Multi account control

[way2stupid]

Usualy I just read the forums and ask in game, but due to the decrease in players that I know I figured why not ask on the forums.

I have searched a little but with no great success, now is there away to control multi accounts (the toons themself/toon actions). I have 3 accounts and decided I would like to level up all three at once, but this gets alittle anoying tab spazzing, and i was curious if there was a way to macro/script ? one account to control the others?

If this is not possible then of well, I figured I would atleast ask.





Anyways thanks for whoever posts with any info

[sorhan]

/assist macros and /follow are about as close as you will get, really.

And I have to say I'm happy with it like that. I'm glad that multi-logging is possible, but I don't see any reason for it to be easier to do than it already is. You can always try multiple monitors or even different machines for less tabbing, but personally I find same machine/windowed to be much easier.

And do use the target ncu windows, it helps immensely especially with a debuffing prof.

[way2stupid]

Thanks for the reply, I figured that was probably the limit, been using them off and on for 5 years or so.
I use to do the KVM but had a blowout on one pc so I sort of "got use to" using 1 monitor and the tab key.
Now I just use a 28" and have all 3 accounts windows on the screen in 1040 - 780 so I can use all three, tried it on Numpty island and it worked pretty well.
Downside is after about 2 hours the shell there all running in starts to spazz a little when in shadowlands.


Oh well maybe in the future who knows...

[bitnykk]

you'll be efficiently dualing (or more) only with pet profession on passive client(s), using script to make pets autoassist the mainly played toon.

out of that i don't see any way to avoid alt-tabbing spamzor (out of having several computers ofc).

[dockwagon]

Search the net for multiboxing and wow. Watch the movies, read how they do it and figure it out yourself.

I've succesfully run 5 toons from one computer, 1 doc, 1 mp, 1 engie, 2 solds.

Some pointers

Do not script/macro gameplay. It's against the spirit of the game and the EULA.You will get some rude tells and petitioned now and then. I think I had a standard answer. "If you feel that I am playing against the EULA, please point out what in the EULA I am breaking and petition me". Being polite and asking people get off their ass to read the EULA and petition saved the admin staff of AO some petitions I believe.

Virtual desktop : It's a must, I use virtuawin when I use windows, it's free as in free beer and free speech. The reason is that to memorize what window is what toon. When multiple toons, swapping to the right toon is important. Also the ability to minimize windows not on current virtual desktop saves cpu cycles.

Good keyboard : I use logitech g15 to set up hotkeys to swap between clients easy. I think I set up virtual desktop 1 as ctrl+alt+windows+f1. Pressing g14 is much faster and easier. I use about about 0.2 second to swap to doctor for panic healing if **** hits the fan.

Multicore cpu and more modern OS than xp if 64 bits. Unfortunately xp didn't work as good with virtual windows and made mistakes.

Key cloner : To distribute keypresses between clients. I paid for keyclone. Study it and redo hotbars, decide which keys should be distributed. For instance, full auto is good, but move forward breaks /follow. Also have a key to stop distributing. Try chatting with it on and toons go everywhere :-)
GM I've talked with ingame said keyclone was ok, demostrated with 5 toons jumping at the same time etc. Another example was that I had one key for all my toons to assist the leader and I could press burst.

I distribute arrow keys, but not awsd. This is because if lag hits, I can use back arrow to break /follow on all toons so they don't go running after a ghost leader and get killed.

Decide on a leader, this is good because use him/her to invite the rest of the toons. The inviter is always f2 for all others. So have /follow on some hotbar and getting toons in line is easy.

Always invite healer as #2 or have him/her as leader. Then invite everyone in a fixed manner. That is because if toon Y gets pounded, you know hat toon Y is f3 on healers friendslist, so swap, f3, heal, is quicker than checking who is hurt after swapping to healer.

Decide which hotbars to distribute and use a lot of testing/planning on what. I distribute 5,6,7,8,9 and 0. Make sure if you depend on 7 for instance that it isn't destructive for any toons. Ie it's AMS but doctor had targetted himself and ubt-ed.

Think of what to do if your leader dies. Ie, can another take over?

/assist is your friend.

Have weapons with short recycle time on specials, and trigger attack by the followers by using specials. Do not try to use q if you like your sanity.

Do not distribute q. You need it to handle multiple crowds and cc. Ie my leader dockwagon attacks a mob by pressing q, press the /assist dockwagon button to get everyone target that mob, then press fling and burst to trigger attacsking by my followers, start to shoot another mob with dockwagon, press assist again and then press key to debuff so the mp's debuff it too. The debuff could have been calm. Or I could shift to a soldier, target another mob, ams and full auto, do the same with the other soldier.

I think only ranged toons are good for multiboxing. The hassle to be in range, maybe an enforcer to mango every mob onto himself might work.

