No broadcast software ideas for multiboxing

[nodoze]

EDIT: A compilation of the various techniques/tools/utilities to achieve these goals is being tracked on this spreadsheet tab:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1566844114

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Original Initial Post below:
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Figured I would start a thread for folk to post/discuss ideas for multiboxing approaches that don't use any key broadcasting nor rely on any 3rd party software (except addons inside WoW) to run their teams. There may soon be some software solutions that don't have broadcasting that we could try but figured it would be OK to put down ideas for the meantime.

1 PC setup: 5 clients on the PC and alt-tab/mouse-over to switch between clients;

2 PC setup:
- Main PC: Tank+3DPS and alt-tab/mouseover to switch between clients;
- 2nd PC: Healer so can simultaneously heal while working to initiate Tank/Healer actions (could be a simple number pad to control heals).

-5 PC setup:
Each client own PC with full keyboard for main client and number pads for the 4 other PCs.

Note for the above you could look to do physical PCs or Virtual PCs...

*Note: for any of the above you could also look into custom keyboard options that can connect to one or more computers...

[nodoze]

Found some native ways to switch WoW clients in Microsoft Windows...

Doing some research I found that if you pin your Warcraft client to the leftmost spot on your taskbar (spot 1) you can use the following keyboard shortcuts to switch only within your Warcraft windows as follow:

• Windows-1: While holding down the "windows key" and pressing "1" one or more times will always take you to a specific wow window. For example when running 4 WoW clients and I hold Win and press 1 three times it will take me to the 3rd WoW window. This may be able to be macro'ed into a G button mouse or G button keyboard to give fast switching to a given wow window consistently. One negative side affect is that it does show "mini-preview-windows" briefly...
• Cntrl-Windows-1: also cycles through the application windows with no "mini-preview-windows" but goes to the "next window" so it could be hard to consistently get to a given window.

Note: Pinning WoW to the 1st slot was just for an example... You can pin Warcraft in any spot 1-10 from the start menu and do the above replacing 1 with whatever slot you pinned it to (use 0 for 10).

There are also some other programs that I found while researching that I did NOT have any time to test (so use at your own risk):

https://neosmart.net/EasySwitch/

https://www.pcworld.com/article/1829...aSwitcher.html

[Swaggasauruz]

I thought of a couple of approaches so far.

1. I wrote a python script that if a WoW client has focus and I press a key it will focus the next WoW client and so on.

This allows me to alt-tab without actually having to press alt-tab - though I'm not sure if this would qualify as automation so I want to shy away from it. This setup is tedious regardless since it means 1 physical key press per client so lots of spamming.

2. Use a USB synchronous switch - like THIS one.

This switch allows a keyboard and mouse to control 8 devices simultaneously. I also purchased THIS one hand gaming keyboard to use with the switch so my regular keyboard is freed up for other things. This offers a simple hardware based solution but the issue is of course you need 1 PC per WoW client which is not a small barrier to entry.

[nodoze]

Wep posted this idea in the ISboxer Discord using a Launchpad approach (with rtpMIDI and Bomes Midi Translator) and VMs:



https://i.gyazo.com/ab172a7a596229d8...02fe12a6a5.png

[nodoze]

I thought of a couple of approaches so far.

1. I wrote a python script that if a WoW client has focus and I press a key it will focus the next WoW client and so on.

This allows me to alt-tab without actually having to press alt-tab - though I'm not sure if this would qualify as automation so I want to shy away from it. This setup is tedious regardless since it means 1 physical key press per client so lots of spamming.

2. Use a USB synchronous switch - like THIS one.

This switch allows a keyboard and mouse to control 8 devices simultaneously. I also purchased THIS one hand gaming keyboard to use with the switch so my regular keyboard is freed up for other things. This offers a simple hardware based solution but the issue is of course you need 1 PC per WoW client which is not a small barrier to entry.

Lots of good thinking. The USB synchronous KM switch would obey the current "letter of the law" (by bypassing software) but may violate the "spirit of the law" by allowing 1 keypress to initiate an action in multiple clients...

A USB number keypad is kinda like the one-hand keyboard (or half keyboards) with even fewer keys... A low tech solution that combines multiple number keypads and allows them to be used like a synchronous switch would be something like:

https://i.gyazo.com/79ec17ce563426d0d4793655ea1547d3.png

Using that wooden dowel to link the devices may however also violate the "spirit of the law" so I would try to deliniate which solutions are using multi-client broadcasting (even if hardware based) versus which are not. Having just those four small 10keypads and manually clicking each one would likely not be a violation of neither the letter nor the spirit of the law...

[nodoze]

If using multiple PCs this monitor allows you to view 4 inputs at once on a single montior:

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Multi-Cl.../dp/B06ZZ25ZZS

There are other similar options out there that may be cheaper... That is just the one I have used before.

[jak3676]

@nodoze I'm actively looking for a 32" version of that multi-client monitor you posted. I think that's exactly what I want for my 4 followers, but I've only been able to find 43" versions from different manufacturers.

