How Innerspace works across multiple machines

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Prepared
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How Innerspace works across multiple machines

Post by Prepared » Fri Aug 28, 2009 2:48 pm

I had Innerspace all set up complete with the way I wanted my keys, mouse, etc, except for one thing I couldn't get working. I use multiple machines and the mouse broadcasting in Inner Space to all clients on all machines is awesome. That's the reason I was looking at it to replace what I'm currently using which is Octopus. The thing is, occassionally, I need to use the mouse to go over to another machine in a specific instance in WoW and work from that instance. For a specific quest for example, I'd like to be able to work with one character on another machine. With Octopus, it has a true KVM where the mouse just scrolls over to the other machine and I even even use macros in the game to set my focus so that instance character can be my main. What Octopus doesn't have, that works anyway, is the ability to use the mouse in all instances at the same time. This is why I was looking at using Innerspace to do this. Before I give up completely, I figured I'd post here to see if I can get some help.

So my question is, how is Inner Space configured so that I can use the mouse in any game instance on any computer? Does Inner Space have this ability? ISBoxer seems to have many different options to control every single detail of keystroke you want to configure in the game. I don't really need all of that. I just use the mouse broadcasting and set only a few keys that I don't want to pass. So all of that FTL stuff, I don't have configured. In reading over the ISBoxer documentation and viewing the youtube videos on it, it seems that there is an awful lot of configuration that is not necessary for WoW given that WoW has a pretty extensible macro capability already. The documentation for ISBoxer says it has a KVM, but I couldn't get it working so that I could use the mouse to scroll over to a specific instance of the game on any computer screen. Any help in this area would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Prepared 50 account multiboxer on Aegwynn.
Currently have 25 accounts with level 80s. The other accounts have levels 70-72.

Lax
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Post by Lax » Fri Aug 28, 2009 3:37 pm

Different KVMs work in different ways. Being able to move the mouse from one screen to another to directly control it is a handy feature to have, but is not currently part of ISBoxer. With a hardware KVM you push a button to switch between PCs. The way it works in ISBoxer is you keep mousing in whatever window you please, but you instruct your clicks, etc, to go somewhere else (one or more other windows, with the ability to block them from the current window). This is done by setting up a Mapped Key with a Repeater Target action. So you can get it to go to 15 other windows, and not the other 35, and so on.

Your style of play is apparently not the norm -- if I was controlling 50 characters, I would probably not be doing it via mouse replication, at least no more than I do with 5 ;) But I can see why it might be necessary to KVM over to another PC and control from there. I might be inclined to suggest using InputDirector or something in conjunction with ISBoxer if you want the mouse between screens functionality. The reason this is not an IS/ISBoxer feature is that IS works on a per-application (game instance) basis, rather than taking over functions of your windows desktop. That isn't to say that this type of feature cant or wont appear in the future. I would actually consider it a distinct possibility in the next-gen multiboxing software that I'm working on, but probably not precisely in the way that you're thinking. Either way, this is a problem I am interested in solving in a way that is powerful and convenient to the user.

I can understand why, with so many characters, you wouldn't need certain functionality. If I was playing 50 I probably wouldn't care to do a lot of things that are incredibly useful when playing 5 either. Some functionality doesn't even scale well to 50 anyway, like FTL. It would eat up something like 150 different key combinations just to be able to follow, assist, and target each character.

Anyway, to summarize: The KVM mode in ISBoxer does not include a "move cursor off my screen to the right and it pops up on another PC" function, which people do use InputDirector (and possibly others, I hear this one works best) to get alongside what IS and ISBoxer provide. It's implemented as "keep using the window I'm in, but distribute the mouse movement and mouse clicks to these other windows, and don't pass the clicks through to my window if I tell you not to" ;)

Hope that clears it up. I'm open to suggestions, requests, etc as always.

Prepared
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Post by Prepared » Mon Oct 19, 2009 7:51 pm

Lax wrote:Different KVMs work in different ways. Being able to move the mouse from one screen to another to directly control it is a handy feature to have, but is not currently part of ISBoxer. With a hardware KVM you push a button to switch between PCs. The way it works in ISBoxer is you keep mousing in whatever window you please, but you instruct your clicks, etc, to go somewhere else (one or more other windows, with the ability to block them from the current window). This is done by setting up a Mapped Key with a Repeater Target action. So you can get it to go to 15 other windows, and not the other 35, and so on.

