Mixed Teams

I've been happily using ISBoxer for a while now. I'm not expert: not close to using it to its full potential. But even the limited use I am making of the software is well worth the subscription price. I cannot imagine going back to the way I was boxing before, having to switch windows or computers for each separate character action. Centralized control of multiple characters and machines is priceless. Thank you!

I'm not using character sets quite the way they are presented in the documentation, and I'd like to explain what I did.

I play EQ1, but I suspect that this idea may apply to many games so I opted to post in general.

I have 8 accounts, most with multiple characters. Currently I tend to run everything on a single desktop machine, though I have used multiple laptops before and still occasionally launch odd characters on a laptop, all working from the desktop keyboard.

I had trouble setting up all the configurations of character sets needed for my playstyle.

I came up with a solution that I am happy with.

- Perhaps others may find this useful.

- Perhaps the makers of ISBoxer might consider supporting this alternative view explicitly.

- Perhaps Lax can tell me a more elegant way, or explain why I should not be doing this

In the usual view, a Character Set is a central focus. It is launched on a specific machine. Character sets for different computers may be linked to be launched as a unit. Together the linked character sets
form a team, generally working together to accomplish some goal.

To do something different, you have that team leave the game and launch a different team.

My problem is that I often want to be doing more than one thing.

For example:

I have 3 main high-level characters that I routinely play with their 3 mercenary characters. Call that TEAM1. I usually have TEAM1 loaded. Though they may not be actively doing much at any given time, I still want them in game to accept tells, monitor guildchat, or perhaps watch for a mob to spawn.

While TEAM1 is loaded, I want to be able to bring in others from the other accounts.

I have 3 other high-level characters that I sometimes want to bring along to provide extra fire-power as an outside group. That's TEAM2.

I have TEAM3, 3 lower level characters that I am leveling up.

I have a motley assortment of "mules" and utility characters that may come in and out to provide services for me or for friends.

And sometimes I want to swap out even a member of TEAM1 for an alt on the same account, for some reason or another.

There are too many different possible combinations of characters to define explicit Character Sets for each combination loaded.

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My solution is based on using the ISBoxer function to launch individual characters from a character set. So I need to define character sets to make every character available for launching.

Define a character set C1 with one character from each account. In my case that's 8 characters.

Define another set, C2, to hold a second character from each account. Keep the same order of accounts.

Then another, C3, for a third character from each account, and so on.

Since the largest number of characters I have on a single account is 7, I need 7 character sets, C1 through C7.

For accounts with fewer than 7 characters, duplicate one of the earlier characters as a place-holder. So each of the sets has 8 characters, one from each account, and always maps characters from a given account to the same slot.

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All the character sets use the same Window layout on a given machine.

On my main computer and laptops with large enough displays, I have a Main Window and enough small windows around the edges to provide a home for each account. That's 8 small windows in my case.

The main window is sized so that it will fit on the lowest resolution screen among the remote machines in use. That way you can let all the accounts share one window on the small machines, and keep the same in-game UI layout everywhere.

---

With this setup, you can now launch any combination of characters allowed by the game itself, one per account, by launching the characters individually from whichever character set they happen to be in. There will never be conflicting ISBoxer slots, because each account has a dedicated slot.

This works as is, but it is tedious to launch a frequently played team by picking them out one at a time from the menus. And for launches on the remote machines, you must do the selection at the keyboard of that machine: you lose central control, you cannot do it from the menus on the main machine.

To recover the TEAM LAUNCH function intended to be provided by launching linked character sets, and to regain central control, I use simple scripts from the command line to have InnerSpace call ISBoxer to do all the individual launches.

For example:

TEAM1.AHK
; Launch Team1
run innerspace.exe run isboxer -launchslot c1 1
WinWait is1
run innerspace.exe run isboxer -launchslot c1 2
WinWait is2
run innerspace.exe run isboxer -launchslot c1 3
WinWait is3
WinActivate is1
WinWaitActive is1

So I can just type TEAM1 to launch that team.

This gives the same function as defining a character set with those 3 characters and launching it.

The difference is that I can also launch other teams and individual characters without tripping over conflicting slot assignments, so long as I do not try to load more than one character from a given account at the same time.

I can for example now launch either TEAM2 or TEAM3, and then go through the login sequence for all 6 characters at once.

I could not do that with TEAM2 and TEAM3 deined by individual character sets. They would all try to use the same slots, 1,2,3.

For launching individual characters I have:

LC.BAT --- slot#,C# launch a character on the local machine
innerspace run isboxer -launchslot %2 %1

For launching things on a remote machine, I have:

RLINK.BAT --- computer set 'computer' as connected remote
@echo off
set rlink=%1
innerspace remoteuplink -connect %rlink%

LRC.BAT --- slot#,C# launch a character on the remote machine
@echo off
innerspace relay %rlink% run isboxer -launchslot %2 %1

When I find that I want a new team it is easy to make a new script.

A team can have a mix of computer assignments on an individual character basis.

