How do YOU dualbox/run multiple accounts?

I'm just wondering what kind of tips people may have for running two accounts on one computer. I have them both active at the moment, and can run them fine with lowered graphics settings.

I have seen something about /maxinactivefps commands and such. what are they for and are they worthwhile?

what about duo toons? One offense, one support I imagine. I play both CoH and CoV, any tips would rock!

/maxinactivefps # -- makes the inactive window (the window you're not actively playing) take a minimal amount of processing power by forcibly reducing the number of screen draws per second (frames per second, or fps). This frees up graphics card power for your active window. (I typically set this at 3 when dual boxing.)
/maxfps # -- makes it so that you don't go above a certain number of fps, so that your graphics card doesn't spend time rendering things if you're OK with fewer screen updates. (I typically set this at 30 or 35 when dual boxing.)

Alternately, you can add them to your startup shortcut, by editing the properties and doing like the following (your install directory may look different):
"E:\Games\City\CohUpdater.exe" -maxinactivefps 3 -maxfps 30
---- does the same thing as the slash commands above, but now you don't have to type in the slash commands every time you start the game!

I also play in windowed mode, rather than full screen, and I reduce the size of the windows so that I can see a decent slice of the other screen when I'm on either one. That way I can just click that screen to swap focus instead of ALT+TAB, which can sometimes act funky.

I have done all kinds of duos; two support, two damage, a support and a damage, a meatshield and a damage, a meatshield and a support, etc. etc. They're all viable. My favorite is controller/scrapper heroside and MM/brute villainside.

Quote:

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I play on two PCs full screen.

I make groups of ten characters, five per account, and mix and match them as I level them up.

I tend to nominate one account as "front" and place my characters who play better as the main one in a duo there - melee-ers, ones with lots of location based powers and so on. The "back" account gets characters who require less attention and have ally-only buffs, eg Sonic Resonance is a great "back" powerset. Liquefy is infrequent enough for the location click to not bother me too much.
Ninja MM = front, because I want my pets running into melee, Thug MM = back, because they'll do OK just following.
Front characters usually get the aggro because they engage first, so buffers like Force Fields do better at the back.

Having said that, I have played two melee-ers at times. Just run round the back of your target and the back character will get into range and flank pretty well.

My favourite duos are usually two support characters. Mutual buffing can give some very powerful results. Two Empathy Defenders? Oh yeah!

Oh cool, thanks for the replies! Now I have some ideas to work with!

Is there anyway to have your keyboard fire off powers for both characters? Like if my primary attack is in the first slot on both, pressing 1 would fire them both off?

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=207366

This thread has some good info on the topic. The last post in the thread (my post) explains about keystroke going to multiple instances.

Smuphy, you rock!

I run two on my one rig at the moment.

One thing I am attempting to do is run them both on different rigs, but still be able to fire off commands for both with one keystroke. I use this

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2006/06/4273.ars

instead of a keyboard for all non-chat commands. I am going down to a local shop that makes custom cables to see if they can make me a splitter so i can use the Fang controller on both rigs. If it works, should be freaking swell.

Awesome Obsidian, I'll check it out!

Check the link in my sig for Synergy.

It's free open source software that allows for keystroke broadcasting across the LAN between two PCs I've also got a set of binds you can grab for basic dual-boxing functionality.

Wow that's super cool! I use a Fang controller though, can it be used still?

Also, any way to get this to work on one rig? as I don't always have access to the wife's lappy :P

Single rig, two instances, full screen, no changes to settings from running single instance. Alt tab between the two. Go from vert sync capped FPS to 30FPS.

I'm afraid Synergy only works with keystrokes (broadcasting them to two computers) and mouse moves (effectively sharing a long desktop between two PCs).

It won't do anything with two applications on the same PC, and doesn't support controllers.