[jak3676]

I'm loving all the discussion and different ideas floating around figure out a multibox solution that doesn't involve software broadcasting. I'm currently going down the road of trying hardware broadcasting, but I fully acknowledge that may also be problematic (spirit of the law vs letter of the law).

In this thread, we started some discussion of ways to window switch rapidly. This seems better place to have that discussion so that we can leave the wow classic discussion of which teams work best with this approach separate.

Alt-tabbing between instances is problematic, but maybe we can focus on improving that portion?
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-b...nce-windows-10 talks about changing the alt-tab behavior such that we don't get the little preview - that should make it faster.

nodoze had some great ideas too - maybe some people didn't see that because they don't go into the wow-classic pages.
Doing some research I found that if you pin your Warcraft client to the leftmost spot on your taskbar (spot 1) you can use the following keyboard shortcuts to switch only within your Warcraft windows as follow:
Windows-1: While holding down the "windows key" and pressing "1" one or more times will always take you to a specific wow window. For example when running 4 WoW clients and I hold Win and press 1 three times it will take me to the 3rd WoW window. This should be able to be macro'ed into a mouse or keyboard to give fast switching to a given wow window consistently. One negative side affect is that it does show "mini-preview-windows" briefly...
Cntrl-Windows-1: also cycles through the application windows with no "mini-preview-windows" but goes to the "next window" so it could be hard to consistently get to a given window.




Note: Pinning WoW to the 1st slot was just for an example... You can pin Warcraft in any spot 1-10 from the start menu and do the above replacing 1 with whatever slot you pinned it to (use 0 for 10).


There are also some other programs that I found while researching that I did NOT have any time to test (so use at your own risk):


https://neosmart.net/EasySwitch/


https://www.pcworld.com/article/1829...aSwitcher.html

[Dougn0782]

Looking for feedback on my plan before I dive in.
5 Accts. 1 PC with 4 VMs.
Planning on making Arduino keypads. Use USB filtering to send one keypad to each VM.

Any reason this would not work. This should not be considered SW broadcasting at all of I am understanding the terms.

[nodoze]

Looking for feedback on my plan before I dive in.
5 Accts. 1 PC with 4 VMs.
Planning on making Arduino keypads. Use USB filtering to send one keypad to each VM.

Any reason this would not work. This should not be considered SW broadcasting at all of I am understanding the terms.

I would have to understand a little more detail to give more advice but my initial thoughts are that you may want to go with 5 VMs if you go this route... I say that because your primary WoW client & Warden running on your VM host OS will then have full access to your VM host and be able to document your full setup from "underneath/behind" your VMs and use that against you...

If your approach is anything like Wep's Launchpad approach (see diagram posted above) anything virtual is technically implemented in software and could be construed however Blizz wants to...

I am not an expert in Adruinos nor the Launchpad but to me the following looks like it is probably software or implemented through software:

• - MIDI Translator;
• - rtpMIDI Network;
• - MIDI channel;
• - USB filtering;
• - VMs;
• - VM networks (VMnets);

On a related note I also saw lots of people in the ISboxer discord saying Virtual Machines (VMs) were against the ToS but no one posted sources for that... I would like to understand the source for that before I invest in any VMs... My time is limited so if someone helps gather the info on Blizz's stance on VMs I would be happy to review it and weigh in but right now I don't have time to research that...

At this point, unless I get more info, I am likely going with the following if I continue 5boxing:

• - 1 main PC with 4 WoW clients for 4DPS (or Tank+3DPS) in quadrants with mouse-over &/or hotkey window switching;
• - 2nd small PC with 1 WoW client for Healer with own keyboard/mouse and maybe some foot-pedals;

I like this setup as it doesn't rely on much (if any) 3rd party software and could be done with regular standard hardware that I already have and would not need any multicasting of any keystrokes to be reasonably effective in 5boxing...

Monitor-wise I will likely either do the 2nd PC as hot-key-able Picture-in-Picture on my 4K multi-input Dell Monitor (P4317Q) or a typically minimized remote control window (like via Remote Desktop Protocol or www.splashtop.com) or both...

Keyboard/Mouse wise I will have separate dedicated keyboards/mice for both PCs but I may add a hardware USB switch to be able to turn on/off the parallel hardware USB replication of my main keyboard to the 2nd PC (not decided for sure yet as that is technically multicasting). If I do that I will make sure that any client key-binds on my healer are not shared with my Tank/DPS so there will never be any chance that one action by me will cause more than 1 action in 1 WoW client...

For reference my main PC will likely work/function like this (except I would likely do 4 Hunters, PaladinTank+3Hunters, &/or PaladinTank+3Warlocks) in the quadrants:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UiGL_Phzsk

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/504835144016986112/774276561359732787/IMG_9044.mov

The reason why I picked these teams (4 Hunters, Paladin+3Hunters, &/or Paladin+3Warlocks) is because I want to be using a team that doesn't either need multicasting 1 input to multiple wow clients nor require tons of keystrokes/mouse movements (Actions per Minute) to be effective (I have carpel tunnel and neck and back injuries). If you are interested in more detail there is more discussion regarding why those teams here:

https://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/...st-multiboxing