AutoHotkey Community

I saw your link from wcreplays.com (this is grom_icecream). I'm glad to see I'm not the only one interested in advanced hotkeys, so excuse this post if it seems like an overload of questions

Do you still need help with



? I'm still trying to understand what you are trying to accomplish with this. Basically the point is for your script to accomodate keeping your mouse near the center of the screen? I'm wondering if maybe your mouse speed isn't set high enough if this is that important, but maybe I just never noticed how much time I waste moving my mouse.

Although I doubt this will be of concern for your script, one thing to keep in mind about wc3 when it centers on a unit: the exact pixel coordinates of the unit after centering will vary significantly with small changes in height and location. I can''t find a reliable way to, say, move the mouse exactly onto a particular unit that is known to the script only by a hotkey.

I see you are using 1234/QWER for your main fingers with Tab replacing control. I used to do the exact same thing since I figured such a position was ideal for minimizing finger movement. I found though that I had to leave the desired "Tab-Q-W-E" finger position too often to reach shift or building keys though. Recently I tried abandoning the keys 1-9 all together. I'm using (with my ring and middle finger) the keys A, S, Q, W, E for 1-5 and nothing for 6-0. D, X, C, F are used for all "grid key" buttons (only the important ones). Shift works as Shift, Control and other functions (although I'm not so sure if I want to keep it like that). I've also found a way to make all building hotkeys QWER, ASDF, ZXC without interfering with everything else.

I've been thinking lately on how to improve control group keys. 99% of the time when I assign a control group it is because I want to add one more unit to the group (i.e., a freshly made unit that is rallied to my hero). I also noticed that instead of shift clicking the new unit into the group (which is the way I always imagine myself doing it when I write my scripts) in practice I often find myself just double click/control clicking any unit of that unit's type so I don't even have to *find* the new unit in the first place. I think this script will help streamline control group micro by using that idea:



The only downside is that by making a "1 & something" hotkey you slow the responsiveness of just the "1" key by itself. If you have an extra Xbutton within finger reach that you aren't using then this script would work better:



where "group" is a variable which keeps track what control group is selected at all times (which is very handy for other things too).

Yes, but not urgent. When units are moving fast, or in close proximity to each other, or hiding behind things, then selecting/finding them takes longer. Especially when I have to wait for the mouse left button to be released, not just pressed. I would not assign this feature to pressing the button down since that is already for highlighting with a box. Thanks for checking if the mouse has problems centering on the screen or not. Luckily, the center location does not have to be exact as long as a good size box highlights units nearby.

Your suggestion for 1-LButton is excellent. 1 by itself no longer works when pressed down, but can be used when 1 is released. Since we always release the numbers anyway before doing other things, then we have not wasted much time. If double pressing 1 still works too, then the feature is even better.

Like you, I love to double-click a unit to select many at once.

I use Tab 0-9 for replacements, but your suggestion for Tab-12345QWERT sounds like a good idea since closer. I use all ten groups because I access lots of units and buildings. Your suggestion to use %group% is clever too, but I feel safer if I actually press a number during an action so I do not accidently loose groups. Using Shift for things other than waypoints seems logical, but I feel safer not to. I found something that I could not do once I reassigned Shift, but I can not remember right now ...

Actually what I meant about the "Tab 1234/QWER" configuration was that you would map important command keys (hero spells, unit spells, unit abilities) to QWER. With 1234 and Tab nearby, this puts nearly all the commonly used hotkeys within close proximity.

Here is an improved version of the "1 & LButton" script that won't affect how 1 functions and won't cause any lag in either button (that I can tell). Basically I coded the hotkey in a stupid way. Instead of using the "1 & LButton" structure I manually check the state of "1" when LButton is pressed. The problem with the "1 & LButton" structure is that program wants to wait a few milliseconds after "1" is pressed to see if you are tyring to press "1 & LButton" or just 1 alone.



If you don't want to use the group variable then replace that line with some IF blocks to send the right key. If you do want to use the group variable you need to add this to your script too:



I haven't tested the script with all ten "GetKeyState, state, X" lines, hopefully it won't affect the speed.

The reason I use the group variable is because it allows for some really cool burrow/hide micro (or even return lumber/stone form micro). With a single button click you single out one injured unit, order it to burrow/hide etc., optionally remove it from the control group, then reselect the original group with lightning speed!

The code is not stupid at all. Chris at tech support said that kind of method is good to avoid problems with prefixes. For example, see, http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7688

The sleep between mouse clicks may be tricky as you noticed since the game sometimes ignored them. Try to add the "D|U" parameter to MouseClick to control the button more precisely. It helped me before.

Meanwhile, I will check it out the rest and see what's up. Thanks.

You misunderstood. I didn't mean the original hotkey using the "1 & LButton" structure was stupid, I was saying that not doing it that way by manually creating a prefix key with the GetKeyState function would appear at first to be a stupid idea. I couldn't find in that link what potential problems could arise from this. I would think the only problem with making a prefix key like that is pressing LButton sends a mouse click first, then asks the question "is this a 1 & LButton press?" later. For this specific hotkey though the errant mouse click is of no consequence, and in fact it is incorporated as part of what we want "1 & LButton" script to do.

