For great justice! Two weeks later, how are people finding this little script? I know I’m still having a blast playing the game like this, but I really want to hear other people’s stories.
That’s a truly amazing find for a person like me, but when playing with ranged characters, wouldn’t it better if there was a way to make a reticle appear?
That would be cool! But probably a bit tricky. I’ve seen a couple of libraries for AutoHotkey with functions for drawing graphical elements on the screen, but I don’t know how to work with any of them. Never tried. I just play with the frame of mind I’m gonna be targeting whatever’s closest to the center of my screen.
4: Configure!
You could just skip this part if you think the default configuration will work for you, but read on ahead if you want to figure out how to customize this deal for yourself.
4.1: Keystroke
Firstly, notice the line XButton2::. That’s Mouse Button 5, usually the foremost of the two side-buttons on your mouse if you’ve got them. I’m using that key because it’s easy to toggle on and off with on the fly, but you can rebind it to any key you want. Just try to avoid any key you’d use in any other context while playing the game, even typing; the script doesn’t know what you’re doing in the game so it can’t know if you really wanted to activate the script or if you were just writing a message.
4.2: Screen size
The script centers the mouse on the middle of the screen, then nudges it 100 pixels up. This is just to make it as convenient as possible to cast AoE abilities while the camera is locked, as the circle draws where the cursor is currently located. Centering the cursor and then moving it 100 pixels up puts it right above the character’s head on larger displays, but if you want it further up or further down just edit the VNudge variable. Higher numbers puts it further up, lower number brings it closer to the center.
4.3: Abilities
By default, the script binds mouse button 1 to action button 1 and mouse button 2 to action button 4. The primary attack for the right and left hand weapon, basically, but you can change them to whichever abilities you want with the KeyOne and KeyTwo variables (left and right button respectively).
5: Save and run
Once you’ve got everything how you want it, just save the script, keep it somewhere easily accessible and run it whenever you’re playing Guild Wars 2. It should only function when you’re actually playing, but no point in keeping it running when you’re not. When you’re in the game now, pressing your fifth mouse key locks the camera to your mouse and makes your mouse keys trigger weapon abilities.
I’m Folji, and I make stuff. Now let’s kill with style!
Hi! I’m Folji, member in good standing with the College of Synergetics. I want to share something I quickly and simply wrote for the game back during the early head start of the game, but haven’t posted anywhere because it took me this long to get a response about whether I was allowed to do this or not.
I like my MMORPGs more like action games than regular RPGs; I love the control scheme in TERA and DC Universe Online, in Champions Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online I’ve played with FPS controls, even in World of Warcraft I had an addon that rewrote the control scheme to work the same way. I was hoping Guild Wars 2 would offer something like this from the get go, but since it didn’t I decided to just write it.
There’s a lot of gamepad remaps floating around, but I’ve yet to see anything that remaps like this for a mouse and keyboard, so here’s what I’ve got. In case you hadn’t figured it yet, the script in this thread will let you freely control the camera with your mouse while using your mouse buttons to attack. Cool, huh?
To get the obvious question out of the way, is this allowed?
ANet has been understandably vague on a clear yes or no, who wouldn’t be, but there’s still enough to figure out what can be done and what can’t be.
So basically, translating a key into another key and ensuring actions require hardware input? Good enough! This script doesn’t automate anything, doesn’t interface with the game in any way and in general does absolutely nothing unless you tell it to. All it does is that it intercepts what comes from the mouse and rewrites it before sending it on to the system, which then sends it on to the game. Since we’re in the clear on this, let’s get right to it.
