800*600 and one where the window is configured to run at 800*600 in WoW? Also, my main windows is 1920 * 1200, so if I set up my user interface to look decent in that resolution, scaling it down to 800*600 (or something similarly small) will make it too small to actually see what is on the screen

• The Quick Setup Wizard can generate a fully working setup for you very quickly, with almost no thinking involved on your part. It will even auto-assist when you push action bar hotkeys (1 through = by default) without you making any changes

As for the user friendlyness, I bought a trial subscription yesterday and I find it pretty confusing. There are no standard buttons in the program - it looks nothing like standard windows/mac windows, which makes it a lot less intuitive. The setup is confusing and while the wizard will get you running fast, in order to utilize 100% of the programs potential, you have to spend just as much time learning to use it as I did in my time with HKN. In comparison, HKN is kind of hard to setup if you're not into programming - but once it's learned it's actually easier to use that most other programmes which require you to browse about for functionality in windows menus with poor or no documentation.

I like the "fake" mouse pointers and the easier macro management, but I find ISBoxer / IS to be a bit user un-friendly and cluttered and not very intuitive compared to keyclone/HKN (I haven't tried GCP for more than 15 mins so I can't comment on that).

[Ualaa]

[QUOTE=Fuzzyboy;231569]It's a nice feature, but is it significantly different from the functionality you get from simple directory junctions?



From what I've read, once the junction points or symlinks are set up, there's functionally little or no difference in actual play.
However, there is physically only one directory on your system, so it takes up marginally little less space on the drive.
The main benefit would be patch day - just patch the one wow without breaking links, patching, re-establishing links, copying wow.exe files and then going.

[Lax]

It's a nice feature, but is it significantly different from the functionality you get from simple directory junctions?

I wouldn't say that junctions are "simple", and it is different in that it is dynamic and doesn't require additional folders. If you wanted a different configuration per Character and you have dozens of characters, you would have to make dozens of folders to use the junctions method. With virtual files, there's just another file in the original folder.

That does sound good, but one thing that worries my though. What is the performance difference between a full-size window resized to for instance 800*600 and one where the window is configured to run at 800*600 in WoW? Also, my main windows is 1920 * 1200, so if I set up my user interface to look decent in that resolution, scaling it down to 800*600 (or something similarly small) will make it too small to actually see what is on the screen

They run at the full resolution, so if you're running 1920x1200 main window and you have 4 800*600 smaller windows with Swap enabled, they're all going to run at 1920x1200. It's impossible to get the desired Swap speed without it. The effects can be mitigated by running at performance settings in game, and pointing the camera angle downward on your "other" characters (which subsequently also makes casting targeted AoE spells, among other things, much more convenient as well). I find that I don't need to see anything in my other windows most of the time anyway.

As for the user friendlyness, I bought a trial subscription yesterday and I find it pretty confusing. There are no standard buttons in the program - it looks nothing like standard windows/mac windows, which makes it a lot less intuitive. The setup is confusing and while the wizard will get you running fast, in order to utilize 100% of the programs potential, you have to spend just as much time learning to use it as I did in my time with HKN. In comparison, HKN is kind of hard to setup if you're not into programming - but once it's learned it's actually easier to use that most other programmes which require you to browse about for functionality in windows menus with poor or no documentation.

Yeah, I'm not going to claim that the ISBoxer configuration interface is pretty, but it is pretty damn functional. I agree that it could have a better appearance, and the next generation software (in development) will be much better in this aspect.

The configuration is only as confusing as you want to make it -- for someone with complex ideas it will take more work. I can only imagine that your issues stem from liking your configuration a very specific way, and trying to immediately duplicate it in ISBoxer has a learning curve (which is one reason why a couple dozen people hang out in the ISBoxer chat room to share their ideas and help newcomers). Not everyone is the same, in fact most people have no idea how they want it set up, and are quite happy that the Quick Setup Wizard can get them up and running in a couple minutes, and then they can make tweaks later when they think of something else they want it to do.

[Iceorbz]

The configuration is only as confusing as you want to make it -- for someone with complex ideas it will take more work. I can only imagine that your issues stem from liking your configuration a very specific way, and trying to immediately duplicate it in ISBoxer has a learning curve (which is one reason why a couple dozen people hang out in the ISBoxer chat room to share their ideas and help newcomers). Not everyone is the same, in fact most people have no idea how they want it set up, and are quite happy that the Quick Setup Wizard can get them up and running in a couple minutes, and then they can make tweaks later when they think of something else they want it to do.

lol amen to this, I have a "setup" that for some reason I cant function if not like it is now. Trying to replicate it in innerspace is very hard and difficult for me.

