Tip - AFK at work in stealth aka Boss key

[eqgeek]

Just wanted to pass this along in the event someone else wants to afk in stealth mode while at work. I do a lot of video conferences with desktop sharing and obviously don't want EQ showing up on my taskbar. Also, I didn't want to have to log off for every 15-30 minute call. Thus, I started using a program called Hide!. It doesn't install, so simply start the program and you can use it to hide your EQ sessions. Here's how:

Once you run Hide! make sure that you check the "hide me when hiding other windows option". If you only have one EQ session to hide, then you need to go into your EQ settings and change the keys under "Camera" and make sure that the F9 key isn't mapped to anything. If it isn't, then press F9 and the window will disppear. Hit F8 to bring it up again.

If you have multiple sessions of EQ, simply go to each screen and hold SHIFT and hit F6. This adds it to the group so you can hide an entire group. Add each EQ session by going to each and hitting SHIFT+F6. Once you have done this, simply hit F6 to hide all of your sessions. To bring them all up hit CTL+F6.

While the windows are hidden, they will not show up in the applications, but they will show up in the processes as eqgame.exe. You can also set a password so that if someone accidentally hits F8 or CTL+F6 it will ask for a password before it opens the applications.

Also, even if you don't want to really use this to hide your EQ games, I often use it to hide the MQ2EQBC.exe window when I'm actually playing.

Great for letting the kids use your laptop without touching your afk team!

Download here: Hide!

 

[no_one]

I too use EQ from work this could be helpful thanks.

 

[dencelle]

For those people that want to get more advanced than this but and are willing to learn a small sub language AutoIT is a good place to check out, you can get pretty creative... i went as far as making it so i won't have 3d rendering so i can run 70 EQ's at once

only tried it once

for anyone wondering how i got all that set up, this is a list of things you'll need.

Macroquest2
EQBC server
MQ2EQBC
Kissassist (and all of its dependencys)
AutoIT3
Koda GUI Editor (optional... but it does make it easyer)
VPN of your choice (this is a must, and you MUST make sure it will assign a different VPN to EACH eqgame.exe)
2-X computers (i did 70 using only 2 computers... but you could divide the load across as many computers as you want... )

using AutoIT3 i created a server with a GUI interface to keep track of what characters i had pulled up and what characters were loaded it all interacted through TCP, i could of used UDP or just made a flat DB with a gui interface on 1 computer and ran everything off of that 1 computer... but this was a choice i made...

 

[eqgeek]

What are the stats on the computers you were running?

 

[Maskoi]

Getting banned from your job would be a bad thing. lol

 

[dencelle]

What are the stats on the computers you were running?

one was a simple little linux laptop (w/ Wine) i have had for a few years now (2gb ram, 250gb hd) this is the one i used as a base server for the communication between computers and the GUI interface i had

the second computer is a simple $300 tower i bought from walmart and have slowly upgraded over time. (win 8.1 64-bit OS, 8gb ram, Navidia 8400GS gfx card, AMD E1-1200 APU processor (1.4 GHz), 500GB HD + 2 500GB side drives and 3 8gb flash drives i use as virtual memory) rates at a 3.5 on the windows rating scale... mainly due to the processor... (this is what inspired me to find a way to take 3D rendering out of the equation)

- - - Updated - - -

before nerds get on to me saying i could of spent my money wiser, i wanted a project... i got one... it suits my needs and i like it the way it is... lol sue me..

- - - Updated - - -

we really should have a thread somewhere to show off our computer setups... kinda interested in what red and maskoi have going on lol

 

[eqgeek]

Getting banned from your job would be a bad thing. lol

So true. Don't get in trouble at work. I work from home, so not an issue for me.

It is also a good way to allow your kids on your computer while you're afk as well.

 

[kcrobk]

Awesome thanks! Very helpful

 

[no_one]

I run eq from work all the time and my network admin has so far not been able to identify when I have my 4 accounts going. He knows I run it and we are having a game of him trying to isolate it on the network.

 

[dencelle]

I run eq from work all the time and my network admin has so far not been able to identify when I have my 4 accounts going. He knows I run it and we are having a game of him trying to isolate it on the network.

i would suggest running a vpn, it is good for hiding the packets that are going from eq to their servers, network admins normally hate this since it makes it almost impossible to see what your doing and what to block or what not to block

 

[no_one]

To get around group policy and other security in windows I installed vmware and created a windows 7 vm to run eq from. Then setup my vpn from with in the vm so all of it stays hidden. I run my vpn through port 80. So it doesn't stand out and with 4 clients going I am only using about 125kb a second if I remember correctly so it doesn't stand out on the network.

 

[playj]

Necroing this thread, because I meant to ask last year.

How did you manage to turn off 3D rendering in EQ so you could squeeze 70 instances on one box (with an abysmally slow E1200 CPU no less and running virtual memory off flash drives)?

