Sandboxing via ISBoxer?

Hi,

I noticed lax made this comment in another thread;

Looks like I'll need to do an update to Inner Space to make the mouse broadcasting work in mouselook mode, and I'll look into sandboxing to be able to launch additional instances.

I'm wondering if it would be possible to implement this as a general option for all games, through the ISBoxer wizard? I've been on a spree lately of going through F2P games, trying to find something fun. I've noticed a lot of them limit 1 client per PC (not always even intentionally, just because of the way the launcher is coded). I purchased a copy of Sandboxie to get around this, but when a client is sandboxed through that software, Innerspace can't interact with it, so it's only half a solution.

Being able to natively sandbox through ISBoxer would be another reason for people to buy ISBoxer. I'd even be willing to pay a little more if this were available as a plugin.

Cheers

PS,

Taken from the wiki -

ISBoxer is the only multiboxing software that can "sandbox" games like Diablo 3 and Star Wars: The Old Republic, allowing you to run multiple instances of these games on the same PC without a Virtual Machine or special sandboxing software!

If it's possible to do this already, is there a guide showing how to set it up for different games?

[MiRai]

While I'm not a programmer and cannot speak for how Inner Space operates, I will say this...

I cannot imagine that sandboxing a game client only requires an on/off switch that you're asking for. If it did, the other software choices out there would have this feature as well. I'm going to guess that each game that people expect to be supported requires Lax to tweak specific code each and every time sandboxing is required.

If there was such an on/off switch, it would still prove to be completely useless at times. Take a look at Diablo III for example, this game requires people who want to multibox it, to virtualize the cache folders. In the event that you could turn on a universal sandboxing feature (if it even works like that), you could still run into problems such as this where special virtualization or other additional settings would be needed.

That's what sandboxing does. It creates a sandbox so all clients run independently of each other.

There are two problem with using existing sandboxing tools. First, Innerspace can't interact with a client inside a sandbox. Second, you have to actively launch a client inside a sandbox or through a shortcut. Innerspace doesn't recognize Sandboxie shortcut as a valid path and, even if it did, the first issue would still prevent it from working.

If Innerspace had natively supported sandboxing, I'm sure lax could figure out a way to create an exception for Innerspace to connect between sandboxes it launches.

Over time, it would probably be more efficient to do things this way, too. Save him having to manually configure each game config every time a new game comes out, as you said.

[MiRai]

That's what sandboxing does. It creates a sandbox so all clients run independently of each other.

If the above quote was directed at why Diablo III has to use separate cache folders because it's being sandboxed, then how come SW:TOR (which also requires sandboxing) doesn't require the same virtualization of cache folders as Diablo III?

While I'm not here to argue about what is or isn't possible (since neither one of us are an expert in this field) I'm going to stick with my "It's probably not that easy" answer; however, only Lax can truly answer this question.

[lax]

In theory that's what sandboxing does, yeah. But in practice things are a bit hairy: Inner Space doesn't have a one size fits all sandbox, different games have different ways they need to be sandboxed, and in some cases I have to add support for their methods into Inner Space before it can handle it.

Well, that's why I made the suggestion. Is there any reason why you couldn't implement a comprehensive sandbox option that completely isolates the client (except from Innerspace, obviously)?

PS,

Do you know of a way to get Innerspace to recognize a Sandboxie link? For example, I'm trying to get Allods (F2P MMO) to run at the moment. To sandbox it, you have to create a shortcut via Sandboxie, which specifies which sandbox to launch the game in.

Eg -

E:\Archive\Start.exe /box:Allods1 "C:\Users\Public\Desktop\Allods Online.lnk"

When I navigate to this link, Innerspace clips the shortcut to E:\Archive\Start.exe (this is the Sandboxie executable). If I try to manually enter the link, Innerspace says "You specified a file that doesn't exist".

[lax]

The correct way to enter that into Inner Space with Add Game is:
* Executable: E:\Archive\Start.exe
* Parameters: /box:Allods1 "C:\Users\Public\Desktop\Allods Online.lnk"

I can't say that I think that will work though. I wasn't aware that Allods needed sandboxing, though I know people use ISBoxer with it (or used to...). I'll check it out.

I suppose I could have simplified things by just asking you to do that in the first place

I just thought it would be good to have a comprehensive means of doing it without having to bug you every time a new game comes out.

Cheers!

PS,

You're right, changing the parameters didn't work either.

Failed to execute "..." Inner Space Launcher Error Code -19.