[zanthor]

It's a nice feature, but is it significantly different from the functionality you get from simple directory junctions?

Once configured it's 100% invisible. You can move your config from machine to machine without problems, doesn't require OS knowledge, etc.

That does sound good, but one thing that worries my though. What is the performance difference between a full-size window resized to for instance 800*600 and one where the window is configured to run at 800*600 in WoW? Also, my main windows is 1920 * 1200, so if I set up my user interface to look decent in that resolution, scaling it down to 800*600 (or something similarly small) will make it too small to actually see what is on the screen

There is a small performance h it to running all windows @ 1920x1200, but really if your machines running smoothly it's not likely to be a big difference. UI is totally irrelevant, the other windows swap so fast you'll give up trying to do anything on them since you can just make them full sized, and then do what you want and back...

As for the user friendlyness, I bought a trial subscription yesterday and I find it pretty confusing. There are no standard buttons in the program - it looks nothing like standard windows/mac windows, which makes it a lot less intuitive. The setup is confusing and while the wizard will get you running fast, in order to utilize 100% of the programs potential, you have to spend just as much time learning to use it as I did in my time with HKN. In comparison, HKN is kind of hard to setup if you're not into programming - but once it's learned it's actually easier to use that most other programmes which require you to browse about for functionality in windows menus with poor or no documentation.

Um, menus are standard on all GUi based OS's... Wizards menu, quick setup... 40 seconds later you can log in and kill shit.

I like the "fake" mouse pointers and the easier macro management, but I find ISBoxer / IS to be a bit user un-friendly and cluttered and not very intuitive compared to keyclone/HKN (I haven't tried GCP for more than 15 mins so I can't comment on that).

Because setting up FTL in KeyClone is so transparent... and I don't believe you are calling a SCRIPTING LANGUAGE more intuitive than ANY GUI.

Wow.

[Fuzzyboy]

Um, menus are standard on all GUi based OS's... Wizards menu, quick setup... 40 seconds later you can log in and kill shit

What are you talking about? Are you claiming that it's impossible to make a custom GUI on a GUI based OS? In that case I think you need to read up on your programming skills :-)

Because setting up FTL in KeyClone is so transparent... and I don't believe you are calling a SCRIPTING LANGUAGE more intuitive than ANY GUI.

Where did I write anything about FTL and Keyclone? And where did I say that a scripting language is intuitive? My point was simply that to set up HKN (which I assume is the scripting based program you're talking about), there's a pretty steep learning curve, especially if you wan't to use the program to it's full extent. With ISBoxer + toolkit it's easy to get up and running but if you want to do the advanced stuff, there seems to be as much of a learning curve as HKN - which is partially due to the interface.

I'm not bashing ISBoxer here, so don't take it too personal - I think $10 is a fair price for three months, but as far as I can tell, HKN just works better for me :-)

[zanthor]

And where did I say that a scripting language is intuitive? My point was simply that to set up HKN (which I assume is the scripting based program you're talking about), there's a pretty steep learning curve, especially if you wan't to use the program to it's full extent. With ISBoxer + toolkit it's easy to get up and running but if you want to do the advanced stuff, there seems to be as much of a learning curve as HKN - which is partially due to the interface.

I find ISBoxer / IS to be a bit user un-friendly and cluttered and not very intuitive compared to keyclone/HKN

Right there... HKN is a scripting language, and right there you said it's more intuitive than ISBoxer's GUI...

[Fuzzyboy]

Where did I write anything about FTL and Keyclone? And where did I say that a scripting language is intuitive? My point was simply that to set up HKN (which I assume is the scripting based program you're talking about), there's a pretty steep learning curve, especially if you wan't to use the program to it's full extent. With ISBoxer + toolkit it's easy to get up and running but if you want to do the advanced stuff, there seems to be as much of a learning curve as HKN - which is partially due to the interface.

I find ISBoxer / IS to be a bit user un-friendly and cluttered and not very intuitive compared to keyclone/HKN

Right there... HKN is a scripting language, and right there you said it's more intuitive than ISBoxer's GUI...

You're playing the too-literal game, but if you insist: The fact that A > B only says something about the relative sizes of A and B - and nothing about their absolute values. Or: The fact that I find HKN more intuitive than ISBoxer does not imply that either are overly intuitive - simply that one is more intuitive than the other. And yes, I find a scripting language more intuitive than ISBoxer, _when it comes to the advanced features_.