5-boxing done easy with Strategic Commanders. My story.

[Bulge]

Since I hate grinding xp and staying on a single spot for more then 30 minutes, I started boxing. At first to cut downtime, later to get a more rewarding experience by fighting non stop, and being able to actually progress in a dungeon and taking on ads and such. I do not like grouping and do not really want to go into why: there are other forums  for that. :) Basically, it takes me out of my immersion, no matter how fine players I am with. It's a Bulge thing.

I now 5-box and do this with hardly more effort then playing 1 or 2 toons simultaneously. My trick is to use Microsoft Strategic Commanders. To make full use of the Commander you are required to have a separate computer for each boxed char, though I do have two accounts on a single computer now too. (of the 5).

When I started duo-boxing (A druid as second box) I used two monitors and two keyboards. It was the messing around with two keyboards that made me quit my boxing in the end: too much hassle, too much space used, not fun.  After single-boxing for a while I decided to buy a Strategic Commander and use it to steer my box. I also bought a KVM switch because I didnt want two monitors on my desk. This came out to be THE solution for handling a boxed char with ease.

The good thing about Commanders is that they are USB and thus can still "steer" a computer, even when you have another comp switched to your keyboard and monitor through the KVM switch.  
The Commander is fully programmable and you can enter sequences as long as you want. They have 6x4 is 24 hotbuttons, which is more then enough for each and every command that I want the boxed toon to perform, especially since each of these buttons can have an extensive Macro assigned to them.

For instance, I have a Buff macro for my druid that makes him untarget anything, stand up, summon horse, memspellset Get Ready, target Bulge, cast 4 buffs, memspellset DPS again. This is all under one button. There are many more smaller macro's of which /assist Bulge  /cast snare is one.
This was so easy that I quickly added a 3rd and 4th box, since I had some extra computers to spare (left overs, I upgrade a lot). These are a Necro and Mage, easy to box pet-classes, yet each with their own utility.

They also have their Buff macros on their own commander and off course their combat macro's.

Getting my entire group buffed and ready to go (including buffed pets) is 4 single pushes on each commander. When I want them to follow, this is also 4 quick pushes with a macro that does /target Bulge /follow. Same for stop following and sit to med. I never have to switch to my 2 petclasses, since I can completely control them through the commanders.

However I have added a second monitor to put my Druid and Cleric on: this gives me a nice 3rd person view and I can also see what happesn to these two crucial toons at all times: they Succor, Heal and Pacify and the second monitor gives me a good update on what happens. I use EQwindows for those two and switch quickly between the two by having assigned one button of their Commander to the EQWindows-swap-key. I will put the cleric on his own box in the future though, since I now sometimes cast pacify, when I want to snare..... :) Does happen less and less, but this is exactly the reason why I never was a fan of boxing on the same comp. :) Apart from the lag.

Now another GREAT thing about using the commanders is, that my left hand is totally appointed to handling them and this feels very natural after a while. While with two keyboards, I was making mistakes all the time, and was hitting the wrong keys and sending the wrong tells and whatnot. Off course my left hand does have to hit the keyboard (for the Main) now and then but for the rest you'll see it hovering above one of the commanders at all times, making the magic work. :)

Here are some pics:

This is photo of my desk: not that messy at all.


Here is a diagram of the setup of all the comps, commanders and such:


And here is a printout (from the setup program that comes with the Strategic Commander) of the setup of my Necro on the commander. Under each of those buttons can hide a more or less extensive macro or maybe just a single stroke. Apart from the printout of the Commanders, I have printouts of the several Spellists of my toons, and also of their Hotkeys in the game.



After all, making it all work together requires setting these three important fields: Commander buttons/macro's, Spellists in game and Hotkeys in game.

Spellists: it is important to know at what slot you have memmed your spells since spellists get swapped out sometimes during buff macros and such, and you want to do this as efficient as possible without spells ending up under the wrong key/macro.

Hotkeys: last but definately not least, are the setups of my hotkeys in the game itself. These play off course a crucial role in conjunction with the Strategic Commanders, since where the Commanders function as a sort of automated keyboard, the hotkey buttons are the ones that actually set the char in motion, cast the spell, swap the list and so forth.

As you will realize, there are two "places" where I can setup macro's, since EQ now features this too. So I can put a small macro under a Hotkey in the game, which will then be triggered by some button of the Commander, or I can put a much more elaborate Macro into the Commander itself, which can trigger a whole sequence of hotkeys and spells and keyboard-strokes in the game: or I can even have a  setup in away that macro's are used in both, all the result of a single keystroke on the commander.

