im completely lost with everything

Hello,

I've spent probably 20+ hours trying to learn how to use this software and have had absolutely no luck with it. I've watched several videos, read several "guides", but am still having a very tough time figuring out how to configure my stuff.

I currently am running 4 accounts in EQ. I am using a monk, shaman, mage, and zerker. I was able to go through the quick setup guide and got my "team" built and got the login process to operate properly (I think). I'm one of those people that have to watch/read something and create something on my own while watching/reading to understand it completely. Every guide/video i've watched has not allowed for this. Everything seems to be very generalized with little to no examples on anything. I understand the reasons behind it, but because of this I haven't been able to really do much.

So far besides being able to get all 4 toons logged in, I created 2 socials. The first one is on my main account (the monk) which is an invite key. This sends an invite to the other 3 toons. The second social is setup on all 4 accounts and reads:

/inv
/pause 3
/target finchy
/pause 3
/follow

this obivously allows the other 3 toons to accept the invite, target my monk, and auto follow him. From what i've read there are better ways to set this up, but everything I have read has been "hey i setup this up" not "hey i use this, and this is how you do it step by step".

so if anyone could please help me get a better understanding for how this program works it would be greatly appreciated.

What I would like to do with this program:

1. have all my toons group up with monk.
2. be able to load buffs with shaman/mage from main screen (monk)
3. always have toons auto follow monk.
4. have my toons assist my monk in combat.
5. be able to control other toons from monks screen.

Here is my config thing from ISBoxer http://www.privatepaste.com/4ba35a3946


Thank you!

[lax]

so if anyone could please help me get a better understanding for how this program works it would be greatly appreciated.

The program works by helping you push buttons in the other windows. It can't magically "load buffs with shaman/mage from main screen (monk)" for example, you want to think of this in terms of "I want it to press the ___ key in my ____ window, when I press ____". It can do that, and you can set up those hotkeys with the Mapped Key Wizard very quickly. I see that you've used the Mapped Key Wizard to set up "1" to send to all via Straight Key Broadcast. You can set it up to press a different key than the one you're pressing by using the Key Re-Map option in the wizard instead. Also note that 1 is a part of the Standard Menu so unless you're manually closing that each time or have disabled Key Maps (Shift+Alt+M), 1 through = already broadcast to all windows by default.


As for Follow and Assist, you shouldn't typically need custom socials like the one you're showing. ISBoxer has follow and assist built in for you, which will press F2 F3 F4 etc and then a hotkey configured in the game for /follow or /assist. This will work unless your group has special cases with pets or mercs or something that can mess with targeting party members that way. All you need to do is tell ISBoxer what keys it can press for those two things. In the top left pane in ISBoxer, click "Variable Keystrokes" and then in the bottom left pane find "Follow Target" and "Assist Target". You don't have the key combos configured, so ISBoxer doesn't know what to do when you press the Alt+A or Alt+F hotkeys. Select the two and configure the "Default Key Combination" to match what you have configured in the game as a hotkey for /follow, and for /assist. After doing that, Export and it should work to follow/assist using Alt+F and Alt+A.


Then for controlling from your main screen, doing buffs, etc, this is pretty much a matter of using the Mapped Key Wizard.

If you need more specific help give us more specifics as well, like what buttons you want pressed when you do what.

My apologies, I didn't mean for it to sound like i want the program to do everything for me. I was just stating what I would like to accomplish using the program.

It's hard for me to give specifics on what I want to do simply because I have no clue what I want to do outside of the 5 items mentioned above. I figured starting with those items would be a decent start to learning the program. Everquest has godly amounts of keybinds already set up in the game, so I would assume people who use this program to the max rebind pretty much everything to get some sort of organization out of it. I'm not too concerned about which specific button to use to do a specific task, but more so how you get that specific function setup. The key bind can always be changed later to fit someones personal liking.

I can look and read through templates all day long, but none of it makes sense to me. It's like someone who knows nothing about coding trying to read code. Sure you can copy and paste stuff to get same results, but you have no idea what or how you did it.

I do appreciate all the videos and guides provided on teaching people how to use this program, I just haven't been able to adapt the method used.

The "mapped key" you referred to that I made, was simply me reading something and doing as it was stated. I honestly don't even know what the "1" I added does.

A guide that explained how to set something up step by step would be a huge help for brand new people like myself. At first this program is very overwhelming. Some of the guys that have been making guides and videos over the years know this program sooo well they can fly through adding things and making changes, and are able to make a guide/video for novice/intermediate users to understand.


Even if there was a guide that was something along the lines of:

1. easiest/fastest way to group 3 or more group members together once logged in.
2. first open up isboxer
3. go to <insert location here> in isboxer
4. add this here
5. put this here
6. go here and do this
7. now your setup

just something that guided you through the process of actually building the hotkey or key bind or mapped key.

