AutoHotkey Community

Hello all,

I have recently found out that AHK SendPlay function could work for lot of online games protected by Gameguard/nprotect (priston tale, ...). But I noticed some strange phenomenon. Actually SendPlay would successfully send a click and bypass gameguard. On the other hand, SendPlay keystrokes is more random. Most of keystroke won't go through but I noticed some interesting thing:
If you sendplay let's says {I } keystroke (=open inventory shortkey) then it won't work. But if you sendplay {Enter} then the game open the chat window. Now sendplay some strings again ("blablabla") you will see the blablabla autotyping in the chat window! SendPlay {Enter} again and you'll see your char saying "blablabla" in game.
Now this behaviour is pretty weird. How can the game protection intercept keystrokes, and allow keystroke typed in chat-mode to pass through

Any comment/hint would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

I encountered an identical problem with trying to send keystrokes to the active game window. I was able to always send keystrokes to a chat/console window, but not the active game window. I finally figured it out and it was because I was not specifying the MapVirtualKey/VkKeyScan scancodes. After specifying this then all keys recognized correctly in the chat/console windows and the regular active game window. As I mentioned in an ealier part of this thread the program name is G-Hotkey. Please note that G-Hotkey does not work (as far as I know) with Gameguard/Nprotect games. The code I use only uses the kebyd_event library which I believe is then translated into SendInput. If the SendPlay function is bypassing Gameguard/Nprotect then this would be a superior way of sending keystrokes to games. Anyway, perhaps this can help Chris out to determine if this would fix the problem. I realize that I am not posting this as a pure Autohotkey soultion, but I'm just trying to help out as I had this exact same problem.

For further information regarding this and code samples please see the thread:
http://www.vdsworld.com/forum/viewtopic ... keybdevent

What is strange is that Zonealarm accepts ControlSend if I run the ahk script, but after compiling the script, it doesn't work anymore. Now how just does an ahk script execute?

I got it, the uncompiled script executes through AutoHotkey.exe, and AutoHotkey.exe is set as Trusted in Zonealarm. That's why a script can send controls to Zonealarm and a compiled script fails (unless set as trusted manually). So if you want to send controls to Zonealarm, set your executable as trusted

I have had the same problem. Funny thing: The supposedly older and worse method "SendEvent" works.

Do you know a way to do that only using AHK? or in C/VB? Thanks

Here is some source code from Sysinternals that isn't device driver code but may be useful in allowing AHK to handle keyboard input from more applications (I really don't know as I just come across it and haven't researched it or read this thread for a long time).

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Ctrl2Cap.html

Thanks; I think someone mentioned that URL a while back. I've made a note to take a closer look at it.

funny, I thought I'd be the only one encountering this problem. Its even more weird in DAoC, if you send more than 1 keystroke they appear in the chat window, WITHOUT (!) previously "opening" the chat with enter. So basically what you can do and what works is sending single keystrokes with a certain delay (1 sec), not very much. And indeed this behaviour is weird and I must confess I dont have an explanation...

Dunno if this topic here is still kinda active / needed, but I found something about DirectInput Hooking (and a Sample):
C++ DirectInput Hooking component and sample

Maybe that can help creating a low low low level hook for DirectInput in AutoHotkey,
so that u can use AHK in every Programm and Game.

Pretty impressive. I'll review it more when the time comes to work on better keystrokes, mouse clicks, and joystick control.

Thanks for the link.

Thank you for the new version 104413 of autohotkey. It is remapping keys with the Send command for my games now. Whatever changes you made after version 104305, is looking good for me. For example,

w::
Send, {w down}
return

w up::
Send, {w up}
return

I no longer have to use the tilde anymore, or inline remap (~w:: label or w::e).

Hehehe i got them! >:)
direct writing to keyboard buffer creates a driver level keyboard event that is in no way different than an actual keypress as far as windows is concerned, this of course breaks every security protocol since it allows kernel mode operations from a user-level application with a certain driver designed for such purposes:))

Nice work. I think someone did something similar earlier in this topic (or some other topic).

How do you do that ? Sorry if you pointed out on previous pages, I can't serach for it in such a long thread...

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