Rift ( boxing review )

[Lyonheart]

(note: this is more of a review on my experiences multi boxing with ISBoxer in Rift, not a game review really, there are TONs of those on the web as well as a thread I started on duel-boxing.com http://www.dual-boxing.com/showthread.php?t=33893 )

I have been boxing Rift for the past few days. I started out trying to 5 box, the game has a 5 player group system like WoW. So that seems logical to try and 5 box it. I have a decent system( corei7-920, 12g ram, gtx 480,two 24in screens..ect), i can 10 box WoW on it with no problem. Rift taxed my system with 5, but with 4 and settings turned to lowest possible, I was able to 4 box fine (the game looks fine at low settings btw). I'm sure with a more updated system or with some more optimization by Trion, 5 boxing on one PC will be fine. I ended up spending the last two days 2 boxing, just so i could learn the game systems and such. i had a blast!

As far as ISboxer+Rift I can say that I did run into some issues, as to be expected when nobody is playing it yet, but was able to box despite a few issues I had. Ill talk about those issues first, it might have been me not knowing how to set stuff up right with isb48. I had some issues where my regions would not place themselves where i set them up in isboxer, and at one point, after i got them to work, the next time i logged in, slot one would not remove the boarders, but slot two did. I ended up using the old windows layouts and it worked fine from then on. later on, i wanted to make repeater region for my healer. I was just going to use the in game bar#4 and place macroed heals there to heal ( was boxing a tank,healer combo ) The repeater regions set up fine, but the mouse would not broadcast within the region. Normal broadcasting did work, both key strokes and mouse. I was using mouse broadcasting to accepts quests and click on chat dialog from NPCs and such.

Another problem i was having was regions would not swap with key binds. When i had 4 clients/regions going , the hotkeys would only swap slots 1 and 3, but not slots 2 and 4. I had tried a number of different keybinds for my swap hotkey and it always ended up just like that. So i tried to just use the instant swapping via clicking on the region but that gave me a new issue. When i would cast with my guys, the windows would start auto swapping until the cast ended. Long story short, I just went to two boxing on two full size screens so i did not have to worry about swapping issues, hehe. I just wanted to box the game and gage how fun it would/could be.

I had started out making macros for every spell i cast on my one slave ( healer) and found out I did not need to. The game has a setting where you can choose to cast on targets target. So if your healer is targeting the leader, he will heal him, or cast an offensive spell at his target. Only macro i ended up using was /target tank. /follow. that worked well for two boxing, but unless repeater regions work later, it will be hard to heal individual team members without macros.

I love the game! I had mixed feeling about it as I tried a few classes and played a few levels on each, but it grew on me over time. I know for sure I will be playing it when it goes live. I will two box it to start and if theres enough community of boxers playing, and ISBoxer keeps up to date with it, i might try 5 boxing it later on. It has everything other games have and more. yes it took things that work in other MMOs and added to it. But IMO thats smart. I think it has a ton of potential! I'm looking forward to boxing it in March!

[lax]

The issues you had with your window layout are probably related to bugs in the ISBoxer 38 beta with certain styles of new window layouts

[hephaestus]

Thanks for the update Lyon, I copied my experience below from another post, since this seems like the most appropriate place. I too will definitely be boxing Rift at launch (3 characters to start, maybe 5 later on if my wife decides to play MMOs again). I had a great experience during Beta 5, I had not downloaded the beta build at that time and only had very minimal issues.

Successfully ran Rift with both a one PC and multi-PC setup during beta. Everything functioning as intended.

-- Single PC (two accounts) If I didn't use multiple monitors, my windows changed focus without any prompting, but that went away with a dual-monitor setup. I am not sure if the unexpected shift had something to do with my interface choices ingame or some quirk between Rift and ISBoxer (the switch would happen as soon as my second character completed casting of the first spell in a fight and it would then focus on my secondary character).

--Two PCs (two accounts) Everything worked perfectly on multi-pc setup, now I just need to recreate my profiles because they changed the whole macro system between Beta 4 and 5. Hopefully the large amount of player complaints will cause it to go back, otherwise my key maps will be getting a lot bigger in ISBoxer.

I did not get a chance to build any click bars, but the broadcasting/keymap one worked, so I would be surprised if others did not. I am hoping that Rift will be supported for ISBoxer after launch. We should work out a server around launch time to get a few multiboxers together in Rift.

[Drelok]

Everything seems to be working ok, but having a couple minor issues...

