Thread: Catching all input and sending it to another program

Ok so I realise this sounds almost exactly like a keylogger, but hear me out first :P

What I am planning on doing is creating a program that will allow me to have 1 instance of a game on monitor 1, another instance on monitor 2, then with two 360 controllers be able to play them both independently on a LAN like setup. Prettymuch turning my PC into a games console.

Essentially what I want to make is a program that catches all input (keyboard, game controller, etc). Then send it to another program (once I am that far sending to the second shouldn't be a problem.

It isn't a problem that the same data is sent to each game instance as they can both have controller settings and it won't interfere with anything, although thinking about it, once the program has been made it wouldn't be difficult to separate the different inputs into each window.

The question is what calls do I need to make? How do you catch data from game controllers? how do you send the inputs to another program?

Originally Posted by MK27

I guess RedWind will be learning c now too

I know C/C++ as well as C#, I don't have a problem with I/O on an app that I am in control of, I just don't know how to catch messages that have been sent to another window and send them to another window. I apologise if my tone has inappropriate for this forum, I have a good idea of what I need to do, I just thought someone could show me to the correct API calls I need to make and if I'm lucky give an example of how to use it/them.

Originally Posted by QuantumPete

I'm still not understanding what you want to do that can't be done with a LAN. What's your programming experience like?

QuantumPete

I know it's easy on a LAN, but that requires two PCs and two controller hubs and that takes time to setup. When one PC can handle two instances of a game running simultaniously the only thing stopping both playing is that only one window is active at a time.

I have good programming experience of C/C++, I don't really know how to quantify experience, I know some C++ gurus are genius's so i dont wanna go beyond good.

I don't know if this would help, but have you thought of using IPC
(inter process communication) messaging.
I use it for communication between a database engine and applications.

Here is a URL that explains it.

IPC Messages

I have used this with great success.

Mmm.. you want to capture the imputs from the controller and use it in a program? you could capture the keyboard imputs and convert them into the pre defined keys of the game by using the keyboard events

My searching so far has unturned two key commands GetMessage and PostMessage.

GetMessage returns 1 for a message, -1 for an error otherwise 0. Inside getmessage is the handle for the window I want the messages for, a filter and a pointer to the actual message.

Postmessage will send a message to whatever window handle, and seems to have "message specific parameters" as well (?)

Does anyone have a clue how to filter messages for just keyboard/controller inputs?