No broadcast software ideas for multiboxing

[nodoze]

I don't actually see there being a good reason to run multiple desktop PC's anymore. For people that want to look at hardware broadcasting for better performance, I think the better option is to feed that input back into a single PC with virtualization. ...

... with focus-follows-mouse and remapped keys for alt-tabbing. I think the performance there will be fine for 5-boxing- arguably better in some scenarios. I can program keys on my keypad to switch the current window of focus to which ever window I need, then to send a single keypress to that window - that all happens with just 1 keypress. ...

These sorts of rapidly switching focus options seem to be the best footing for whatever blizzard decides to do in the future also - if they say, "no broadcasting by any means", I'll already be compliant. ...

The part that's kicking my butt right now is getting my screen layout optimized - but its slowly coming together.
https://gyazo.com/a4ad7d2987fd1632af9b94913789b900

Agreed as full VMs (or Virtualized Desktops) architecturally give you virtually the same thing as physical PC.

Regarding getting your screen layout optimized, did you try renaming your windows with a tool like GUIPropView and then running a layout for each window by name via something like ShiftWindow? It testing mine were all pretty easy to get laid out correctly everytime and others were able to get it to remove the borders at the top of each client (I got it removed on 1 but didn't do for all of them in my testing).

What are you using to bring a desired window into focus via keypress?

[boxblizzard]

Agreed as full VMs (or Virtualized Desktops) architecturally give you virtually the same thing as physical PC.

Regarding getting your screen layout optimized, did you try renaming your windows with a tool like GUIPropView and then running a layout for each window by name via something like ShiftWindow? It testing mine were all pretty easy to get laid out correctly everytime and others were able to get it to remove the borders at the top of each client (I got it removed on 1 but didn't do for all of them in my testing).

What are you using to bring a desired window into focus via keypress?

cloud/Vm are of the same technology and creates a easy environment to box larger numbers.

this is possibly the kind of tools blizzard wants to not promote, hence hardware route limits numbers and technology within.

this is why I believe blizzard would be ok with raw tech than virtual/software based, because it’s easier to be exploited and run bigger teams with.

sadly, exploiters for personal gain and abusers will continue to cut down the limitations we are having.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they limit to one pc with hardware casting only for input actions. That would clear things up, sadly it’s a political game of cat and mouse in the fog....

[nodoze]

cloud/Vm are of the same technology and creates a easy environment to box larger numbers.

this is possibly the kind of tools blizzard wants to not promote, hence hardware route limits numbers and technology within.

this is why I believe blizzard would be ok with raw tech than virtual/software based, because it’s easier to be exploited and run bigger teams with.

sadly, exploiters for personal gain and abusers will continue to cut down the limitations we are having.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they limit to one pc with hardware casting only for input actions. That would clear things up, sadly it’s a political game of cat and mouse in the fog....

Almost every Cloud Computing offering leverages virtualization but virtualization does not mean Cloud Computing...

If I understand correctly I believe Blizz's issue with Cloud Computing was more Intellectual Property (IP) related and related to 3rd parties externally hosting their games and streaming them to you (like NVIDIA's proposed cloud hosing service).

I agree that virtualization technology enables advanced configs for less than equivalent purely physical setups and helps amply abusive techniques/approaches.

The official broadly published stance taken thus far was against MultiCast input capable software and not against MultiCast input capable hardware which is why folk are trying to pursue hardware based MultiCasting approaches in keeping with the "letter of the law" (at least for now).

The smartest thing folks in the community can do, regardless of what approach they take, is to get in keeping with the "spirit of they law" and follow the "1-1-1 rule":

"1 human input can only cause only 1 action in only 1 client (whether enabled via software or hardware)."

[boxblizzard]

Almost every Cloud Computing offering leverages virtualization but virtualization does not mean Cloud Computing...

If I understand correctly I believe Blizz's issue with Cloud Computing was more Intellectual Property (IP) related and related to 3rd parties externally hosting their games and streaming them to you (like NVIDIA's proposed cloud hosing service).

I agree that virtualization technology enables advanced configs for less than equivalent purely physical setups and helps amply abusive techniques/approaches.

The official broadly published stance taken thus far was against multicast input capable software and not against multicast input capable hardware which is why folk are trying to pursue approaches in keeping with the "letter of the law".

The smartest thing folks in the community can do, regardless of what approach they take, is to get in keeping with the "spirit of they law" and follow the "1-1-1 rule":

"1 human input can only cause only 1 action in only 1 client (whether enabled via software or hardware)."