You can imagine how setting up this whole kaboodle can take some work and it took me months to do it, but off course it was a gradual proces. I added the boxes over time. Right now however I have things so maximised that I can Buff my entire group with 4 pushes and find them medding and buffed to the full when I look back at my monitor.

Not only works this whole setup great for fighting and dungeoncrawling, but you can also have fun in other ways: for instance, I have a macro for each toon, where they /dance and /cheer then walk back a bit, forward a bit, turn around and boogie..... and I can make them do this simultaneously by pushing just 4 buttons fast. :)

Ok, I AM a freak!

If I wasn't in such a great Guild already, I would Guild all my toons in Bulge and the Bulgettes or something. ;)

Cheers!

[Noriko]

This sounds interesting.  Will have to check it out.  Have you tried any other devices other than the SC?

[Bulge]

I have been using the Trustmaster Tactical Board for SWG, and that worked fine, but the Commander is smaller and can be macroed much better then the Tactical Board. The 24 button combinations on the Commander are really enough, and if you must use more, there is a switch on the commander where you can load  2 extra complete setups , so if you really must you can make 3 setups of 24 keys each, for different situations. I have never had to resort to that though.

The Strategic Commanders are truly a great piece of hardware and the software that comes with it is absolutely great und userfriendly. You can even record the macro's while in game, if you want too. If you enter the setup program later on, you will find back your recorded macro's and can name them or tweak them to your liking. Great stuff. Only thing you have to realize is,  that the Commander simulates a keyboard only, though you can even hotkey the mouse-buttons. But you can not record any mouse-*movements*.

However: the commander CAN be used as mouse too, sice they also have a movement on the x and y axis and even a 3rd axis. They are designed for RTS's and these axis were implemented to move around your map quickly. I have disabled those though, the biggest reason being, that if you have them enabled, it is very easy to accidentally move your char around while he is casting. Which means interrupts and that's a thing you dont want on a boxed char. WHen you push the buttons of the Commander it happens a lot that you move the "ball" that the buttons are on somehwat, so....better keep movement disabled, you can do all that in the setup program.


Have fun! I think they do not cost more then 30 bucks or so, though you may have to look a bit before you find one, since I am not sure if they are produced any more. I see them in stores here in Holland quit a lot still though.

By the way, I know Bards use the Commanders too, I think they are great to setup toe keep songs going and such. One of the bards on EQDiva posted and linked his own setup (extension is *.s14, I think), I think its a sticky post there.

[Noriko]

Have another question for ya.  How do you deal with lag?  Do you program pauses into the SC macro?  How about mem bug (like sometime you started memming a spell set and the book opens but nothing is memmed)?

[Bulge]

I do setup macro's in a way that there can be a small delay, so when I have to cast a spell that has a casting time of 6 seconds, I take 8 or 9 seconds or so. I also factor in a Fizzle, meaning I make the macro cast twice in a row fast: if the first one works then NP, if it doesn't, you get a second shot after a second or so. I factor that in too, since after a fizzle you have another extra second delay before you can have the macro do the next thing. I must say that I have very little lag, I am on a Power ADSL con and live about 30 km away from the Kane Bayle server which is in Amsterdam. :) Ping of 60 ms!

Also, all my comps are connected through a Router, so no crappy internetsharing or using one computer as a gateway or some: all have a direct link to the internet through the Router.

About the memspellset bug: that sure was annoying, but I have noticed it happens the least (or not all) when you activate  swapping from a STANDING position, and while you are NOT on a horse yet. So in my buff macros, I swap to the Get Ready spellset before I summon my horse, and after the buffing is done, I swap back to spellset DPS, (while still on the horse) and this has caused no problems. You have to factor in all the delays of swapping sets too off course, this can sometimes take up to 15+ seconds.

[Mortan]

Suppose I wasnted to create a macro to automatically hand items to my pet. Would the commander be able to handel that? Can it handle mouse commands? Or is it limited to simple keystrokes?

One of my toons I multi box is a bard. Currently he's just an /autofollow mana bot because I can't feseably twist while playing more than one toon...but can the commander be put into a loop so he could twist 2 or 3 songs at once continuaslly?

