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Welcome to the Lazy[FCUK] Wiki

Welcome to the Lazy[FCUK] Wiki.

Nothing much here yet, but expect it to be updated as Cyth gets around to it.

For those browsing here via the http://www.thereviled.co.uk/Index.php5 url, please reset your bookmark/link/whatever to http://wiki.lazyfcuk.com/index.php5 as this address is temporary, subject to change and largely used purely to avoid over protective spam filters.

Mean time, enjoy your stay, avoid the Sinister Keg, and try not to break anything.

The Mad Bad Multi Boxing Project of AwesomeSauce

As those of you who know about Lazy[FCUK] will already understand, Lazy[FCUK] is largely about doing things the "easy" way. Sometimes the easy way isn't necessarily any less work, or even "easier" per se, and is more a case of taking some of the sting out of playing solo, or using a different play style to make things a little less difficult.

The multibox project is one example where making things "easier" really doesnt mean any simpler.

For those that don't know, dual- or multi-boxing is where you take a computer or a couple of computers, a few fully paid accounts and a peice of hardware or software that will allow you to send input from one keyboard and mouse to each individual game client, on one or a number of computers.

In essence it means you can quite simply run a 1 man army.

The MBMBPoA (Mad, Bad, Multi-Boxing Project of AwesomeSauce) is Cyth's latest project. Taking the skills learned from multi-boxing 3 accounts on Eve-Online for megamining to the extreme, the current goal is to run a reasonably size fellowship around middle earth in Lord of the Rings online, with the aim of turning a solitary character into a solitary but very confused & schitzophrenic one.

Day 1: Location, Location, Location...

So obviously the first thing to get sorted is to actually decide where and how you're gonna set up your rig for some quality MMO Schitzophrenia.

Unlike Eve-Online the system requirements for Lotro meant that whilst my system is probably capable of running a few instances of the client, its far more stable and frankly interesting to set up for a multi session on a couple of computers at once.

With Lotro especially, its also worth noting that a number of users have reported having problems sending keystrokes to a minimised client, or a client running in the background, and so for intial tests, just running the one client per system seemed like a safe bet.

This decided, with my pc now set up in my own office at home, I got Lotro installed on both of my laptops and then decided how best to broadcast commands to each system from my pc.

Hardware solutions are prefered by a lot of boxers, as KVM switches are fairly easy to come by, and will allow you to send commands to a whole bunch of computers. Unfortunately most KVM gear these days only supports PS2 devices, which is no use for a dedicated Razer™ usb user like me. Additionally most of the cheap ones only allow you to send commands to one computer at a time, which limits their use for commanding world shattering armies of clones.

Software solutions on the other hand, are cheap (the most expensive advertised through http://www.dual-boxing.com group is listed at $30) and most are free. Most of them include the ability to multiplex output (that is, send it to a number of pcs at once) and some include other funky and satisfying features, like picture in picture (PiP) and so on.

The most well known of the lot are Octopus, Synergy and Keyclone and the vast majority of boxers seem to use one of these three products.

Unfortunately the vast majority of boxers are also WoW players and so the only support for any of these applications also comes in "WoW" flavours which dont translate to Lotro well.

I could have gone for one of these options, I could have edited a Wow script or two to my own devices and got it running on Lotro. But Octopus is almost impossible to get hold of now as the developers have apparently disappeared and the original site is now permanently offline. Synergy runs on script files which would need a lot of work to get running. Keyclone, whilst looking like the better option anyway, costs $19 per system its installed on.

So I rooted about on the Dual Boxing forums and came up with a post that someone had made about a nice bit of easy to install and use freeware called Input Director.

The price tag had me interested. The lack of scripts had me intruiged. The fact that it didnt take 10minutes to track down a download for it, and had attracted a fair amount of interest had me installing it on each of my systems pretty sharpish, and before long I was in complete control of 3 systems at once and waiting for the Lotro client to fire up.

Day 2: As lost as Adam on Mothersday

While researching things a bit prior to setting up my rig ready to do the Schitzophrenic SideStep in Lotro, i'd read about macros. Lots of Macros. I mean crazy numbers of macro's. So many that you begin to suspect that, whilst flicking through the ones people regularly use, theyve actually slipped in a few for flossing their teeth or tieing their shoes up.

I've never really been a major macro fan. Back in the days of Star Wars Galaxies most players had built themselves a few macro's to automate boring tasks, but all within the mechanics of the game themselves. G15's are mentioned a lot, nasty clunky logitech mass produced evilness. My Razer Tarantula only has a handful of programmable buttons, but barely a patch on the myriad of options on the Logitech board.

Being a bit dumb, I decided to play down the macro thing. They cant be that vital, I wont need so many of them, etc etc etc

In retrospect, it wasn't the best idea I've ever had....

I hadn't factored a few things in to my careful calculations you see. Unlike Eve Online where it had been a simple task of tabbing between windows and targetting shared waypoints, or even better "Squad Maneuvers" I was litterally replicating input between each instance of Lotro.

All input.

Thats all chat channels, all key presses, mouse clicks and the like dutifully copied from pc to pc. Initially amusing, I soon found it next to impossible to actually get all my characters heading the same way. Unless you could some how manage to get each character to be facing in exactly the same direction, even the slightest movement could see each character wandering off on its own private adventure across the country side. What only added to the fun was the fact that lag meant that not all key presses were registered at the same time, or to the same degree. After 10 minutes of struggling I had only just managed to slaughter a level 7 wolf outside Celondim and that was only after some random newb had decided to join in and help.

Needless to say, it wasnt going well.

So i relented, and set up a shortcut key to stop Input Director from mirroring input from my pc to the drones, and another to pick it back up. Well i say set up, i should say attempted. I could get it to stop sending without any problems, but despite my best efforts i couldnt get the system to pick it back up, leaving my drones stranded till i dutifully tabbed out, restarted mirroring on input director manually, and picked the drones back up.

I figured more advanced macro's may have been in order, so i set up a quick macro to automatically target the group leader, and another to follow them. It met with just the kind of success i was beginning to loathe. On triggering the macro from my main character, the drones would indeed begin following the leader. Unfortunately it also meant the leader would target and follow one of the drones. Much running in circles ensued and my temper grew frayed.

Pretty soon I realised I would have to run the clones seperately to my group leader, essentially playing two characters at once to control my army. But by then I'd had enough, and as day 2 drew to a close, I disconnected from the clones for the last time that evening, and almost ritualistically logged them out before letting out a strained sigh of relief.