We know such virtualisation technology would present a can of worms, we can only hope to get some guidelines from blizzard soon, otherwise as you say the fail-safe is the 1-1-1 input rule to be followed.

This is a really crazy situation, no one knows what is acceptable or not and I doubt we will ever get confirmation for political reasons.

fun times!

[jak3676]

I may have to type up the shiftwindow setup.

ShiftWindow was kicking my butt early on, but it is pretty simple once you figure it out. At 1st I was just running my 5 different rules, but it was applying those rules to only 1 client (makes sense - all the client windows have the same name). So then, I was thinking I had to rename each window, then run the rule for that named window - which works, but holy cow is that a lot of effort just to launch your games. Maybe if I knew how to save and script that to run automatically - but I don't know how to do that.

After failing at ShiftWindow I tried FancyZones, but couldn't get it to work with WoW for some reason. So then I tried "Actual Window Manager" which worked, but it was a PITA to set up and it screwed up so many other things. Then I went back to trying GUIPropView in conjunction with some other tools - which also sorta worked. At that point someone in discord explained what I was doing wrong on ShiftWindow, so I went back and figured that out. But by then I was launching my 5 clients in windowed mode, so I tried "Windowed Borderless Gaming" to strip the window piece and I thought it all looked pretty good. But then someone pointed that there was no need to launch in windowed mode - just launch in full screen and ShiftWindow still works find - plus no need to strip out the window boarders then. Eureka! Screen setup finally looks great and its easy enough to launch everything. https://gyazo.com/038d7d1d9dc3ff0fa92287772152fbbb

I imagine JMB will make the screen setup even easier to configure and launch. So there's no reason to get super invested in something else for now. But a quick ShiftWindow config is easy enough.

Now back to actual control setup and testing - my goal is a combination of mouseover and macro keys on my Razer Tartarus keypad.

[Wepwewet]

A "mental gymnastic" workaround I myself am kinda okay with: Making use of the fact that a keypress indeed consists of two events (stumbled across that again while playing around with Arduinos and the USB-HID implementation there) : onPress and onRelease.

-Find a Windowmanager that let's you hotkey the window to focus
-Make use of the HID-Driver of your programmable keyboard (if it is capable to mimic that behavior) :
onPress - - - > send hotkey to focus window X
onRelease - - - -> cast spell hotkey of client X

If MIDI Hardware is involved and/or translated to Keystrokes it would be the terminology NoteOn / NoteOff.

Not saying that this will be tolerated, really no one knows, but from my perspective a setup like that can only send one key to one client at a time while minimizing keypresses / not injecting to background windows. Also the first event is only used within the OS while only the second event is processed by a client.

I would also try a "mixed" solution as you proposed, only handling the most important spells that way while maintaining the hover over solution for stuff like pots/cds/reg

[Mordikai]

What are the resolutions of the Windows in https://gyazo.com/038d7d1d9dc3ff0fa92287772152fbbb?

[jak3676]

This is all on a 4k 32" monitor (3840x2160), but for whatever reason ShiftWindow puts it at 2560*1440 - I'm assuming that's due to 150% UI Scaling on my windows desktop.

So in ShiftWindow I have my main screen set for 2060*1400, then my smaller screens at 500*350 - which leaves room for the 40 pixel taskbar at the bottom.

Within the game, it recognizes that I'm running a custom resolution of 3090*2100 and then 750*525.

[nodoze]

https://gyazo.com/038d7d1d9dc3ff0fa92287772152fbbb?

This is all on a 4k 32" monitor (3840x2160), but for whatever reason ShiftWindow puts it at 2560*1440 - I'm assuming that's due to 150% UI Scaling on my windows desktop.

So in ShiftWindow I have my main screen set for 2060*1400, then my smaller screens at 500*350 - which leaves room for the 40 pixel taskbar at the bottom.

Within the game, it recognizes that I'm running a custom resolution of 3090*2100 and then 750*525.

That is really well done and looks nice. I may make my scaling 150% also on my 3840x2160 and try those settings.

[jak3676]

@Wepwewet - what are you using for a window manager? I tried "actual window manager". It works, but I hated that tool - it messed up so much of the rest of my config.

As for "on-press" controlling where you have focus and "on-release" actually doing the in-game action - I suppose that works, but that limits you to only pressing 1 key at time. I'm trying to get it down so I can either just roll my fingers across 4 or 5 keys, if not just press 4 keys at the same time - so I'm trying to get the focus change as close as possible to in-game action