Help with Macros : Son is disabled (Resolved)

Before anyone possibly gets upset. Please understand that my son is physically disabled and can no longer use his left hand and has some limitations to his right due to an accident.

Me and my husband have been playing boundless and my son has picked up an interest in it as well, but due to the controls and his limitations it is a lot harder for him to play. Neither me and my husband are PC smart and with other games we have had friends able to help us with a few small macros and some had mods we could easily add to help him.

The macro program I usually use for him doesnā€™t seem to work with boundless. At least not completely. Some of the keys and macros work while some of them do not. It could be that my husband and myself are the ones failing at setting it up, but I am not sure.

He really likes to farm so all I wanted was to get him a macro set up to move him three times when he clicks to harvests the crops. So just a Click - move forward - move forward - move forward. So he can then click again.

If anyone can help me with this it would be very much appreciated. It breaks my heart when he just slumps in front of the computer because he wants to play and help but physically canā€™t manage with his limitations.

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I think you will find some help here. If you donā€™t over the next few, shoot me a text and Iā€™ll try to hunt somebody down. Can he use a mouse?

I use a logitech G700 and I can run around and open doors and use tools and rotate through them with one hand.

This mouse is discontinued, but there are similar macro enabled ones out there that are left right swappable.

I mention it because I sometimes play one handed with it.

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He can use a mouse, it can be a little straining on him as he only has use of two fingers and a thumb. Matter of fact the mouse we got him is very similar to the one you mentioned.

I know I saw people with posts about automated farming and things so I was sure that someone could possibly help. Even if I am not trying to automate I assume itā€™s a slightly similar issue.

He is really excited and wants to play. He already said people were awesome. Apparently he found one of the portal hubs and ended up in dangerous world and someone revived him as well as gave him a few things and showed him where the item he was looking for was. The community so far has been amazing. <3

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Tell him to stop by the TNT hub sometime. Iā€™ll ask around for macro advise.

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Oh he loves the TNT hub. He has done more exploring and dying then my husband and myself combined.

Ask anybody with the TNT tag. They can help. Let me know if you ever need anything.
And thanks for being cool yourself :grin:

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Someone messaged me on here! It was super fastā€¦ This community is just amazing!

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Autohotkey or ahk.
I havenā€™t used it myself, but I understand you need to write small scripts to get it to work but the language is pretty simple.

If it sounds suitable we could probably find someone here to write a couple of them for your son.

TNT Brucebanner

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You could just press the move forward key down and keep it down so he keeps walking forward until he presses a button?

Not sure which application you are using but AutoHotKey works okay for this stuff with Boundless.

I am a little familiar with AHK, and I was failing all over the place. I have someone helping me try to set up another program at the moment but if I cant get that to work I will try and see if anyone can help me with the AHK.

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Still a mouse with the extra buttons is going to be handy as a trigger so he can do it all using one hand.

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Also come to think of it, a button on the mouse could perhaps be made to key press say ā€˜zā€™, then in AHK you can do the action right/left button (your best bet is to change those in the Boundless Controls settings to also use keys, like g for left action, h for right action), walk forward a certain amount of ms (need to time it and if he changes his walk speed in any way this need changing too) and then stop. If he then presses the same mouse button again the Logitech mouse presses down z which the ahk script then translates again in g or h, walk forward, etc.

Should work!

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He does have one with some extra buttons. So we are trying to set that up as the hot key functions for movement and things, but for some reason I was failing horribly on it.

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The biggest issue we are running into right now is the fact that he can only use his thumb, index and middle finger of his right hand. Boundless is an amazing game and has so many different button functions that it has been hard to set him up with a convenient way to play and enjoy the game.

He really likes farming and helping us by doing things for us. I was hopping to be able to set up something simple so that he could click/swing with his 3x3 axe and it would have his character move forward about three spaces and then he could collect and have it move again. However it is starting to seem like I might not be able to get that kind of macro for him. Most of them seem to be the auto swing/click. None of them with availability to move the character forward.

I can make an autohotkey to do this when I get off workā€¦ for clarity do you want one button to move AND action or do you want them separatelyā€¦ also what button(s) does he want the different functions of the script to use?