Obviously this could be elaborated... it would not be hard to whip up a graphical interface to allow one to click on characters to make up new teams and to launch them, in arbitrary combinations and with arbitrary distribution across multiple computers, without typing anything.

But I am comfortable typing at the command line and these short commands are enough for me.

---
To swap an active character for an alt on the same account, without messing up the associated virtual files, use the same process you would use with the launchslot function from Innerspace or Isboxer menus:

- first camp the character to character select
- then launch the new character

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I did find the need for a couple of other utility functions. When first logging in a team, all of them display properly right up until character select. Then EQ does some odd swapping of its graphics engine. Often one or more of the windows gets hidden, and the focus is lost from the main window from which you are driving the login sequence. Sometimes took a lot of clicking to get things right.

So I made a REDRAW function:
; Re-draw all existing ISBoxer windows,
; (currently only IS1 to IS8 used)
; leave lowest number as active window.
loop
{
if a_index > 12
break
WinIdNum := 13-a_index
WinIdStr := "is"WinIdNum
IfWinExist %WinIdStr%
{
WinActivate %WinIdStr%
WinWaitActive %WinIdStr%
}
}

(No idea why I didn't use a FOR loop or why some are .BATs and some .AHK --- it all just kinda grew. )

And I made up a text file showing the grid of character names indexed by slot and character set, with a quick command to show it, since my memory for such details is fading with age.

As I said, one could make it all a lot smoother if motivated.

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Anyway. The notion of slots/windows associated with accounts, and "teams" as arbitrary selections of available characters with computer selection at the individual character level, seems natural and useful to me. The function is all almost there in ISBoxer as it stands: I've just changed the granularity of the associations.

What say you?

[lax]

I applaud your efforts.

Have you considered watching MiRai's Pro Config videos? This is something it is designed to handle efficiently and I would highly recommend watching them. Start here and do it now! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cONmD2E69nA
You can use one Character Set of a given size, and drop any characters you need into it, and the team will automatically handle it.

Thank you.

Unfortunately, I find it very difficult to learn from such videos. They blur in my head and little sticks, and I'm not sure what I saw when it is over.
I sat through 4 or 5 videos, and am not sure whether any of it actually touched on the issues that concern me.

I do better with text. Is there a written description of the things he is talking about somewhere? I expected to see some such stickied in the forums related to the
pro system, but I did not find it. I seem to remember some such from my reading a year ago, but as I say I cannot seem to locate the information now.

The focus seems to be associating all the necessary keystroke actions with the characters themselves, tailored to their abilities, set up under a virtualization system
that will make everything connect up dynamically as you move in different mixes of characters. Impressive, but not my current concern.

I have what I want for action keys in a very rudimentary form. Mostly I have a few keys that get sent to everyone, or to everyone other than the originator.
The response, if any, is determined by macros on the recipient character. Nothing fancy, but it is enough for now. Maybe someday I will want more capability.

I was more concerned with the launching process. Specifically, I want simple actions to launch various subsets of my available characters, either on the
local machine or on remote machines.

From your remark I get the idea that he is setting up a system that will use a single character set as a holder for whatever characters are to be played
at any given time. Then perhaps you drag the particular characters you want into the set, export it and launch it, to change the toons dynamically?. But I don't remember
seeing further discussion of that aspect of it in the videos I watched. Maybe it was a section where my eyes were blurred.

It bothers me somewhat that you say a character set of a given size. So If I've loaded 3 characters and decide I want to load a mule, I need to use a different
character set?

How would the system handle wanting to run a couple of characters on a remote machine at some point?

[lax]

I see. I admit I didn't carefully read each line of your post, if this is what you're after then I would say the "Mixed Teams" title is maybe not the best choice.

Yes, MiRai's Pro videos are entirely based on the concept originally described on the wiki http://isboxer.com/wiki/Style:MMO_-_Pro

It bothers me somewhat that you say a character set of a given size. So If I've loaded 3 characters and decide I want to load a mule, I need to use a different
character set?

What I typically would suggest in that scenario is you probably want to load a Character Set with 4 characters, which you can leave off the 4th character (e.g. just close the window if you don't need it, or technically the launching process is interruptible, particularly with the amount of trouble you're already going through). So no I'm not suggesting you need to use a different character set to load a mule. But if you have scenarios where you have a 5 man vs a 10 man team, it will probably help to have different Character Sets to support the different Window Layouts, etc.

How would the system handle wanting to run a couple of characters on a remote machine at some point?

This whole time writing this post now I'm thinking what you really want here is ISBoxer 2. ISBoxer 1 is not designed for you to easily push one or two characters from your team onto a second PC and for it to operate the same; there is inherent difficulty in doing that, regardless of your system or Pro Config or whatever. If you're sometimes wanting to go 3 PCs and sometimes 4, then it gets even worse because you need one Character Set per PC, for each combination of PCs you want to use. ISBoxer 2 on the other hand is being designed so that you could arbitrarily choose to have a couple of them launch on the second PC, and not have to worry about setting up a bunch of additional Character Sets just to do that.


