Magicka Message Board  

Hi !

I just found a nice way to speed up casting times.
What you need is a nice little tool named AutoHotKey.
With AutoHotKey you can map different combinations of buttons and mouseclicks to each other. You could, for example, write a script that would emulate pressing 'asf' when you press the '1' key.

The script is rather self-explaining. It starts off with enforcing the use of keyboardhooks (This might strike some AntiVirus as odd, so look out for warnings). After that the delay between each emulated key press and the press-down time is defined.

Then we start defining our Hotkeys in this fashion:
1::SendPlay asf

That means if you press '1' AutoHotKey will emulate pressing 'asf' which will prepare the elements to cast the spell Haste.

Just save the following script as *.ahk and then doubleclick it and the defined hotkeys should become available ingame.


#UseHook ;Script may use Hooks
#InstallKeybdHook ;Force the use of Hooks
SetKeyDelay, 50, 50, Play ;Delay between KeyDown/KeyUp and different Keys
;Now for the Spells:
1::SendPlay qrqrqrqrqr ;xIce, I just like it !
2::SendPlay qfasa ;Thunder Bold
3::SendPlay fdfqdf ;Meteor Storm
4::SendPlay qqf ;Rain
5::SendPlay asf ;Haste

I gave this a wack on Win7 but it doesn't seem to be working correctly for me, pressing 1 doesn't give results with the script running and seems to disable to defined hotkey altogether so that pressing the 1 key doesn't stream out qrqrqr or even just 1, any advice?

Hi !

I am running Win 7 x64 too and it works pretty well.

Can you check if the hotkey properly works in a texteditor like notepad.exe ?

Can you try to remove the first two lines from the script (The hook stuff) ?

You can also try changing the first two parameters in the 3rd line (SetKeyDelay).

One parameter defines how long a button is pressed and the other one defines how much time passes between presses. Try a value of 100 or so.


I have uploaded my version of the script here: rapidshare.com/files/445191370/Magicka.ahk

You might want to try it out.

Thank you for the reply, it seems that sendplay doesn't function correctly on Windows 7 32bit with UAC active, that was the problem.

I'm on Vista 64, and I turned off UAC. Now it kind of works, but it only updates the keys when I press another.
For example, I press '1', and it writes the first element, but it wont write the next unless I press another key, like 'Space', and I have to do this continuously until it finishes the script.

Hi !

Did you try the suggestions I made for Alisis in my 2nd post ?
Did you try the usual Vista-related stuff like run as Admin and XP Compatibility mode ? As far as I know it must be run as Admin.


You might also want to try to search for vista 64 specific issues with AutoHotKey.

This might also be some kind of timing error, try setting the delays in SetKeyDelay higher, like 100 or so (Values are in miliseconds).

[Edited by RedWraith, 1/30/2011 5:11:52 AM]

I've tried running it with and without admin and compatability.
I've inserted and removed the hooks.
I'll try looking into AutoHotKey's forums.

worked OK for a bit in W7X64, but all of a sudden it started going thru the script and activating each of the keys 1-6 all by itself. This went on for over 20 mins, was kinda funny actually, was just at start of the game, before you get the white staff, in the room with all wizards around the table, it would go thru script buttons 1-6 and whatever it was they got hit with it. It did finally end on its own.

Gonna try again later & see if it does it again, on its own. I used the file RedWraith had posted, no changes to it at all.