Realise that your toon never will be utilised to their fullest. Don't care about 30 seconds buffs etc. What you will do better is coordinating. I've stod against mobs with 4 toons that have wiped 6 people. It's just that coordinating myself is much easier than others

It's a lot of work, but I enjoyed it and it was kinda fun to do Arid Rift with the firepower, burst, fling, fa, send in pets to mop up. 1 alien pr FA cycle :-D

[Xyphos]

Using a 3rd party application to control a character is strictly prohibited as per EULA.
Yet you are allowed to use multiple computers and an application called SYNERGY (google it) to control the computers from the same keyboard and mouse, without using a hardware KVM switch. (I use synergy myself, and it's awesome)

However, using the existing in-game scripting engine, it is possible to have unattended assistance from pet professions and if this qualifies as an exploit, then please forgive me in advance but as of this posting, I do belive is qualifies as a border-line exploit (well within the game play limitations of AO without fully breaking the EULA)

you're going to make 2 AO scripts; one shell script and one main loop.

starting with the shell script, named afkpets-shell.txt

/follow
/afkpets.txt %t

simple and clean 2-liner script that launches yet another script that will forever loop until logout or another script is executed

the main looping script named afkpets.txt is as follows:

/assist %1
/delay 250
/pet attack
/delay 250
/assist
/pet heal
/delay 250
/afkpets.txt %1

Explaination:
%1 is the name of the person the pet user will be assisting, as given by %t (target) from the shell script which means in order to use, you need to have the pet user target the main character that you'll be using mostly before executing the shell script.

So how it works:
pet user will be on constant /follow mode and utilize assist targeting to target what your main character is fighting then after a small delay, send the pets to attack it. then after another small delay, assist the current fighting target to target what the mob is fighting and sends the heal pet in to heal (if applicable) and then another delay before self-repeating the process.

you might want to turn off pet chat, as the spam can be quite annoying

[dockwagon]

I've done the petattack in a loop, but it was deemed to inefficient and mistakes was made.

It also is kind of rude to have a pet user on reclaim with a pet spamming pet chat while busy fighting with the alive toons.

The reason I discarded it was that it was much faster and efficient to have cloned /assist dockwagon and a pet attack button. I could swap targets with Dockwagon as well without pets reassisting, good when things have to die fast. But the most efficient use was to do like this :

Attack mob 1 with DW - Debuff and start the machinery.
Attack mob 2 with DW - Debuff and send pets.
Attack mob 3 with DW - Debuff, swap to a soldier, ams
Attack mob 4 with DW - Debuff, swap to a soldier, ams

Mob 1 and 2 could be done without swapping client.

I took pride to run through and clean up every train in Arid Rift. When I learned to offtank the nanodrainers on the soldier, I hardly ever wiped. The challenge for me was to handle more difficult situations, not to have a farm machine.

The keycloning is against the EULA I've heard before, I've petitioned myself and look into forums for any official word. The only response I've had is from a GM that said it was ok as long as any action was initiated by me and not a script.

When I started to do more than duallogging, I was bored of the game, and setting up this and doing it efficiently kept me playing at least for five more months. I believe this extra challenge keeps many playing for longer than normal.

[Phyxr]

I dual log when I want to level a character quickly. I generally have a hgher level fixer as the companion for healing, evade and damage buffs and also for crowd control.

I run both on the same machine and use no other apps. I find that switching between instances is quick and becomes second nature very quickly. To help I do use the follow macro and I have the follower in third person view whilst the main leveling toon is in first person view so I always know which toon I currently have control of.

On rare occasions I have run as many as six instances, but they are spread across multiple PCs and only for social or org building reasons.

Being able to dual log really helps the solo player and provided your PC is up to it, needs nothing more than the odd macro.

[dockwagon]

Pharox: If there are only two accounts, alt+tab between them will always yield the right account. The problem are if there are three or more as the OP asked for. Then alt+tab or alt+tab and tab confusion might kill a toon.

[way2stupid]

Some good points made, after trying a few things, I opted for windowed mode on my desktop
I run all three accounts sized to fit, seems to work great.
I did mess with some of the programs mentioned, but I think I am either anal about how I do things or I just had an itch i couldn't scratch so I turned to the window AO and I must admit I am happier than I thought I would be, these are all new toons btw, my alt backup OSB is running from my laptop just incase lol.

The machine I run on is able to handle it with ease, dual Nvidia 275 bfg brand, 8 gig ram and 6 drives striped raid 0 ( yeah I know no redundancy but, the gamble is fun!.
Quad core, somthing like a 1200 power supply been a while since I messed with my pc
Windows 7 home premium is sucking atm having and had issues with AO since installed, ultimate and enterprise versions AO works great 32and 64 bit.

[PingBong]

just whatever u do dont have an enf and a shade in the same bunch, my wrist is sore after every time i have an agg contest with myself