String of non-UTF-8 characters?

[Smedbox]

In Rift, II would like to make one Mapped Key (with one step) that does the following on with one key press:

1. FTL assist (using WoW FTL modifiers)
2. Enable AoE for characters that use that (e.g. the Reaver ability Plague Bringer, which isn't restricted by a global cool down)
3. Send a key press

The first one I do with a "Do Mapped Key Action" that sends Shift/Ctrl/Alt+F2. The second I'd like to do by sending an F8 to any character in an Action Target Group. The third is just sending '1' or something like that.

I tried chaining two "Do Mapped Key Action" for the first and second but that didn't work. Is this possible in ISBoxer? I guess I could do this if I didn't use F8 to enable AoE but just a regular UTF-8 character instead (just do an FTL Assist + Key String Action)?

EDIT: Ah, it seems the Key String Action sends a sequence of WM_CHAR or something, not actual key presses and I couldn't do the second and third even if they were keybound with UTF-8 characters... So it seems it's simply not possible to send a quick sequence of key presses with ISBoxer at all?

[lax]

Generally what you might be running into (as you have considered already) is that any keystrokes in the same Step that go to the same Target are going to be combined. To avoid this behavior, separate the different (conflicting) keystrokes into their own Mapped Key, and then chaining Do Mapped Key Actions.

Sometimes what's required is "inserting a delay" between the keystrokes. ISBoxer will not do this for you. However, you can insert your OWN delay by having a Step execute on press, and then on release of the same button (using the "Pressed OR Released" setting for the Mapped Key). That way, the longer you hold the button down, the longer the delay is.

Some games (or more commonly, specific functions within the game such as movement) may ignore keystrokes that are too short, which means using the Hold option is going to help, but also means you have to use separate Steps per extra keystroke unless it can be held at the same time as the other(s) for the desired effect.

[Smedbox]

Thanks for your reply. It seems that your suggestion of the press-or-release would work fine in this case, but it would be restricted to a sequence of two keys (plus one for the assist which seems to be working when combined into one step)?

So far in Rift I haven't needed more than that so I'll be fine hopefully, but in other games (e.g. Lotro) I've needed to send 3 key presses just for auto-assist and an ability (one key to select self, one key to select leader + assist, one key for ability) to avoid an explosion of in-game macros.

Another reason I sometimes need this is because I'm an altoholic and play a lot of different characters in all kinds of combinations (sometimes solo, sometimes duo, sometimes a full group, sometimes with others in the group, sometimes on multiple computers, sometimes on one computer, etc), and it's a bit painful to have anything depend on character name or which computer the character is played on. Having fewer but more generic in-game macros and just chaining them together differently can sometimes help, but it requires the ability to trigger them in a quick succession with generated key presses.

Any possibility of changing the Key String Action so that it sends a sequence of WM_KEYWDOWN/WM_KEYUP events instead of WM_CHAR (like 1 ms apart)? And possibly work with virtualization?

(As a perhaps unrelated developer question, what do you do to make a game believe they are in the foreground? I'm thinking I may have to do that to develop a program like Katmouse but that works better with programs like Visual Studio 2010...)

[lax]

Any possibility of changing the Key String Action so that it sends a sequence of WM_KEYWDOWN/WM_KEYUP events instead of WM_CHAR (like 1 ms apart)? And possibly work with virtualization?

That's what a Keystroke Action is. In order to get this, you chain Do Mapped Key Actions.

As a perhaps unrelated developer question, what do you do to make a game believe they are in the foreground?

Inner Space does application-level virtualization; when the game tells the Windows platform to jump, Inner Space asks how high.