1: Download AutoHotkey
Yep, it’s an AutoHotkey script. Surprise, eh? Just go to their page and download the latest version. http://www.autohotkey.com/
2: Create a new AutoHotkey script
With AutoHotkey installed, right-click the desktop and create a new AutoHotkey script. Just name it anything; I named mine GW2 Mouse. Just keep it right there on the desktop. http://i47.tinypic.com/2uzplko.png
3: Edit script
Right-click your new .ahk file and choose to “edit script”. Then, remove everything in there and paste this in:
#NoEnv
SendMode Input
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%
#IfWinActive, Guild Wars 2
{
MouseMode = 0
Hotkey, *LButton, Off
Hotkey, *LButton Up, Off
Hotkey, *RButton, Off
Hotkey, *Rbutton Up, Off
VNudge = 100
KeyOne = 1
KeyTwo = 4
XButton2::
if (MouseMode = 0) {
MouseMode = 1
WinGetPos, , , Width, Height, Guild Wars 2
Width /= 2
Height /= 2
Height -= %VNudge%
MouseMove, %Width%, %Height%
send {RButton Down}
Hotkey, *LButton, On
Hotkey, *LButton Up, On
Hotkey, *RButton, On
Hotkey, *Rbutton Up, On
} else {
MouseMode = 0
send {Rbutton Up}
Hotkey, *LButton, Off
Hotkey, *LButton Up, Off
Hotkey, *RButton, Off
Hotkey, *Rbutton Up, Off
}
return
*LButton::Send {%KeyOne% Down}
*LButton Up::Send {%KeyOne% Up}
*RButton::Send {%KeyTwo% Down}
*RButton Up::Send {%KeyTwo% Up}
}
It’s not complicated at all. Even if you don’t know the scripting language you can probably figure out in two seconds how everything works and what parts do what. Nothing more there than what needs to be there.
I’m hitting a character limit, so let’s continue on in the next post
If you haven’t, you should try it. Then try to see how long you can go before throwing the staff away. For those who have, anyone else out there who find the staff sounds for the necromancer to just be incredibly annoying? No offence, but who thought of that?
This isn’t an account issue, so please hold on until we have other forums up and you can ask there.
What kind of forums would that be then? It’s interesting though that Mike O’Brien over at Reddit said that translating key-clicks to mouse-clicks (and vice-versa, I bet) is okay as long as it’s not an action loop or anything that automates gameplay.
Ok, than I’ll answer exactly about this situation:
AutoHotkey is a free, open-source utility for Windows. With it, you can:
Automate almost anything by sending keystrokes and mouse clicks. You can write a mouse or keyboard macro by hand or use the macro recorder.
Using such programs will get you banned, I hope you understood why
It’s funny that you say that whole deal is something only an official person can answer and then you go ahead and “exactly” answer it yourself. And saying that using a program will get you banned because you might use it to automate gameplay in any way, is like saying that driving a car will get you jailed because you might use it to run over someone.
… That analogy really sounded better in my head, but you get what I mean. I’m translating an action into another action without explicitly automating anything.
To cut a long story short, a while ago I wrote a keystroke macro for Guild Wars 2 using AutoHotkey. Not one that tries to play the game for me, though; it actually calls for the player to be more directly engaged.
Basically, it’s a script that toggles a variable whenever SHIFT-SPACE is pressed.
When this variable is active, it sends a signal that MOUSE2 is being pressed down even though physically it isn’t. In the case of Guild Wars 2 this basically gives me a toggleable way to lock the camera to the mouse without having to hold down a mouse button all the time.
But then the script also reroutes the MOUSE1 and MOUSE2 buttons to keyboard keys 1 and 4, which means what while the camera is controlled by the mouse I can also use the left and right mouse buttons to attack with my primary and secondary weapons respectively.
In short, I macroed the game to be an even more direct action experience. I was hoping this kind of functionality would be already present in the game, but since it doesn’t seem like it is I just wrote it myself.
But then I came to think, would this be permissible within the rules of conduct? I’d love to share the script with the rest of the GW2 community, but it wouldn’t be such a great idea to share something that could get anyone into any kind of trouble.
Effectively, this whole thing is done with a third-party program, but the rules of conduct specifically refers to third-party software used “in order to automate gameplay functions” – aka botting. This script doesn’t automate anything, everything it does requires hardware input from the user. Technically it doesn’t even directly interface with the game; it intercepts the keyboard and mouse input, rewrites it and sends it on to the system as something else, and could just as easily be used with any other game. In my eyes that sounds like something that could be safely used without breaking any rules, but I still want to be absolutely sure.
So, hotkey macro that makes the game think I’m holding down the right mouse button while pressing 1 and 4 when I’m actually clicking the left and right mouse buttons, safe to use?