For that last piece of code, using down/up events didn't seem to help. I'm not 100% sure what you mean though, so maybe you could give it a try.

And while I'm at it: a heads up on the quick burrow script, it doesn't work properly. I actually didn't test it the way I wrote it up there. You see until yesterday it was just one block in a bigger MButton script. For some reason it is going too quickly now; what happens is sometimes (depending on whole long you held MButton apparently) you'll just select the fiend then select the whole group with no burrow in between. You need a pretty high Sleep, x to fix it too. The following script however is completely reliable and quick:



I think the problem may just be the rest of my script. I'm using Shift for a lot of different functions so there may just be an unforseen interaction going on.

The "Follow Code" idea is working well. Maybe expand it to include any selected units, shown in code below. Maybe there used to be other code for a Ctrl+C utility that no longer exists at,
http://www.wcreplays.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5423

Your quick burrow/hide/statue/root script is better now. Too bad it only works on a few units though. When a group is given another action, these few units luckily do not return to the group. Are we assuming all burrow/hide/statue/root are activated by pressing 'c'? Would have been nice to just tell any unit to run for their lives temporarily and come back when feeling better.


Your "Add to Control Group" idea gave me an idea to build the following code. Press #, then #-LButton to add units. Press #, then #-RButton to add/remove units. Pressing # first helps show the affected group before changed accidently.




I do not understand. The FAQ does not mention a problem with combinations like "1 & LButton::". If "1" is a prefix, then programs ignore it until released. No waiting that I can see. See FAQ - Custom combinations at,
http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/Hotkeys.htm

Thanks for all your help.

On a related note:

The program Warkeys, which is supposed to act as a replacement for Keycraft, is now available for download here:

http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=46507

Here's a small taste:


It's still in the alpha stages, but I welcome any feedback you may have. If you would like to report an error, please use the email link in the about window under help.

Points,

Awesome program man! I was actually writing a script in C++ to do this, but I think I'm going to trash that now The one thing that would be nice would be the addition of a ctrl+c spammer for watching replays. When u spam ctrl-c replays become more like VoD's and so this is very desirable. I tried toggling the ScrLk key but it didn't do this. Any chance of adding this? If not, maybe I could learn the language you used and add it myself.

Thanks,

Sephrial

I'm not exactly what Ctrl-C does in replays but if you wish to spam ctrl-c you can use autohotkey to write a script.

Nice work with warkeys, haven't tried it yet but I am planning to try it soon.



Yea, I'm assuming all those actions have been bound to 'c'. It might actually be possible to tell a unit to run home like this. All the user would need to do is define a "home" location on the minimap (via hotkey) at the start of the game.



That makes much more sense now, I must have just been noticing the time difference between key press and key release.


Here is a new script of mine. When you double click on any hero you will select all heroes you control, a lot like double clicking on units. The difference is you will select all heroes, not just heroes on the screen. This is my first warcraft script using PixelGetColor to achieve new functionality.

Basic program outline: The program knows if you clicked a hero by looking for the "hero damage type" icon. The script shift clicks heroes using the portraits in the upper left corner. To check whether or not there actually is a hero portrait there it looks for a tooltip which appears on the lower right when you mouse over a hero portrait. This requires Advanced Tooltips to be checked ON in the options menu. Finally, the script determines if it added or removed that hero by looking at the portraits on the bottom HUD.



Since the program works by looking at pixels it needs to know the right reference colors. This could vary from user to user due to different gamma settings. Here is a test program to find your reference colors.




I'm thinking that using pixels will open up a brand new level of warcraft scripts. The quick burrow/hide ( /run home?) script, for example, could be comibined into one hotkey by looking at what type of unit was selected. I'm working on a "AMS everyone" script, and using pixels will be vital to know who is already AMS'ed.

I recommend using Warkeys to change all of your home commands to 'c'.

hi. good thread.
I actually downloaded this program for w3 also so I am pleased to see it is being discussed on the forums. I am trying to make my own script, specifically to do the space+wasd stuff mentioned halfway through this thread. I asked for some help in http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8190

The question there isn't specific to warcraft because I wanted to keep it general. Can something like this not be done.
When space is pressed, do the following:

a::Left
s::Down ..etc

then when space is released:

a::a
s::s etc..

something like this:

Autohotkey has a prefix structure to handle exactly this. So you would do



to make space w do something but leave w alone. ('common' prefixes like shift, control, alt and some others have their own special strucutres. You would write +w::, ^w::, and !w:: respectively for those prefixes.)

So I think what you are looking for is this (just a modified version of jtbalogh's code):



Here "Space & w up::" binds an action to the release of w while space is held down.

I think you would have to do



in order to make Ctrl-Space just Space. The $ tells the script to utilize a keyboard hook, which means that this hotkey cannot be simulated with other hotkeys (otherwise the space you are trying to send might get interpreted as a control space and you'd have an infinite loop).