I apologize if i'm too big of an idiot to understand this program, but I would really like to learn it as it seems amazing with a crazy amount of features that will come in handy.

After writing this I will also be attempting your recommendation for Follow and Assist.


Thank you.

[bob]

Even if there was a guide that was something along the lines of:

1. easiest/fastest way to group 3 or more group members together once logged in.
2. first open up isboxer
3. go to <insert location here> in isboxer
4. add this here
5. put this here
6. go here and do this
7. now your setup

This is what the Quick Setup Wizard, and the Quick Setup Guides (on the WIKI) are for. I recommend you use it initially, because at the beginning there is a large amount of setup for Game Profiles, Characters, Virtual Files, Character Sets, CPU/GPU strategy, WindowLayouts, Variable Keystrokes, Menus, Key Maps and Mapped Keys that are all needed to be done to log in and have the basic functionality of Assist and Follow. The wizard does hide a fair portion of this, and where it does not, it is in a much more concise format. The Wizard does not do anything you can't do manually, but then it doesn't forget to do it either. Stepping through this stuff in the Wizard takes about 5-10 minutes the first time around. Doing it manually would be an hour or two.

From what I've seen, new users end up going through the Wizard two or three times for the same team (using File menu -> Clear between), and redoing their setup as they learn the terminology, what was actually being asked of them, and that operating a team is very different to operating individuals (and several individuals at once).

Writing such a guide as requested would take a lot of work, it would be very long, and I doubt many people would use it (besides yourself that is).
Information on each of the above items is available in the http://isboxer.com/wiki. If you find it lacking, you can say so, it can be knutted out what needs to be updated and then it can be done. Each time I find myself writing out a response that should be in the WIKI, I try and make sure it gets updated.

Just something that guided you through the process of actually building the hotkey or key bind or mapped key.

The Mapped Key Wizard will guide you through the process. You can then check the results to see what it actually did. There is also this page on the WIKI (http://www.isboxer.com/wiki/Mapped_Key) which goes through the process (Creating a Mapped Key), and it has a video.

I apologize if i'm too big of an idiot to understand this program, but I would really like to learn it as it seems amazing with a crazy amount of features that will come in handy.

Everybody starts somewhere, doesn't make you an idiot.

[Fippy]

I know where you are coming from Finchy. People here are very helpful, and there is a ton of material. Maybe even too much

What I mean is that some of the material is very advanced (In my opinion requires an understanding of other material first), and some is outdated.

Firescue17's guides are great, but it would be best if we didn't start there. (I'll include myself in this). But I haven't decided where the next logical step is after the Quick Start Guide. By no means is this intended as a criticism of Firescue's work, just that I think you need to know a lot of stuff to work with them. So don't feel bad if you struggle.

At the lowest level you want to bind controls you physically use to actions which happen in the game. These can be directed to individual characters. Maybe a good next step would be to find the "Always On" keymap and add new mapped keys to this.

EQ has some strict limits on the number of characters you can send in an action. The official answer is 15, but I swear that my limit was 14 (including the / and the enter). The difference is minor, and not worth debating. It is small. An action corresponds to what you can do in a key press. Once you understand that, then try adding a second action that fires on a key UP and putting it after the first.

But for early experimenting I suggest loading up your in-game hotbars and mapping them to keypresses. Then use ISBoxer to send individual keypresses to each box. This is reliable, quick, and gets you in-game much faster. The downside is that you need to change hotkeys on all of your characters rather than just updating ISBoxer's config.

Did I do this? No. But I did all of that in Innerspace for the last 8 years or so. Not sure of the length, only Lax knows.

exactly, Fippy. This is the main spot I am struggling at, what do I do after i do the starter guide wizard thing. I have run through the wizard 4 or 5 times now and still have no clue what I am clicking on. Last night I messed around with it for a bit longer than I had before and was reading through stuff. I started clicking buttons that sounded like something I should do, but in the end, I ended no different than the previous times. You mention loading up hotbars and mapping them to keypresses, but I mean all my hotbars already have keypresses tied to them in EQ itself. What is the benefit of doing this in isboxer?

Maybe I am failing at explaining what I'm having trouble with. So I understand the general concept of mapping keys to do specific things, but my issue is how you actually accomplish setting up this key mapping. As I mentioned, i've done the quick guide several times, I've watched most of fire's videos. I've read at least a dozen guides on how to do things, but nothing is clicking when it comes to actually putting something together.

Let's try playing out a scenario here and see where it leads.

