AutoHotkey Community

[miscman]

thank you

[miscman]

/me lets out a triumphant cry


nice!!!
the mouse macros work!!! and text can be sent from the script into the game. Although im not sure how the heck i can get the script to read in keypresses. :-/

Good for now though... definatly good for now!!

[Chris]

That's good news. It was a longshot, since I figured any game that prevents hook hotkeys from working might also defeat mouse hotkeys.

If you get a chance, try using GetKeyState while the game is running to see if the state of keyboard keys can be reliably detected. If it can, a whole new set of possibilities opens up. For example, you could have a mouse hotkey perform a different action if you are holding down some keyboard key.

[miscman]

yes that is a good idea. now that i think of it... there was mention about how the game makers went to great lengths to disable the windows key.... it caused toe game to minimize, thus terminating your connection. ( i would have prefered they just let us minimize it without killing the game, but who am i to complain... just a customer...)

So that may be why that isnt working... also.. the ctrl and alt keys have significance in the game as well... those also did not work... I will ry your idea, but i may need to look into how to get a low lvl hook in place.

BTW: launching the script from a timer causes me to lose connection to the game :(

[Chris]

[miscman]

and this polling loop doesnt hose the cpu?

[Chris]

Since you're only checking one key, it should use a miniscule amount of CPU time. This is because of the "Sleep 10", which probably rests the CPU for about a million times longer than the body of the loop takes to execute.

Even checking a lot of keys would probably be very low overhead, but I have yet to confirm that. One of my ideas to implement "string hotkeys" is to using a polling loop in the program. The reason for this is that it will work on Win9x (and on XP/2k it avoids the use of the hook). However, if I discover that polling all keys every 10ms is a high overhead operation, I will definitely not do it that way.

Also, I'm not thrilled about the polling method for general use by the program because it feels unreliable. For example, if the system is under heavy load, the polling might not be able to check the keys at the desired frequency, and thus it might "miss" some keypresses.

[Chris]

Here is my tentative design for what Rajat calls "string hotkeys". It's based on miscman's idea as well as the ideas of Jay D. Novak, Rajat, and others. Comments are welcome.

Input [, OutputVar , MaxLength, Timeout, Options, EndKeys, MatchList]

OutputVar: This receives the string that the user typed.

MaxLength: The input will be terminated when the user enters this number of characters.

Timeout: The input will be terminated after this amount of time.

EndKeys: A list of keys such as {Enter}{Esc}, any of which will terminate the input.

MatchList: A comma-separated list of key phrases, any of which will immediately terminate the input.

Options:
(V)isible: Whether the user's keystrokes are echoed back out to the system (normally they are hidden/suppressed).
(C)ase sensitive: affects MatchList and maybe also EndKeys.
(M)ouse button input is included in OutputVar (e.g. as {LButton} or {LButton down})
(E)ndKey is included in OutputVar if it's what terminated the input.
(B)ackspace is included in OutputVar (normally backspace performs its native undo function).
(S)pecial/invisible characters such as control-C, Escape, etc. are included in OutputVar as ^c, {Esc}, etc.
(H)otkeys are included in OutputVar (hook/registered hotkeys should normally be excluded?)


NOTES:

The hotkey used as the lead key for the above could be made pass-through to have it be a visible replace. For example:
~[:: ; The tilde makes it a pass-through (non-suppressed) hotkey.
Input, OutputVar, 5, 3000, V, , btw, ahk, otoh, afaik
if OutputVar = btw
Send, {backspace 4}by the way
return

Default timeout: somewhere around 3000

Have escape always be an EndKey unless overridden by an option?

If given no parameters, any in-progress Input (i.e. in an underlying thread) is terminated.

If another thread does an Input while there's already one in progress?

For flexibility, translate any keys pressed while others are still down as {firstkey down}abc{firstkey up} ... same for mouse buttons. Oops, I don't think this will work for keyboard keys because it is very common for people to press new keys (in the course of typing) while others are still down.

Hook gives precedence to a hotkey such as #z rather than including it in OutputVar?

Use actual newline char in lieu of {Enter}? Same for tab. But what about ESC, modifiers, home/end/pgup, arrows, etc? Maybe the best policy is to tranlate into a visible char whenever possible (e.g. newline) but otherwise just store it for possible use with the Send command, e.g. {HOME}.

Install hook dynamically (if needed) when the Input command is first encountered.

[Rajat]

[Chris]

[Rajat]

[Chris]

Thanks for the analysis, and for the "hotstrings" buzzword. It's rather catchy.

[miscman]

Finals and a host of new and unexpected problems have prevented me from playing my games much.. and as a result i almost forgot about my request here. I gotta say i didnt expect you to have it working so soon.

Kudos to everyone who made this possible. I cannot wait to try it out :D