So, ... my final suggestion at this point, given what you explained your priorities are, is to just use one Character per EQ1 Account, instead of making a Character in ISBoxer per EQ1 Character or whatever else. The rest can be handled by virtualization, on the fly, as per the Pro Config. With WoW we don't do it this way largely because the game supports Addons, and macros can be conveniently assigned within an Addon to a specific Character, so pretty much all of the tools needed to run any particular Character can be built right into ISBoxer. But you don't have that for EQ1 so there is literally nothing stopping you from using the same ISBoxer "Character" for every single toon on a given EQ1 account. As far as setting up the configuration goes, the only difference between what you want and what is detailed on the Pro Config wiki and videos (*), is you want to set up the virtualiztion using Mapped Key Virtualization Actions instead of building it directly into the Characters -- you don't "know" what class you're going to be in advance, but once you log into your Character (which may be from any of your "team1", "team2" or "team3", etc) it would be trivial to press a Hotkey or click a button on a Click Bar or Menu to select the mappings/behaviors you want this Character to use.

* MiRai shows how to use this kind of Action to switch "specs" in WoW (each class has 3 possible specs), and that is 0% different from what you can do to switch classes/levels/whatever for EQ1 or any other game.

This means you don't need 42 Character Sets for each combination, you just need one Character Set with the approximate number of toons you want to play (or more than that, and you don't use the extras). Swapping toons in/out for others doesn't require any new launching, you just log out to character selection, pick the new one and enter the world, and you do the same thing you did when launching the team initially. Press a Hotkey or click some button or whatever, to set the virtualization for that window to be your warrior or druid or whatever (can even be character-specific instead of class-specific, etc) settings.


So I still think the Pro Config is what you want here, and I apologize if I've made you feel you've wasted any time. If you don't need abilities to be linked up based on who you're playing, I guess I'm not really clear on why you have 3 Character Sets in the first place. I will point out that in almost every walkthrough video I've done for multiboxing various games with ISBoxer, the ISBoxer "Character" is a per-account thing... I just put in "EQ1 1" for toon 1 and continue with "EQ1 2" and 3 and so on for each character, because it doesn't matter which actual character I log into, I generally just want the account info stored separately and that's the functionality a Character gives at that point.

Is it just that you want a character-specific Virtual File, as opposed to account-specific? We could have a conversation on IRC (ISBoxer Chat Room) about this if you want.

Well.

I would say the "Mixed Teams" title is maybe not the best choice

My apologies. I had in mind a mixture of multiple teams serving different purposes, all loaded at the same time.
Not a single team with mixed elements, or whatever the phrase means to you.

Is it just that you want a character-specific Virtual File, as opposed to account-specific?

Yes, I want specific characters in ISBoxer for the individualized virtual files.
I like having the intended character selected at login automatically.
I do use some individualized key assignments in the game itself.
I also want specific characters as individual and class targets for key actions.
I also like having the character names in the window titles.

The way I am doing it lets me to easily load any mix of characters the game will allow.
The way I am doing it lets me load any number of characters from 1 to the number of available accounts without having to change anything.
I can load them individually if I wish.
I can load them as groups or teams with a single command.

The way I am doing it allows me to load any of the characters that I want on other machines.
I can do that from the main keyboard and screen, I do not have to switch to the other machines to load things there.

I guess I'm not really clear on why you have 3 Character Sets in the first place

I have 7 character sets, all the same size: big enough to hold one character from each account.
I need 7, because some of my accounts have 7 alts and I need a place for each of them.
I need them because you use the order of characters in a character set to assign slots, and I want a dedicated slot for each account.

That's what I was asking you to consider supporting: slot assignments per account.

I assume your misreading of 3 character sets was due to my examples of TEAM1, TEAM2, and TEAM3.
Those are sets of characters each launched by a single command, not ISBoxer character sets.

ISBoxer 1 is not designed for you to easily push one or two characters from your team onto a second PC and for it to operate the same; there is inherent difficulty in doing that, regardless of your system or Pro Config or whatever. If you're sometimes wanting to go 3 PCs and sometimes 4, then it gets even worse because you need one Character Set per PC, for each combination of PCs you want to use. ISBoxer 2 on the other hand is being designed so that you could arbitrarily choose to have a couple of them launch on the second PC, and not have to worry about setting up a bunch of additional Character Sets just to do that.

I am using ISBoxer 1. Perhaps I would have been happier with ISBoxer 2. It sounds as though you are addressing my concerns there.
But I have for the most part found a way around the limitations of ISBoxer 1.

I can easily push any number of characters to as many remote machines as I wish.
I need only copy exactly the same character sets that I have on my main machine.
I never have to make up special character sets of different sizes. Character sets for me have nothing to do with which characters are actually loaded.
The character sets as I use them only provide a framework to allow me to launch any character(s) I want, in any combination.

[lax]

Okay.