I personally use lots of keyboards and monitors, but haven't considered using something like this yet. Thanks for opening my eyes, heck the macro feature enough is enough to sell me.

[DiosT]

I'm glad you got your setup working..

I personally could never use a KVM switch, my story of using it is a horror story of the switch butting out my keyboard/mouse, and requiring me to go into the back of the computers, pull out the connectors and plug them back in trying to get the connection restored...


While playing the main shaman in the middle of a raid :-P


I decided I liked the reliability and capability of moving my rogue around, while still casting spells on my shaman...

May have just had a low quality switch, but still :-/ ick, dont think i could try it again.. Also bad to 'install and remove' keyboards/mice while the computer is on, though I believe high quality KVM's probably make the computer think it's still plugged in..


I also like just using the K/M part of the switch, multiple monitors let me review situations easily without switching around

[Bulge]

Ah yes, never had any trouble with my switch. :) It indeed emulates a mouse and keyboard so the comp thinks it is still connected. It's the most bugfree piece of equipment I use, to be honest.

The thing I hated most of boxing was all the keyboards and the monitors.
The two pet-classes are very easy to play, after all they are casters and do not have to move around. Just follow, or sit or cast or send pet. This can all be done without ever switching to their comps/view, through the commanders.

If every toon would have its own monitor I would get the same problems that I had when I used two keyboards: confusion about which toon I was looking at/handling/typing on again? :D

Thing is, I want to play the whole group as one strong toon or Family, rather then switching between their roles. So the KVM switch is there to get rid of the messy keyboards and monitors and not for the fact I can play those toons as the temporary main: I honestly never switch during my gameplay, not even when buffing up. I can even Pacify without ever switching to the Cleric himself.  It's all automated through the Commanders.  This is also why I would never make a chanter as bot: I would actually have to switch to his view often and actually play him if I would want to get some use out of him. Even though it *is*  possible to mezz through just the commanders, using /assist /mezz macros , the chanter would end up dead, becuase CC is more then just mezzing: it's the staying alive afterwards that is the hardest part. :D

So I don't really want to play my bots in themselves; they are more like extensions of my Main, adding abilities that SOE forgot to give the Beastlord class. ;) This does not mean, that all I do is send the pets in and heal a bit with my druid. You'd be surprised what you can do with a good setup of your commanders. Debuffs, dots, Malo, snare, nukes, I use them all when the situation calls for it. All through touching the buttons of my Commanders. Bulge, my main is like Director of the Orchestra and the Commanders are my instruments.

[Bulge]

Mortan, the Commander can not log mouse movements, though you can add the mousebuttons to the macro's.

They do seem fit for Bards though, since you can make macro's that play songs for a certain period of time. You should look on EQdiva, there is a Guide somewhere how to use the commander for bards.

However, these macro's are not looped, though you can make them VERY lenghty. I have not checked how long a macro you can make in the commander, I guess there is a limit to the length of the string of commands. Sure enough it should save you a lot of button pushes. And the least you can do is put the /end song /start new song under one buttonpush though you prolly already do that with the macro's in EQ itself.

If you want looped macro's you should look at other programs, but I think SOE considers those illegal, so better not discuss those.

[Shambler]

Sorry to bump a post thats 3 pages back :) but..
does this violate EULA at all?
I am guessing its in the grey line like eqwindows is.
I see a lot of bards love these and the nostrom 52.

I am currently in the Netherlands.. for a few more weeks anyways.
Which shop sells these :D


Oh yeah I can't imagine boxing more than 2 teribly well unless the rest consisted of clerics and wizards and a warrior tank :)

[Xarilok]

I used to AFK my bard with a gravis gamepad.

Set up a button on the controller to press the keyboard keys 1, 2 and 3 with a defined pause in between them, then set the buttton to autofire, then used...duct-tape, and taped the button down....presto, 3-twist ad infinium!

Course this was back right before I quit for a long time, so I wasnt worried about getting banned, as I didnt care.

I now play on a different server, and a different accout, so you didnt hear this from me, lol.

[Shambler]

If they banned people for useing gamepads.. we wouldn't have as many bards I bet heh.

[Sarkaukar]

Would it be possible to post the profiles for a few of your toons, ie cleric/druid and a caster?

More interested in the multiple macros used with the SC than anything else.

Thank ya.

[Vahaus Warder]

Nice setup!

Playing only one toon at a time now days must be boring.

[pongu]

I will just stick with my  three seperate sytems, lol