I can assign different functions to single presses, long presses and double presses as needed, and depending on what works best for himā€¦ so each button could do 3 different things potentiallyā€¦ and if he is able to use any kind of modifier key like space bar with gross motor function or a foot pedal or even two buttons on the mouse at the same timeā€¦ that would open up a lot more options as well

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I helped a friend before with same issue Iā€™ve bought a cheap racing control and reprogrammed the pedals to give him extra buttons could be useful maybe if you find a second one you can go up to 4 pedals it nice extra input to use. I recently saw a plush enter key for 2 bucks that gave one key if you stepped on it nice alternative maybe if you explain what he can use beside hands I can come up with alternatives and find products there is also a controller on the market that letā€™s you craft homemade switches and plug them in I look tonight whats it called and can explain how it work etc just pm me if ya need helps check this https://youtu.be/wEKIAHrugZ4. But if money is issue I can bring cheaper alternatives

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you could buy a cheap 2nd keyboard and pluck all buttons except 4-5, glue a thingy on each use that as pedals (if that is an option)

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The xbox adaptive stuff is super cool. Have you used this with Boundless?

Also, it looks like logitech has some stuff for it too:

Ok here is a proof of concept that allows normal left mouse clicks through (to swing the tool) and then follows up with some movement forward based off of the variables saved in the script (you can set them to the speed of your character that is listed in-game and to how far you want each click to move you in blocks/meters)

if you have autohotkey installed you can just copy past it into notepad and save it as a .ahk fileā€¦ or as a .txt file and then rename it to a .ahk

I also added a bunch of comments to help explain what is going onā€¦ first time writing one out for someone else to use/tinker withā€¦ so who knows if they will help =P

Edit: I made some additions and tweaks to the first version as i used it on my farmsā€¦ it now starts suspended so you donā€™t loose mouse functionality the moment you start it. I moved the harvesting to the right button (since that is my pref) and added a hotkey to the left mouse button to take a short step back as needed since the script moves me a tad too far each action. all in all it made for a nice relaxing one-handed experience ^^

Mouse only-ish Harvesting
#NoEnv  ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
SendMode Input  ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%  ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.
ListLines Off

; the bits above are mostly standard recommended stuff for any script - they are not 100% necessary

Suspend on ; starts the script suspended so you can still use the mouse buttons

; ////////////////
; Variables
; ////////////////

Distance:= 2.825 				; how far you want the character to travel each time
Speed:= 5.15 					; Speed of the character - This can be found under Character > Profile > Motion and action in game 
								; I set my speed a tad faster than listed in-game since the game displays rounded values 
Time:= Distance / Speed * 1000 	; this tries to determine how long to hold the move key (in milliseconds) to travel the given distance

; ////////////////
; The action
; ////////////////

~RButton::			; this sets the button that will trigger the action. LButton for left click if you prefer 
					; The " ~ " symble allows the normal function of the key fire 
					; this means that we only have to worry about sending the move key
{
KeyWait RButton  		; this waits for the key to be released before moving on
						; not exactly necessary but it can help prevent problems if you hold the button down 
	sleep, 200 			; tells the script to wait in ms.  1000ms = 1 second 
						; this gives the game time to swing the tool before moving the character
	Send {w down} 		; presses/sends the "w" key down
						; Boundless seems to like seeing separate "downs" and "ups" for each key
	sleep, %Time% 		; waits for the amount of time set by the above formula & variables
	Send {w up}			; sends the " w " key up / releases it	
}

Return 		; establishes an " end point " or stopping place for the above hotkey 
			; without this autohotkey would continue executing whatever is next

			
				; setting up a new hotkey on left mouse button to take a short step back as needed			
LButton::  		; this sets the button that will trigger the action. RButton for right click if you prefer 
				; since i left out the " ~ " normal LButton function will be blocked / unsent 
{
KeyWait LButton  	; this waits for the key to be released before moving on
					; not exactly necessary but it can help prevent problems if you hold the button down 
	Send {s down} 	; presses/sends the "w" key down
					; Boundless seems to like seeing separate "downs" and "ups" for each key
	sleep, 50 		; waits for the amount of time set by the above formula & variables
	Send {s up}		; sends the " w " key up / releases it	
}

