A petty strange, yet awesome if it works, request..

So i'll just start of by saying that this may belong in the q&a forum or the technicians, but I couldnt decide which, so i'm putting it here - as it will likely be a bit of a challenge anyway.

At home i've got a pretty powerfull computer that has no problem running two instances of guild wars at once. I also have dual monitors, and theres nothing more fun that maximising guildwars on each screen as if I'm playing two copies at once.
But its not really the same as actually playing two copies at once... which is what i'm asking you guys for help with!

Essentially I want to be able to invite my friend over some time, grab some beers, fire up my computer and play some split-screen co-op with him. Him on his keyboard and mouse, using the left moniter, and me using my own keyboard and mouse, on the right moniter.

As far as I can see, all that I need for this to become a reality would be a programme that is able to keep two applications 'active' at the same time, and then feed the button presses on one keyboard and mouse to one of those aplications, while sending the other presses to the second application. (Hope that didnt sound too confusing)

So has anyone ever done this? I think it'd be pretty awesome, especially in the more competitive aspects of the game.
If not, i'm sure by putting our heads together we could find something in the vast interwebs that would make this a reality, and the whole community could benefit from it.
Thanks all. Questions, comments, critisms appreciated.

Yeah sounds like fun.

Although it's very possible for your friend to unplug his computer, keyboard, mouse, get the wires and bring that over to your house.

Actually you'd need extra wires to connect him up to the internet too, unless he has a wireless card inside.

;D

Closest thing I can find is an application called TeamPlayer, which allows you to attach multiple keyboards and mice and have separate cursors for each mouse, bit I don't think it allows you to lock each keyboard/mouse combo to a separate application. I could be wrong.

hehe, yeah, this is exactly the reason why I think people dont play guildwars together (physically, i mean). Which is a shame. But ts just so messy having to take an entire freaking computer with you and hooking it up. Another reason why i'd love this to work, itd just be like "oh grab my spare keyboard and mouse andwe're ready!"

Sounds interesting... so that achieves half of what I would need to pull this off - a way to seperate the key presses between keyboards. Has anyone else had any luck with this app?

Thanks, guys.

cant really help you with the dual keyboard/mouse thing, but running two guild wars at once is simple. program called gwx2. Download it at gwx2.co.nr There is a guide on guru right here: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10301247

The poster posts his own link for the download, i dont know how safe it is so i posted the official site. Also, i dont know much about this program: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10373154

Its something that seems like it could work, i have not tried it though.

Hehe, yeah, thanks. I've used gwx2 many times before, thanks!

Pretty sure you'll need a second PC.

I don't think you can make two GW windows active at the same time

Well yeah this seems to be the problem. But if there is an application that can make any two windows active at the same time, there is no reason why it shouldn't work with guildwars.
Its just a question of finding that application.. xD

Google GWx2, that should be all you need for running 2 instances of GW, easy to use. GL HF

Read the FUUUUUU text. It's not about 2 GW windows. It's about having 2 windows ACTIVE. So he can switch without problems between skillbars, windows and effectively move two characters (+ heroes) at the same time.

Erm... yeah. Please try to read the post before commenting xD.

I appreciate the thought to help, though.

Yep, think of the possibilities.. *daydreams about playing HA alone*. xD

I think the trouble lies in the fact that if both windows are active,
then any input from the keyboards would be sent to both instances of GW.

I have heard something about a company called Userful inventing a program that can 'split' one computer into multiple computers using several monitors, keyboards and mice.

I don't know much about it, but I'm sure if you google it you'll find something.

Hmm, yeah I sure will have a look. Really all we need is two things; A way to run two active windows of guildwars at once, and a way to split the keyboard input to the two windows.
I'm not sure I like 100% the idea of spliting into 'mini computers' as that sounds way more complex for what I actually need to do... but whatever. Google is my friend.

EDIT: Is it just me, or is this just for linux?

It might be just for Linux.
As I said, I don't really know much about it and didn't bother to look =P

I used to multibox on WoW, which involved using a program that sent keystrokes to multiple windows at once.
There were two different programs... one completely cloned my key presses and sent them to other windows.
The other let me assign which key presses should be sent to other windows and which should be ignored.

The latter may possibly be capable of something similar to what you're asking.
What you would have to do is have different bindings on each instance of GW,
and set up the script for the program to send certain keystrokes to specific windows.

I'm not very good at explaining, but I'll try...

GW #1 = The keys 1-8 are your skills and W, A, S, D are for moving.

GW #2 = Numpad keys 1-8 are skills and the arrow keys are for moving.

The script for the program will send keystrokes on 1-8 and W, A, S, D to GW #1 only
...and it will send the keystrokes on numpad and arrow keys to GW #2 only.

This kinda makes it so you can control both characters at once, using different keys.
However, you'd have to write the script yourself and as you can see, it's rather complicated...