So I am in game with my monk/shammy/zerker/mage and all my toons are auto following my monk(as he is the toon I "drive?" with). I'm standing a decent distance away from a mob I want to kill. So I set up my monk to pull, and this is the order things take place:

1. monk throws a star at the mob.
2. when mob gets to monk, the monk pops a hard hitter to grab a chunk of agro.
3. The shammy would cast his slow.
4. the mage would malo
5. the mage would send in pet
6. the zerker would start his auto atk

this is a basic start to a fight. I would have a healer merc and either a dps caster merc or tank merc in the mix, but this is how I would like to basically start out a normal fight.

prior to using this program I ran 3 monitors with 4 toons and would just move my mouse between the screens clicking the buttons to make this happen and just alt tab to the zerker to turn auto atk on and bounce back and forth

running through it once again...These are the biggest things that don't make any sense...

http://i.imgur.com/Aqx28in.png
http://i.imgur.com/adBevfC.png
http://i.imgur.com/o7Owi4W.png

[lax]

1. monk throws a star at the mob.
2. when mob gets to monk, the monk pops a hard hitter to grab a chunk of agro.
3. The shammy would cast his slow.
4. the mage would malo
5. the mage would send in pet
6. the zerker would start his auto atk

Again, you need to step back and remember you're playing a game and to play the game you push buttons, and ISBoxer has to push the same buttons you do in order for the same thing to happen. Zero of the things in what you said involve a button that needs to be pressed, so how exactly can you expect us to tell you how to set it up? You probably want one Mapped Key, which sends out a different key to each of the windows, to activate the things you just said. It's just a matter of deciding how you want to activate it, and what keys to send to where. It really doesn't matter to us what the abilities do... You can have one button send many different keys to many different windows at the same time by adding Actions to a Mapped Key; the ones I showed you in the wizard only do one key to any number of windows, because that is the basic setup people use.

#1 The Game Key Bindings tab you just linked is detailed in the walkthrough video I linked you earlier. You should be filling in the Follow Target and Assist Target boxes. The Targeting Table is filled in for you -- it specifies which key each guy needs to press in order to target each other.

The rest of the tab is irrelevant to you because EQ1 does not have Interact with Target, "Focus Target" maybe but this is rarely used in ISBoxer even for games that use it, and the bottom does not apply to EQ1. Just fill in the Assist Target, and Follow Target keys, to match what is bound in the game.


#2 the conflicting key maps happens when you select options during the Quick Setup Wizard that are not compatible with the previously-generated Key Maps. If this is confusing you, you should probably clear your configuration and start clean because it'll only get worse from there. Just go to File, and select Clear.

#3 If you're confused by that, either uncheck the Advanced options on the last page of the wizard or check out the Pro setup. It sounds like you're not going to be satisfied at all by setting up the basics anyway without going into the complicated stuff. Watch my video on that and see if this is the direction you're currently looking for... http://isboxer.com/wiki/Style:MMO_-_Pro

[bob]

and to add my two cents (coz I was typing it out when Lax answered ).

First image - http://i.imgur.com/Aqx28in.png

I'm going to assume you mean the Target select table, rather than the "what is the in-game bind for Follow/Assist/IWT/Focus (worth noting that NOT all games have ALL these options).
The Target table is asking you what each character has to press in order to target the other character.
Going across in the top row, if Finchy is your active character (your main, the one you are currently playing from). What key does Finchy press in order to Target himself? F1? Most MMO's, F1 targets yourself. What does Finch press to Target Bigzz? and so on. Now sometimes you wont know this until after you have set this up and logged in and formed your team, but you can always fix it afterwards in the Character Set -> Slot -> Slot number, Variable Keystrokes.

MiRai has a video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl6MZxHXAoA, and it is also on the same page that describes this notion too http://www.isboxer.com/wiki/Common_modi ... eting_keys.

Second image - http://i.imgur.com/adBevfC.png

This one is a bit more tricky, but it means a couple of things to me.
1. You are using the Quick Start Wizard on a profile that has already got stuff setup in it. This is no issue, it will happen. If you don't need the prior config, use the File menu -> Clear. If you do, read on.
2. When you went through the Wizard, on that last series of pages, you selected some different values in the Hotkeys and Game Key Bindings tab that are not the same as the last time you ran it so ISBoxer is asking if you want to:
a) make a new set of Key Maps so your new character set will have settings distinct from your other character set
b) overwrite your previous settings
c) use what you chose previously
d) don't do it.
So choose an option. As I like to have all my character sets using the same in game binds for the same functions, I usually choose option C and just assume I screwed up something.

Third image - http://i.imgur.com/o7Owi4W.png

Don't tick the Advanced tick box. If the other stuff is confusing, then the advanced stuff will be even more so (mainly because it is asking you about some options that come from understanding what the previous stuff was asking.


ps. Do what Lax says. He knows way more than any of us imposters

Hi finchy,
This is just my $.02. You might want to try with just 2 characters to get a feel for it first. Once you get some basics down, like follow and some fighting, you'll start getting the hang of it. You'll be able to add more characters very easily until you have your army.

I use ISBoxer to box a lot of characters in EQ2. Now I can setup a group in no time. I tried EQ1, but I found that so difficult to even play a single character, I gave up - I didn't even make it to the boxing part.