Return
			
f2::      			; setting up a hotkey on " F2 " Since there is no " ~ " in front of it, the normal F2 function will be blocked / unsent 
Suspend, Permit 	; this allows the hotkey to work even if the scrip is suspended
{
Reload 			; this reloads the script (and loads any new changes) - handy for testing if you are making frequent small changes
}
return

f3:: Suspend		 ; sets a hotkey to turn on and off the hotkeys if you need them to behave normally without closing the script
return
(first version) Click to Harvest autohotkey script
#NoEnv  ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
SendMode Input  ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%  ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.
ListLines Off

; the bits above are mostly standard recommended stuff for any script - they are not 100% necessary

; ////////////////
; Variables
; ////////////////

Distance:= 2.7387 ; how far you want the character to travle each time
Speed:= 6.3 ; Speed of the character - This can be found under Character > Profile > Motion and action in game 
Time:= Distance / Speed * 1000 ; this tries to determine how long to hold the move key to travel the given distance

; ////////////////
; The action
; ////////////////

~LButton::  		; this sets the button that will trigger the action. RButton for right click if you prefer 
					; The " ~ " symbol allows the normal function of the key fire 
					; this means that we only have to worry about sending the move key
{
KeyWait LButton  	; this waits for the key to be released before moving on
					; not exactly necessary but it can help prevent problems if you hold the button down 
	sleep, 200 		; tells the script to wait in ms.  1000ms = 1 second 
					; this gives the game time to swing the tool before moving the character
	Send {w down} 	; presses/sends the "w" key down
					; Boundless seems to like seeing separate "downs" and "ups" for each key
	sleep, %Time% 	; waits for the amount of time set by the above formula & variables
	Send {w up}		; sends the " w " key up / releases it	
}

Return 		; establishes an " end point " or stopping place for the above hotkey 
			; without this the autohotkey would continue executing whatever is next


f2::       			; setting up a hotkey on " F2 " Since there is no " ~ " in front of it, the normal F2 function will be blocked / unsent 
Suspend, Permit 	; this allows the hotkey to work even if the scrip is suspended
{
Reload 				; this reloads the script (and loads any new changes) - handy for testing if you are making frequent small changes
}
return

f3:: Suspend 		; sets a hotkey to turn on and off the hotkeys if you need them to behave normaly without closing the script
return

The equation solution is a bit better than using trial and error to find how long to hold the move key to travel x blocks/meters but itā€™s still quite flawed. Since the game lists rounded values for speeds and the character seems to ā€œslide to a stopā€ a bit after you let up the movement key, you will always travel a bit farther than the distance save in the script (unless you set your speed faster than displayed in-game). This sliding seems to get worse as you increase your speed, so fine tuning will still be necessary with each change in character speedā€¦ not to mention itā€™s hard to look perfectly strait aheadā€¦ so drifting side to side will increase the distance needing to be traveled and therefore add variability in performanceā€¦

In other words each movement wonā€™t be exactly 3 blocks and every so often you will need to take an extra step forward / back or readjust the camera angle etc

a work around would be to snoop the coordinates from the game and base movement off of thatā€¦ which is possible, but much more complicated and each game patch would break the scrip until the script is updated tooā€¦ fun times hehe

sorry if that got a bit too long windedā€¦ i tend to get carried away O.o

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If you donā€™t already have one, a mouse like the Corsair scimitar (or a cheaper knockoff) would work great for him if he has good mobility in his thumb. These are like normal mice but with 12 thumb buttons. So he could walk forward and harvest with one hand even without macros (though macros would help)



Also as mentioned above the Xbox adaptive controller is great for using with knees, elbows and feet. A bit pricier. However for $100 for the Xbox controller plus $100 for the Logitech additional buttons and $30-70 for the mouse, heā€™d be able to press at least 6 buttons with feet and knees plus 20ish buttons on the mouse.

The $30 red dragon mouse would definitely give you the most bang for your buck. You could also build your own USB foot pedal with a few buttons relatively easily by disassembling an old keyboard, but the Microsoft kit is probably better.

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