I see what you mean. And could it be scripted so that the keys 1-8 on keyboard #1 send to guildwars #1, and the keys 1-8 on keyboard #2 send to guildwars #2? and so on?

Though mind you... thats a lot of scripting. Every single action would have to be done... :S.

Thinking about it, with something like this you wouldnt even need to have two apllications active, would you? It just does that automatically.

I found this product called Team Player:

http://www.wunderworks.com/teamplayer/

It allows two sets of keyboards and mice to connect to one PC, however at the moment it does not seem that it will allow you to set the focus to separate applications.

Reading on their forums though, it looks like this feature is under developement, so it might be worth keeping an eye on it.

I'm not too sure, but if I remember correctly the program also supported the remapping of keys
and the use of joysticks/gamepads and such too, so it might be possible to do that.

Anyway, the name of the program was AutoHotkey I think.
So if you google that, no doubt you'll be able to find if it's of any use to you or not.

Ahh. Autohotkey. God I strugled with scripting on that... Just creating a rapidfire script was a nightmare for me. Hmm.

Hmm, thankyou. I'll have a looksie.

Unfortunately, doing what the OP asked is not possible. Here is why:

The purpose of an operating system is to coordinate tasks and manage system components. To allow users to be able to easily define new tasks, the GUI was created. Hence, everytime you move your mouse, you are creating a new task for the computer. When I say task, I do not mean task in the sense of "Task Manager".

Your mouse and keyboard input falls under the category of system interrupts. User interrupts have high priority. This means that no matter what the system is doing, it must listen to mouse and keyboard inputs (for general understanding this is enough).

Now, mouse and keyboard inputs have to be translated by the OS and the mouse/keyboard drivers. To make this as simple to understand as possible, lets take a look at only 3 of the main requirements.

For a mouse click, the system needs to know the x,y coordinates and what window/application those x,y coordinates exist in. This idea of focus comes from the need to know what application/window the user define action must occur in.

When a certain window/application has focus, all of needs of that application/window take priority over other processes. This also means that the OS will send instructions to the system hardware to focus on the needs of application/window in focus.

When you introduce a second mouse/keyboard and want it to behave as a separate second user input, you need to create another user interrupt and again introduce another "focus".

All system components execute instructions linearly and therefore it is not possible to have two different items both in focus as this creates no focus.

In other words, try to look at 2 different pictures at the same time with your eyes and draw the first picture with your left hand while you draw the second picture with your right.

I tried to make this as simple as possible to understand. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the post. You obviously know a lot more about computers than me... but are you telling me there is no possible way for a PC to have two seperate mouse cursors controled by seperate mice at the same time? Because, if so, how are things like this possible?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MUOn_nJmRA

Moved to tech.

Thanks, i guess xD.

It's possible to have two mice and two mouse cursors. There's an old utility, http://cpnmouse.sourceforge.net/ that does this, also Microsoft has a SDK kit for developers to write programs to do this. I think I have used the cpnmouse before, at least I did use a utility that allowed 2 cursors, 2 mice and one computer. It worked, but you had to constantly regain focus for the other mouse. So if your friend wanted to use a skill, you would lose control on your Guild Wars, then when you regained control, he would lose control.

You MIGHT be able to use something like virtual box, install an OS and Guild Wars on a virtual machine. It will grab the mouse, but I'm not sure how it would interact with cpnmouse. It might grab both, or when the virtual os looses focus, it might react like every other program and just not respond.

Technically, what you need is a program that can assign a duo keyboard+mouse to one GW, while the other duo keyboard+mouse is assigned to the other GW. It's easy to have 2 duos working, but the "program assignment part" is the hard one (an OS like Windows only treats one program at a time for whatever keyboard+mouse you use). I have no idea if this exists, but a quick google points to software allowing you to have multiple devices but not assign them independently to programs.

Hmm... interesting. It seems as though I was underestimating how difficult this would be.
If one person is constantly loosing control, I dont think that would be very good for this.

I wonder, does anyone know of any other decent forums I could also ask about this? I mean one that isnt guild-wars related.
I mean, I gotta figure - some other people must have been thinking something like this before, right?
Perhaps theres a community of people out there who know more about this issue...? (Not that anyone here is useless, ofcourse)

Yeah, in all my time with computers I have never heard or seen anything like what is being asked here. I guess I kind of just assumed it was because not many people would have use for it.... but i'm begining to see its more a technical issue, now.

Sorry to double post, but i've just found this interesting thread:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/...7825_10_0.html

They are essentially talking about the same thing as us, and a few applications have been suggested that prove it is possible, they're just out of date now... or in a foreign language.

I'll keep editing this post with any further findings.

Interesting, looks like team player may be what we're looking for.
Watch this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE5vA2wPYkA) and at 2:06, do you see what I see?:
Multi-application focus?