I am asking because I really do not need any rendering on my 2ndary chars.

Was it actually usable? I remember I could load 8 characters back in 2005 on 2GB real RAM with HDD swap and it worked but was horrible at times when swapping, even flash would be slow once it starts heavy swapping.

This is an incredible achievement if true. Maybe you meant 7 chars ?

Why am i a bit skeptical, is because each instance does take some CPU time even without rendering, so E1200 could not handle such a load.

I can load 20 chars now on 4790k with 16GB RAM and it is a bit sluggish and there was a thread where someone loaded 35 on 4790k but it was slow: http://www.redguides.com/community/...nd)-Window-Lag?p=239174&viewfull=1#post239174

Of course we all are still rendering 3D, so managing to turn off graphics completely (not just with viewport, which keeps rendering) would be an awesome step forward in EQ/MQ2.

 

[Maskoi]

I think there is still a way to invoke the stick figure graphics from Aprils fools SOE did a few years back. Even with that I would have a hard time imagining running 70 instances on one machine as well.

 

[Dretski]

I can't try if this works atm, but a guide I found from 2010 (and another more recent one from 2012) says you could put Stickfigures=1 in eqclient.ini

 

[1everdude]

http://ezserveronline.com/forums/index.php?topic=2988.0

This is what I always use to optimize EQ for multiple boxes. I've managed to get 12 running on my crappy old machine. Some of the advice is EQEmu specific but most of it works for EQ live as well.

 

[Noobhaxor]

I've done 12 characters on the same computer using viewport at a resolution of 100x100 on secondary characters. If doing a lot of swapping you can set up a macro or focus event to auto set it. Another key part of this is memory usage. If you strip down all the models in options you can get EQ to about 500MB per instance, so 12 instances = 6GB. Most people screw up and set FPS too low on background characters and it makes follow a nightmare.

I also use the viewport command when viewing EQ from phone using a VNC viewer. Not really practical but hey I get board sometimes.

Viewport Explained:

When you type the /viewport command, it tells you it wants 4 numbers: x; y; w and h.

x = where you want the viewing area to start from the left of the screen
y = where you want the viewing area to start from the top of the screen

So, 0,0 would mean that it starts in the very top farthest left corner of your screen.

w = how wide you want the viewing area to be from x
h = how high you want the viewing area to be from y

So, 1280X1024 means that your viewing area would be 1280 pixels wide and 1024 pixels high

Put it together, and you get:
/viewport 0 0 1280 1024

- - - Updated - - -

P.S. I use autohotkey to a keystroke combination that flips chrome on top of my windows. I think bind middle mouse click to that keystroke for instance I'm just browsing the internet.

 

[playj]

I've been using stickfigures for a long time and the other optimizations too, 18-20 on 16GB RAM and a decent 4 core CPU is playable but glitchy from time to time.

What dencelle achieved is way beyond that, the E1-1200 is a horrible CPU, that's why it seemed so impressive that even without graphics the CPU could keep up 70 EQ instances.

This is E1-1200: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+E1-1200+APU
This is what I use to get playable 18(using integrated graphics since I use viewport and stickfigures etc): http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-4590+@+3.30GHz

My CPU is 10x faster and still 18 accounts will utilize it about 60-70% so not much leeway left.

So whatever dencelle did would be a huge step forward for MQ2 if one could completely disable graphics.

It would not only cut down on graphics and memory usage but also would cut down CPU requirements as well(by a factor of 10x-20x).

 

[eqgeek]

View attachment 8384

Bringing this thread back to life in case new users needed to see it. I was just searching for the hide program to add to my new laptop.

 

[Hihi]

For those people that want to get more advanced than this but and are willing to learn a small sub language AutoIT is a good place to check out, you can get pretty creative... i went as far as making it so i won't have 3d rendering so i can run 70 EQ's at once

only tried it once

for anyone wondering how i got all that set up, this is a list of things you'll need.

Macroquest2
EQBC server
MQ2EQBC
Kissassist (and all of its dependencys)
AutoIT3
Koda GUI Editor (optional... but it does make it easyer)
VPN of your choice (this is a must, and you MUST make sure it will assign a different VPN to EACH eqgame.exe)
2-X computers (i did 70 using only 2 computers... but you could divide the load across as many computers as you want... )

using AutoIT3 i created a server with a GUI interface to keep track of what characters i had pulled up and what characters were loaded it all interacted through TCP, i could of used UDP or just made a flat DB with a gui interface on 1 computer and ran everything off of that 1 computer... but this was a choice i made...

I know PlayJ asked again later, but does anyone know how turning off the rendering can be accomplished? I've done some google-fu and haven't been able to come up with anything referencing how to do this.

 

[rk1]

I'm also curious about that, short of writing some kind of null rendering driver i don't see, specially since he gave a list of needed things and none of those seem to be related to disabling rendering?