1. I cannot get a keymap to switch to next or previous window to work at all. My keys to switch to individual characters work, but -next and -previous will not
*edit - In the console when I use the hotkey to switch to next window it prints out "Switching to session Rift3364 (on my second window it says Rift6000). If I press my key to switch to a specific window is says "Switching to session IS#" not sure if that will help or not.


2. right now i've got a simple key setup for skills. 1 presses 1 for all windows, etc.. it seems on my caster, when a spell goes off it switches to that window on its own.

3. If I mouse click my unfocused region, the camera points strait up. this is probably something with the game, but just throwing it out there. If I switch between them using G1, G2, etc it works fine.

Will post more as I find them, only been playing for about 30 mins with IS

[lax]

1. I cannot get a keymap to switch to next or previous window to work at all. My keys to switch to individual characters work, but -next and -previous will not
*edit - In the console when I use the hotkey to switch to next window it prints out "Switching to session Rift3364 (on my second window it says Rift6000). If I press my key to switch to a specific window is says "Switching to session IS#" not sure if that will help or not.

That is interesting. Sounds like there are additional Rift processes running that Inner Space is also hooked into. I'll have to take a look at that, but in the meantime you can get me some additional information. With the games all up and running through Inner Space, right click the IS icon in the system tray (notification area) and select Console. This should bring up the Inner Space main window with a Console window in it. In that window, enter the command "sessions" with no quotes and hit enter. In order to give the behavior you're describing, I would expect the output to show something like this for 2 windows:

Code:

is1
Rift1234
is2
Rift5678

(the 1234 and 5678 would vary)

2. right now i've got a simple key setup for skills. 1 presses 1 for all windows, etc.. it seems on my caster, when a spell goes off it switches to that window on its own.

Hmmm I would have thought this was related to your issue #1 fiddling, but hephaestus said the same thing. Sounds like the game is probably trying to activate itself. There's a couple options you can try, in your Character Set (just select your Character Set in the top pane, and these are in the main options for your Character Set without selecting anything in the bottom left). It sounds like the "Make game believe it is foreground window" option might take care of this issue. If not, try "Prevent game from repositioning windows" as well.

3. If I mouse click my unfocused region, the camera points strait up.

This happens when the game interprets the click while we're moving the window.

You can change this behavior in your Window Layout, in a couple different ways depending on how you want it. If you want it to work as it does now, with clicking moving the window, but you want the game to ignore the click... then there's a drop-down box in your Window Layout's main options panel that says "When clicking to focus a game window, the game should _______" and defaults to "do what it normally does". Change that to "ignore the click" and this problem is solved. The down-side to having this behavior is that you have to first click on the window, and then click on something in it to interact, rather than one click to interact with the window.

If you would like it so that when you CLICK on a window it doesn't move but rather interacts immediately with the game, you can enable "Focus Follows Mouse" instead. This option is locked out if the "Swap Hot Character to main region" option is set to Always, so you would either have to change that to a specific Hotkey, or per-Slot Hotkeys can be configured in your Character Set (select Character Set in top pane, select Slot numbers in bottom left pane, and the Hotkey option will be at the top of the bottom right pane). Change this option to something other than Always, and then mouse clicks will no longer swap the window to the main spot. The Focus Follows Mouse option, then, will automatically focus the window when your mouse is over it (if one of the game windows is currently focused) and so you would be able to hit hotkeys or click anywhere in the window without having to activate the window with a hotkey or click first.

[Drelok]

Awesome, fast responce.

1)
Yup, it shows

Rift####
IS1
Rift####
IS2

2)
The options to make game believe it is foreground worked.

3)
It seems to be working with that option to ignore clicking. Allthough I did have it happen 1 out of 10 times switching screens

[Drelok]

Also, I cannot get my action target groups to work, or hotkeys assigned to specific chars. is it related to the problem with the rift#### handles?

[lax]

Inner Space build 5366 (new dev build available now; make sure the dev build of IS is enabled and restart Inner Space to patch up) should fix the issue with the additional processes/sessions. I won't have time to do any further testing or fixes until at least tomorrow. Let me know anything else you find out.

Someone in the ISBoxer Chat Room reported that setting the "Make game believe it is foreground window" option made their mouse stop working in the game except for on hotbars. I'm not sure what that's about yet

[Drelok]

I haven't noticed anything like that yet.

I'll be playing most the night and will check things out.

[Drelok]

I still cannot get next/previous window to work. In the game console is still shows switching to Rift#### but nothing happens.

Also cannot get assigned keys to work. keymap assigned to target group or to individual char name or slot#