Suggestions for multi game setups

[Malic]

I play a lot of Elite, but messing with Star Citizen

Issue is it has a lot of binds and/or commands that I want to carry a command over from one to the other, example, open galaxy map, and opening the mobiglass navigation.  Issue is VA is watching a series of button presses to see if it should open, but the profile can only watch for one game, not multiple.

[SemlerPDX]

VoiceAttack already has this feature ... it's called "profiles".

You create a profile for a game, and if you want those commands for another game, you can create a new profile for that game, and copy/import commands from the other profile and reconfigure the targets and keys as needed for that new game.  You can even set up an auto-profile switcher to activate the appropriate profile depending on the game which is currently running.

If you really want to get creative, inside a general command, you can have it check which game is running using conditions and tokens, if for example, Elite Dangerous or Star Citizen - in the 'open galaxy map' command - and if it's ED, it presses that key for that game, and if it's Star Citizen, it presses the key for that game instead.

Apologies if I am completely misunderstanding your suggestion, but as I read it, these tools already exist.

[Malic]

The problem with that is when a profile is designed to go online, download an update listing of say, a few thousand star systems, so then it can put that into a variable, and then reset.  It is an absolute pain when the main profile takes 40+ seconds to finishing doing its startup checks and downloads.


I would absolutely love the ability to edit another profile that is attached to it while staying in my main profile if that could become a thing instead, or open a second VA window that could let me edit that second profile there, mayhap disable its voice functions when it is up, like a light version, and once the command is good, have the main exe refresh that profile so it can be used.

[SemlerPDX]

Some fully-featured public profiles take a long time to initialize their systems, and that is merely the cost of using those public profiles - when they have a lot of work to do, it can only be done so fast as the designer had programmed them.  Typically, though, it's less than the time it takes to load the game it is designed for, but not always.

If your issue is that you are launching VoiceAttack and it is immediately loading this profile you mentioned which takes 40+ seconds, I would suggest that you instead create more than one Windows shortcut to launch VoiceAttack.  You could create a blank profile to "land" upon when using one of these shortcuts so it doesn't load that public profile you described - and another one that will load that profile which takes 40+ seconds to load.

This way you can selectively launch VoiceAttack and begin editing some other profile without waiting for the other one to load.

Alternatively, you can hold down CTRL+SHIFT while VoiceAttack launches, and in the startup pop-up select the option to disable profile startup commands for the remainder of the session - this will let you edit profiles and work with them without waiting for them to load, of course you'd need to restart VoiceAttack when you're done so that the profile(s) function normally and run their startup commands as needed.

[Malic]

And there lies the issue, I need all the profiles to be active but need to be able to edit each one independently while another is being edited.

Example, I am showing something with Blender that uses voice commands to do things to animate something, and then swap to a game, use VA to control the streaming software to turn scenes or sources on and off, then to ithoughts for mind mapping, then back to a spreadsheet that takes data from the API that has to be running when the game starts up to pull states, you can not shut down VA between each one.

[SemlerPDX]

Are we using the same terminology here?

When you "edit" a profile, you are in the Profile Editor view which shows a list of commands, from there, you can select a command to view the Command Editor window.  There should be zero reasons to simultaneously edit more than one profile and its command(s) at the same time independently and also with each of these as 'active' profiles.

I can't imagine a scenario where you would be editing profiles while using them.  What you seem to describe is that you need multiple active profiles, one for Blender, one for a game, one for controlling streaming software, a spreadsheet editor, and ithoughts.  For this, you merely need to manage your profiles and possibly modify them so that they do not need to be the currently selected profile in order to function, so that they can be global profiles in the background all active at the same time.

So long as there is no command overlap (same voice commands in multiple profiles), this should work just fine.  I presently have my default profile loaded, which works for several games depending on if they are running, but also globally I have my voice calculator, my sensors & weather profile, and my openai/chatgpt profile all waiting for commands as well - each of these are separate profiles with specialized purposes, similar to what you describe in your use case scenario.

When a profile is included as a global profile, that profile's command phrases are loaded (globally) when VoiceAttack starts up - no need to switch to the profile(s).  But if any of your profiles have 'initialization' or 'start-up' commands which need to fire at least once before using the profile, you may consider means to merge these somehow so that they occur after VoiceAttack is loaded so that you can use other profiles as global or included profiles all at the same time without switching between them in order to use their commands.

[Malic]

Think about it this way.

You have your main overall profile, and you have a secondary profile for an individual game.

You are creating a command that relies on existing commands for it to work.

Right now, to make a change to this individual game I have to do the following:

Starting in main profile:
Change to individual game profile
Make a change to the command
Save, go back to main profile.
Wait 30 seconds while it does it initialization, downloads data from internet for commands
try command to see if ti does not work
Start over at top, rinse, repeat.

Having to constantly leave and then return to the main profile to see if it functions gets old very quick

Having a way to edit a second profile would help streamline this.

I would like to be able to instead:

Open secondary profile command and make changes.
Test to make sure they work.

Without the constant need to wait till the main profile initializes each and every time just to make, create or edit a secondary profile command.

[SemlerPDX]

I think I understand your suggestion.

I also have to fully initialized my CORE profile and the end game profile (AVCS4 BMS, for example) in order to test changes to these advanced voice command systems due to their size and scope.  It takes upwards of 30 seconds to finalize this initialization, and so I can relate to this slog you are experiencing.  I get that you would prefer if at least a few of these steps were eliminated by being able to edit any profile without loading that profile in the editor by switching to it.

In the end though, it is the long initialization which is truly the time consuming part, while switching to another profile to edit it is simply an extra task that adds to a multi-step process.  Unfortunately, it may not be feasible to access an editor for another profile due to the nature of the VoiceAttack program and how it works at the base level.

I can't speak for what Gary might have in mind for this program in future, or whether this suggestion is even possible, but I will say that I included keypress hold overrides which I can press when switching to one of my profiles with a long initialization time to bypass this and just land me in the profile for editing - food for thought as we wait to see if this type of suggestion piques any interest or gets investigated further.