MultiBox

[Ellay]

Created by Micah who frequents the boards. Taken over by Shockbeta for the time being.

Check this forum for updated client download
http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums2/viewtopic.php?t=402

MultiBox Client & Server: http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/ffeff6c466/
MultiBox Client & Server & Source: http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/f148a7baff/ (out of date)
MultiBox w/ Display Shortcuts (modified by Shockbeta) : http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/69107c171c

Features:
* One mouse/keyboard can control multiple computers without any additional hardware.
* Specifically designed to allow you to play 3D games that use the mouse for looking around.
* Ability to toggle "broadcasting" with a hotkey that will allow your keystrokes or mouse movements to be broadcast to all connected computers.
* Simple UI: Setting up monitor layout is very easy.
* Runs in the taskbar so it's out of the way.

Run MultiBoxServer.exe on the machine with the mouse/keyboard. Run MultiBoxClient.exe on every machine (including the one with the mouse/keyboard). Set the port on the server machine to something and match it on all the clients (including the one with the server software running on it). On the clients, enter the hostname of the server into the Server Name (this is the name of your computer if you are on a local area network) and press enter.

Note: Be sure to connect the client on the same machine as the server first, otherwise you won't be able to get back to that machine without quitting all the others first.

Pressing escape 8 times in a row will exit the server in case something breaks and you have lost control of the mouse/keyboard somehow.

There are a few things that need worked on but on a whole it should work pretty well. This version is fairly large because it's compiled in debug mode (release mode crashes for some reason) but I'm assuming anyone multi-boxing has a big enough internet connection to download a 10MB executable. Smile

The source code requires wxWidgets 2.8.0 to compile and run as well as the Windows SDK. It currently only works on Windows XP (95/98 probably won't work and 2000/Vista are untested). It definitely won't work on a Mac or Linux but it is mostly written with portability in mind (wxWidgets API instead of .NET) so if someone is interested a port isn't terribly unrealistic.

Learning Curve - Medium

Post Reviews, Suggestions, and Comments below.

[kadaan]

Is there a tutorial on setting this up? When I run the server exe on one computer and the client on the other, the keyboard and mouse connected to the server are now controlling the client with no obvious way of switching back.

[Torrid]

Micah actually did a very good job at making this extremely easy to setup. His first post in the following thread has the info you are looking for I believe.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums2/viewtopic.php?t=29

The most important thing seems to be making sure you first run the server AND client on the main machine first, then launch the client on any of the secondary machines.

[Micah]

New version out, update thread at earliest convenience:
http://ultrashare.net/hosting/fl/ffeff6c466/ (source code for this version available on request, it's a pain to get together in a .zip so I don't do it for every version).

[Hydrocool]

HELL yeah, man this rocks.

Thx's for the update

[Ellay]

Done.

[Ukon]

awsome man. alltought it was some delay. may that have something to do with that stuff where it were written 2200ms or something?

is it possible to get an reaction within o,1 seconds or something?

anyways. nice program and nice work

or is it just that my mom's computer realy sucks? :lol:

[ocaTwins]

So the massive lag that was mentioned before, is it gone with the new version?

I'd really like to try out Multibox, but last time I checked, I hat the 10 seconds lag as soon as I tried to switch from my client computer back to the one running client AND server.

[Micah]

I still haven't figured out what the cause of that lag spike is/was so I don't know if it's been "fixed" or not. I have changed a bit of code related to screen switching so it's possible that the lag is gone and if you get a chance I would recommend giving it another try to see if that is the case or not.

[Ukon]

I still haven't figured out what the cause of that lag spike is/was so I don't know if it's been "fixed" or not. I have changed a bit of code related to screen switching so it's possible that the lag is gone and if you get a chance I would recommend giving it another try to see if that is the case or not.

The "lagg" is more like unstable, but i guess that is prolly because the other computer is realy suckey.

but the thing that is mostly anoying is that the mouse laggs some times.

and that it sometimes takes like 10 minutes for the other computer+thisone to connect to the server.

but some times it works realy smooth ^^

to bad that the other computer is in like 2 etg's over my comp :roll:

so i have to run up and down the stairs xD