I thought the applications they mention where all about simply connecting 2 keyboard+mice without the ability to assign them to different applications. It seems that JetWay (you have to google it since the link from the thread doesn't work) has (or rather "had") such an application but you have to buy their hardware:
http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2025

The other applications they mention all allow you to have 2 sets of keyboard+mice, but you have to manually switch applications as fusa explained.

If you think about it, the mice don't actually have to be assigned to any application, since the apllication they're clicking in will be the one they affect.
But yes, the problem remains an issue for the keyboard.
Also, check out my youtube link above, i'm sure thats showing multi application focus. But after downloading the software ( a small programme) I cant see any form of options page to turn such a feature on.


EDIT: Just found another thread/comment thingy about multiple active windows. http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Multi...tive_20Windows Again, they're talking about what we need. But I dont think I can see any substantial turnups from it... The Amigo thing requires hotkeying between applications, It seems.

EDIT2: I've been using ''teamplayer'' for a while now. Its pretty good for the dual mouse thing, very easy to set up. But it seems to mess up right clicking within guildwars, makes the camera go completely crazy. Perhaps some different sofware would be better...

People have been doing this in linux for at least the past 3 years. I don't think you can get this to work under microsoft because it takes editing the actual operating system. With linux, well thats easily done, but yeah not so much on ms.

edit:

The oldest version I found was a basic hack from 05
http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/multiuser/
Essentially it is easy for linux because if we want we can have multiple copies of the current session going. That doesn't explain it right, its sort of like imagine you wanted to have windows vista on screen 1, now you have a separate copy of windows vista on screen 2. That gets around the whole problem of where the click action goes. You can find how to do this on numerous sites, I wouldn't exactly suggest going into irc about it for two reasons. The first is that you seem to be primarily a windows user, and unless you find someone super nice those people aren't going to hold your hand. Two if you start asking about this in the linux chats you first get told to read the #$%#ing man pages. I mean, it is a great community and I love it myself, but things are a bit different. To my knowledge, and it is limited with windows os, you won't be able to do what you want inside of the windows environment.

Now that I think about it, why bother with a multiterm setup, you could always just use a multiple xserver, or open two versions of wine and use a dual input setting. Doesn't seem that difficult, might even be better to just trash the entire keyboard mouse setup and have a controller interface setup. I think you can get them now with 12 buttons 2 axis etc. Then just edit your /dev input settings.

Anyway I wish you luck though. Maybe you can find a work around for it, like I said my knowledge of windows is rather limited.

Thanks for your comment, thoughyou lost me a bit with the 'multiterm setup' and 'xserver' part!

Just btw, I have created a thread on the tech support forums. Its a lengthy post, but It details everything I've found out and what I need help with. I'm hoping someone there may be able to help me as well. (http://www.techsupportforum.com/gami...ml#post2143116) so give it a read if you wish.
I'd still like help from you guys, though, as you'll know a lot more about the guild wars related problems (such as why my mouse makes my camera go crazy when using TeamPlayer, and such). So please keep brainstorming and throwing ideas out there!

First, sorry to kick the topic.. But I think I found some interesting programs.
I found these 3 programs which could make it possible:

Aster: Tried the program out (Needs Windows XP). It just splits your computer as if you had two different computers running, with the same programs and stuff. It was easy to install en setup, everything worked.. Except for the mouse on the second moniter. So I gave up on this program.

BeTwin: This program was even easier to install and setup the monitors, keyboards and mice. You get to login on 2 different accounts on Windows. Everything worked fine (I'm using it at the moment). But again, one problem. Direct3D isn't possible on the second monitor. So this program is useless, unless someone comes up with a workaround.

SoftXpand: This program seems to be the most advanced of the three. When I tried to install it (on Windows XP 32bit) it didn't even start installing. I just got an error. So maybe someone else could try it? I read somewhere they're coming up with a new version (Which supports Windows 7 too) soon. So might check it out later.

I just found out that there's a newer version of Aster. I installed 2.5, but there seems to be a 4.5 too. So I'm gonna try that one.

EDIT: Just tried out Aster 4.5, it works. Moniters, keyboards, mice and even the wireless internet connection worked after a bit of work. So I loaded Guild Wars two times. And it worked. I had control over both at the same time. But after a few seconds the graphics got messed up and eventually the games freezed. This could be because my graphics card ain't good enough (Geforce 8500GT). Maybe it'll work with a better graphics card or maybe two graphics cards..?

try dropping the graphics settings down in the clients. the 8500 is not the most powerful card, so it will most likely struggle with 2 clients on 2 monitors.

it may also be aster struggling with what you are attempting to run.

Well, I tried dropping the settings. I put both games down to 800x600 with lowest possible graphic settings. That didn't make any difference at all.. It's not the program either I think.. I finally got SoftXpand to work, the program works all right, but whenever I try to load Guild Wars two times the graphics fail. (I'll make a screenshot sometime) Maybe two graphics cards work? Can't see any other solution atm..