Your style of play is apparently not the norm -- if I was controlling 50 characters, I would probably not be doing it via mouse replication, at least no more than I do with 5 ;) But I can see why it might be necessary to KVM over to another PC and control from there. I might be inclined to suggest using InputDirector or something in conjunction with ISBoxer if you want the mouse between screens functionality. The reason this is not an IS/ISBoxer feature is that IS works on a per-application (game instance) basis, rather than taking over functions of your windows desktop. That isn't to say that this type of feature cant or wont appear in the future. I would actually consider it a distinct possibility in the next-gen multiboxing software that I'm working on, but probably not precisely in the way that you're thinking. Either way, this is a problem I am interested in solving in a way that is powerful and convenient to the user.

I can understand why, with so many characters, you wouldn't need certain functionality. If I was playing 50 I probably wouldn't care to do a lot of things that are incredibly useful when playing 5 either. Some functionality doesn't even scale well to 50 anyway, like FTL. It would eat up something like 150 different key combinations just to be able to follow, assist, and target each character.

Anyway, to summarize: The KVM mode in ISBoxer does not include a "move cursor off my screen to the right and it pops up on another PC" function, which people do use InputDirector (and possibly others, I hear this one works best) to get alongside what IS and ISBoxer provide. It's implemented as "keep using the window I'm in, but distribute the mouse movement and mouse clicks to these other windows, and don't pass the clicks through to my window if I tell you not to" ;)

Hope that clears it up. I'm open to suggestions, requests, etc as always.
I finally got around to using InputDirector. It works great. Now the only problem I have is that the mouse inside of the WoW instances flickers a lot and I can't use the mouse repeater functionality. It seems to sometimes work but other times it flickers all over the screen and is unusable until I turn it off with a key set for that. I'm thinking I might not have something set correctly but it is strange that the mouse sometimes works and sometimes it doesn't. I'm currently using 7 machines. 3 laptops and 4 desktops. I think I have all of the window layouts correct for each computer. On my master computer I have all of the other window layouts defined. All of the slave computers I only have that layout defined along with that computer and the characters that run on that computer. For the master computer, all of the characters are defined along with the character sets for each of the computers where they run. The wow instances all start up positioned where I want them to be with their associated login/sub-account information filled in correctly. Is there some trick to getting the mouse to work properly within all of the wow instances? I thought if I clicked on each wow instance that it might fix it but still the mouse flickers around when I try to turn on the mouse repeater from the main machine.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Prepared, Aegwynn.

Prepared
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Post by Prepared » Mon Oct 19, 2009 8:51 pm

Just some more information, per configuration documentation for ISBoxer, I have Hardwar Cursor enabled on all WoW instances. I have Reduce Input Lag unchecked in all WoW instances. I also have set 1x multisample on all WoW instances.

Lax
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Post by Lax » Mon Oct 19, 2009 11:10 pm

I finally got around to using InputDirector. It works great. Now the only problem I have is that the mouse inside of the WoW instances flickers a lot and I can't use the mouse repeater functionality. It seems to sometimes work but other times it flickers all over the screen and is unusable until I turn it off with a key set for that.
Mouse Repeat will feed back from the remote PCs (i.e. you move the mouse on one PC, the mouse moves on the others, which then feed the position back to your PC at a slightly later time, messing with your cursor), so you need to make sure it's only on on one PC at a time. I know that might be inconvenient but it's not something I can easily fix in the current software. In the next-generation software this wont be an issue.

Prepared
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Post by Prepared » Wed Nov 04, 2009 2:51 pm

Lax wrote:
I finally got around to using InputDirector. It works great. Now the only problem I have is that the mouse inside of the WoW instances flickers a lot and I can't use the mouse repeater functionality. It seems to sometimes work but other times it flickers all over the screen and is unusable until I turn it off with a key set for that.
Mouse Repeat will feed back from the remote PCs (i.e. you move the mouse on one PC, the mouse moves on the others, which then feed the position back to your PC at a slightly later time, messing with your cursor), so you need to make sure it's only on on one PC at a time. I know that might be inconvenient but it's not something I can easily fix in the current software. In the next-generation software this wont be an issue.
When will the next generation software be available to use for mouse repeater functionality across multiple machines? I don't know of any mouse broadcasting software that works properly across multiple machines for mulitple instances of a computer game like World of Warcraft. Innerspace appeared to almost work but if it only works on one machine I can't use it right now.

Lax
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Joined: Fri Jun 18, 2004 6:08 pm

Post by Lax » Wed Nov 04, 2009 9:52 pm

It does work across all PCs, you just need to only broadcast FROM one PC at a time (i.e. enable it on ONE pc, not on all -- the others will receive it)

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