Process Affinity and EQ2

[Destriel]

<p>What I would really like to do is run 3 EQ2 clients in windowed mode at 1920x1200 on 3 monitors.  The problem I'm having is that the processor affinity simply will not change - all the EQ2 clients run on the same core.  I go from running 100fps in extreme performance to 20fps with a second client loaded.  If I set the affinity to say, processor 2 for 1 and 4 for the other, they both get set to 4.  I've tried using imagecfg from Microsoft to force the affinity on seperate EQ2 installations, it did nothing.  Manually setting it in Task Manager does nothing.  I know I was previously able to run the clients on seperate cores, I brought up my last couple toons boxing on 1 PC and it was possible because I could set the process affinity.</p><p>The weird part is, if I set the affinity in Task Manager to whatever cores and then check it a while later, the affinity is back to default - all cores selected.</p><p>I've just upgraded to a beast of a system, it's an Intel I7 920 oc'd to 4.5GHz, 6GB RAM, and an ATI 4850 X2 2GB quad DVI video card running XP64.  It should handle 3 EQ2 clients no problem, and surely would if the processor affinity would just set correctly.  Any ideas?</p>

[Wingrider01]

<p>whne are you attempting to set th processor affinity - the game itself is a child process, so it has to be set before that</p>

[Destriel]

<p>im quite sure it is not a child process, or so says process explorer.  the voice service is a child of everquest2.exe tho...</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p>Greetings,</p><p>Are you running the different Everquest 2 instances out of the same folder or do you have multiple Everquest 2 installs on  your computer?  If you are running them all out of the same folder then you might want to copy that folder to another location.  Then try running game from each folder. </p><p>We don't officially support multi-boxing and I haven't tried this myself, but it seems like it would be worth attempting.</p>

[Wingrider01]

<p><cite>Destriel wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>im quite sure it is not a child process, or so says process explorer.  the voice service is a child of everquest2.exe tho...</p></blockquote><p>It is a child process, the patcher or the new launchpad is the parent. You start the application via the patcher or the launchpad, then when you select play, or  the game is launches the child process of the game. If you started the game via the executable (not the patcher) then it would be the parent. Have always set the affinity on the patcher/launchpad and have had it process downward.</p>

[Destriel]

<p><cite>TSR-DanielH wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Greetings,</p><p>Are you running the different Everquest 2 instances out of the same folder or do you have multiple Everquest 2 installs on  your computer?  If you are running them all out of the same folder then you might want to copy that folder to another location.  Then try running game from each folder. </p><p>We don't officially support multi-boxing and I haven't tried this myself, but it seems like it would be worth attempting.</p></blockquote><p>I generally run all the EQ2 instances out of the same folder, I have a 32GB SSD for EQ2 so there isn't a ton of room for multiple copies.  However I have tried copying the folder to a seperate drive and run 1 from the SSD and 1 from another spindle with the same result..</p>

[Destriel]

<p><cite>Wingrider01 wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p><cite>Destriel wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>im quite sure it is not a child process, or so says process explorer.  the voice service is a child of everquest2.exe tho...</p></blockquote><p>It is a child process, the patcher or the new launchpad is the parent. You start the application via the patcher or the launchpad, then when you select play, or  the game is launches the child process of the game. If you started the game via the executable (not the patcher) then it would be the parent. Have always set the affinity on the patcher/launchpad and have had it process downward.</p></blockquote><p>Run Process Explorer while launching EQ2 and see what happens.</p>

[Vodr]

<p>I sent you a PM, if you search the multiboxing forums you will come across a gem of a program called ISBoxer which can fix the afinity issues,  allow you to easily map how you want your windows layed out and launch your instances for you.</p><p>Has some handy keyboard relay commands too so you can press say shift + ctrl + 1 or however you set it up to press 1 on the 2nd game instance.  Makes multiboxing easier for sure.</p>

[TSR-DanielH]

<p><cite>Vodroc wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I sent you a PM, if you search the multiboxing forums you will come across a gem of a program called ISBoxer which can fix the afinity issues,  allow you to easily map how you want your windows layed out and launch your instances for you.</p><p>Has some handy keyboard relay commands too so you can press say shift + ctrl + 1 or however you set it up to press 1 on the 2nd game instance.  Makes multiboxing easier for sure.</p></blockquote><p>Thanks for the good info.  I just started multiboxing the other day and I'll need to check that out for myself.  So far I have just been using my secondary as a buff bot.</p>