"Dual Boxing" with a single machine?

Quick simple question here since I don't have a second rig. What's it take to run two instances of CoX on one computer?

My assumption is a higher end PC, and that you have to have the game installed twice, like with setting up training server access.

you do not need to have two Installations like you do for the test server, but you do need 2 accounts.

You dont need the game installed twice, just get on account all the way logged in, before switching.

If you are just trading enh or other stuff, even a fairly low end PC is reasonable, just make sure you turn down the slider settings.

If you are actively fighting with both then a higher end graphics card and lots of memory would be useful.

I used to occasionally dual box on my laptop, which had 4 gig of memory and 'real' graphics card (not an onboard one), and with low settings it was tolerable.

With a quad-core processor, there is almost no difference running 2 instances than it is running only 1... as long as you have the available ram as well. Once you get into 3 or more instances, performance usually starts to degrade. It can be helpful to use the slash command "/maxinactivefps 2" in each instance. It will gear down the inactive windows and greatly help performance on your active window.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Catwhoorg You dont need the game installed twice, just get on account all the way logged in, before switching.

You don't even really have to be logged in. Simply getting to the login screen before loading the next instance is enough. The client itself can be run more than once.. it's the updater program that can't have more than one copy open at a time. Once it's closed, and the client starts loading, you can open another one.

That said, you can bypass the updater altogether and load as many instances as you like simultaneously by using the following shortcut (assuming default installation directory):
"C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CityOfHeroes.exe" -project coh

To make it even easier, you can even combine all your multi-box preferences right into the command line as well:
"C:\Program Files\City of Heroes\CityOfHeroes.exe" -project coh -fullscreen 0 -maxinactivefps 2

You can have as many instances of CoH running as A) Your compy can support without imploding, and B) Accounts you have.

You can NOT have more than one (1) instance of the Loader/Patcher running, however.

My compy is almost 6 years old, and if I turn the graphics settings all the way down, I can have both of my accounts running. I generally just use it to trade stuff, and even, I get laggy. I have an AMD Sempron™ 3000+ 2.00 GHz with 2 GB RAM running WinXP Home SP2.

Oh, and I ALWAYS run in windowed mode. Can't stand Fullscreen. >.>

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A quick way to turn your graphics settings down (especially if you have yours tweaked and don't want to keep fixing it) is to click on "run in safe mode" on the EULA screen. This automatically drops your graphics settings to their lowest, and when you log out and back in normally, the settings are reverted to what they normally should be. Just make sure you don't accidentally click on "options" when you're running in safe mode, or the low settings will be saved and you'll have to tweak them again.

As Master-Blade mentioned, the "maxinactivefps" command is a lifesaver when dual boxing. The command tells the game that, if it loses focus as the active window, then it shouldn't use as many system resources. Once you return to the game screen, it will then play exactly like you're used to.

If you don't want to edit your CoH shortcut for whatever reason, the command can be activated ingame by typing "/maxinactivefps #" in the chat bar. The # is how many frames you want it to render every second when it's not the active window. I usually use 1.

Typing "/maxinactivefps 0" will disable the command, and it will continue to render fully even when in the background... which is, again, not recommended while dual boxing.

If you're looking to do AFK farming, such as a heal farm or a damage farm overnight for the badges, you can also open up a browser window on top of the game windows, causing all of them to use much fewer resources when you're not actually playing.

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Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!