Executing Commands Differently

[Kodama]

I am no programmer, and im a huge noob when it comes to making profiles and such, I imagine a more.. user friendly ui for building profiles, as well as profiles becoming more readily available for download will be a thing in the future. With that said, I have noticed through my minor testing and usage of voice attack, along with other voice dictation like software.

When a command is happening it more or less acts as a macro, which presses keys, or mouse clicks, etc, which can then hinder or interrupt something else you were doing with your keyboard, or worse you could accidentally mess up the macro that was being executed by simple pressing a single key.

Would there be a way for commands to be able to directly interact with a program or software without the need for mouse clicks or key presses.

For example, if I am sitting in a game, and I want to play some music from itunes or media player or, whatever music software. I would need to set up a command that either using mouse clicks to navigate to the program and click the play button, or to keyboard shortcut it to play it, in either instance it has to move away from what I was already doing on my game to bring the other program into focus, now this becomes incredibly inconvenient cause at this point i may as well have just manually done it myself as in either case the game loses focus.

If the program could instead directly talk to the program and when i say play, it just plays without the need for key clicks or any of that then i could completely stay focused in the game without interrupting the command or the game.

[Pfeil]

It'd be nice if this were possible, but there is no universal interface for it. Most applications are designed for human input, which any macro application has to emulate.

Some applications, media players in particular, do offer alternate methods of interaction which VoiceAttack could utilize through a plugin, but that requires custom programming.


Though, if what you're looking for is to control something like itunes, media keys(Play, Next Track, etc..) should work(you may need to set them up to work globally); They don't change window focus.
If your keyboard doesn't have them, you can also select them from the list of keys by clicking the keyboard icon in the "Add a Keypress" dialog(In the latest beta, at least).

[Kodama]

So essentially if more programs allowed for custom plugins and such, it could be possible to hook VA to directly talk to these programs using said plugins. I certainly hope the blowup of voice attack with htc vive, and star citizen, gets people into gear to utiliize this program for all its worth and more by allowing such plugins, or building there own direct lines themselves for voice attack to work with.

I figure there is a way to get around the focus screen for media players btw, it was just the simplest example i could give at the moment. I am super noob when it comes to utilizing voice attack, I am hoping to learn more and understand the jargon that comes with it as well. I would like to try and set it up to just use everything. to be able to open certain programs and switch profiles depending on which program was opened, or game, It would be nice to have a profile that acted as a global profile, where the commands were just available globally, instead of having to repeat certain commands for say media players in each profile, or avoid having to say hey use commands from this profile as well, in every single new profile i create. Although i suppose thats a less efficient way to set a 'global profile'

[Pfeil]

So essentially if more programs allowed for custom plugins and such, it could be possible to hook VA to directly talk to these programs using said plugins.

I meant to imply that VoiceAttack can communicate with programs using plugins for VoiceAttack(to extend its functionality), but that is only possible if the target program has an interface that can be communicated with in the first place; So I suppose it is true that if said programs allowed plugins, VoiceAttack could be made to work with them.

[Gary]

avoid having to say hey use commands from this profile as well, in every single new profile i create. Although i suppose thats a less efficient way to set a 'global profile'

You can also link another profile into your profile (which can link to another profile and so on).  Just click on profile options and select, 'include commands from other profile' (or whatever its called).  It's not a, 'global' solution, but it's a way to not have to copy every command into your current profile.  Since it's linear, you can create any set of linked profiles into single profile that can be used.  I tend to stay away from, 'global' as much as possible, as global things are great right up until you don't want them to be.

Hope that helps!

[Kodama]

Yeah that might be the better way to go, I was just thinking for being able to link certain profiles together so if I say opened up star citizen it could automatically open up the star citizen file, but then if i closed star citizen, and opened another program I could just call the profile out for it to switch, which the way you described will work well enough, no problem.

[iceblast]

I don't know if you do this already or not, it's just a suggestion, but I usually run my games in windows mode. That way, I can easily, and quickly switch to another program, without any problems. You can have VA send commands to another program, and switch back to your game in a second.

Another thing, since Alt+Tab doesn't working in VA, you can the Windows Key.

Win+1 to music player, Win+2 to game. Each Windows Taskbar Tab is a number. I use to play Everquest, with 3 characters. It was very easy to make a macro that would switch between windows, and control my characters. I could hit one key, and all my characters would fight, and kill the mob I was fighting. The switch is so fast, you don't even notice it.

But the Game has to be in windows mode.

Sorry, if you already know all this. Anyway, I hope it helps someone.

[Kodama]

Thank you for the interesting Idea, I play everything in borderless windowed mode, as transition in easier. I have a dual monitor setup but alt tabbing is still infintly easier in borderless. Even with that half second or second interchanging, it can still be game breaking, especially if your trying to use a viva with a hotas setup and your trying to issue commands(unless keyboard inputs dont interfere with joystick inputs at the same time) but then something is interupted because your trying to dodge that one missile coming at your face while playing star citizen, as the command you just issued was taking place.

HOPEFULLY star citizen does indeed, work with greg here to build some kind of proprietary plugin support for star citizen to directly communicate with the game, which would then hopefully pioneer other games, and programs to add similar functionality to allow voice attack or future dictation programs to be able to directly communicate.