#0 - Sept. 10, 2010, 2:36 a.m.
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I wasn't sure that I was properly interpreting the blue response to my post at:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26726034861&sid=1
so I put in a ticket to obtain clarification.
Ticket 2010Sep08 Question:
"I wish to use 3 game mouse buttons to simulate pressing a keyboard Shift, Alt, or Ctl modifier key and for the affiliated mouse button to do nothing else. To let me press a key modifier using my right hand without having to move my hand away from the mouse. But the key being modified would be physically pressed by my left hand on the keyboard itself. That necessitates that the mouse button that "presses" a modifier key continually do so (it "loops"). Is that allowed by game policy?"
Part of the Ticket Response (in context):
"Overall, our general rule is one button press per one action. From what I can gather, you're indicating that holding you mouse button down would spam or loop that Ctrl, Alt or Shift key just as though you were holding it down on the keyboard. Since this would not be any kind of automation, it would not be against our Policies.
However, should a key or mouse button be mapped to be pressed once and that one press would trigger a continual loop of input, that would be considered potentially against Policy."
That last line of the response does not refer to triggering an ingame created macro, it refers to creating on a keyboard (such as a G15) or a mouse a device side (on the keyboard itself or the mouse itself) a macro that would cause multiple things to happen. Having a device side macro do absolutely nothing but simulate pressing just one keyboard key (with or without a modifier key being included and whether or not it causes an ingame created macro to run) is allowed by ToS and EULA.
The very nice thing about the ticket response is that it clearly IS permissible to use mouse buttons to do nothing at all but simulate pressing a keyboard modifier key such as Shift, Ctrl and Alt. To do that, your mouse simply must spam or "loop" the simulation of pressing of the keyboard modifier key while the mouse button is held for that purpose, so that you can press an actual keyboard key while the modifier key is being pressed by simulation. My Cyber Snipa Stinger game mouse button assignment macro creation tool calls that "Fire button (loop while held)". So do it, your ingame macros will benefit.
Why is this so nice? Not just because some spells can be cast while moving via mouse control instead of by WASD control, meaning you don't have to stop using the mouse to press a modifier key if your other hand can't reach the modifier key and the key being modified at the same time! It also means this:
Say you're using the standard User Interface and showing all 4 action bars on your screen, 2 on the bottom and 2 on the right (a 5th is accessed by scrolling the bottom action bar, something that can be accomplished by a macro too). Your bottom action bar already has 12 slots with "hot keys" defined by default installation of the game, the keyboard keys "1" through "=" and they do not require a modifier. Right above that row you have another action bar of 12 slots, but you have to create ingame macros and bind keys to those macros for any icons you want in that slot if you want to use them without having to click them. For that top action bar, it would make sense to bind the keys to, say, Shift+1 through Shift+=.
You could do the same thing for the two vertical action bars on the right side of the screen, using Ctrl+1 though Ctrl+= and Alt+1 trough Alt+=. That would give you a total of 48 action bar slots that could respond to a key press, 36 of them using a modifier with the key press. And they would ALL be using the same keys "1" through "=", with or without a modifier key. A lot of work, but very nice.
Use BindPad to perform key bindings for your ingame created macros. Because it will put lettering over the action bar slot icon indicating WHAT the key bind is for that icon! If it isn't showing that then it's not bound by BindPad. Nothing to remember, just a quick glance at your action bar and you know how to run the macro. And it allows for organizing the icon on the bars.
Having everything on your action bars, all 48 visible action bar slots (60 if you macro the scrollable bottom action bar), accessible simply by pressing a mouse button (if needed) and one of 12 keyboard keys "1" through "=" is very nice indeed, and likely to reduce potential hand injuries caused by repeatable and un-natural contorting of the hand to press a keyboard key at the same time that its modifier key is being pressed. I'm very happy that I got the ticket response that I did.
Of course, you still have all those OTHER keyboar
