Trouble with .exe reconition/program switching

[Sir Poopsalot]

I cannot seem to get Voice Attack to change to my Elite Dangerous profile when EliteDangerous32.exe is running. I must go into voice attack software and manually select the profile. Other progams I use, such as logitech gaming software and TrackIR configuration do not have any trouble recognizing that the program is running. I have tested it with other .exe files as well and nothing seems to get it to switch to the appropriate game/program.

Please help!

[Luca D]

There is no auto-switching based on the running executable, because at the moment there's no direct link between a profile and a specific EXE; it's left to the user to decide if that profile should work for multiple programs (using the 'Active Window' option) or is dedicated to a specific one.

You can have a command do the switching (note that you can create a "master" profle that is linked by all your other profiles, so that these switching commands are available always) or start/switch by running VA with the appropriate command line (see page 48 of the manual for all the options)

[leit]

You can accomplish that by using the voice attack command line options and a batch file.

Create an empty text file EliteDangerous.txt and write:

@echo off
cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\VoiceAttack\"
start VoiceAttack.exe -profile "Elite Dangerous"

cd "Elite Dangerous Path"
start EliteDangerous32.exe

Then change the filepath and the profile name and change the file extension to .bat. Now you can link your Elite: Dangerous shortcut to this file and it will start elite and change the profile with one click.

Or you can use evenghost (or something similar) to automatically execute the VoiceAttack.exe -profile "Elite Dangerous" command when the game starts. This is a more complex solution and takes some time to set up, but it gives you some advanced options.

[Sir Poopsalot]

OK, well I appreciate your tips and instructions and I may try that method. But that doies make me sad to hear. I guess I assumed that Voice Attack did them already.
 But, in general, that seems like an awful lot of trouble to link all of my games to their profile. I hope that in the future the Voice Attack can "direct link between" as actually all of my other game utilities do.

This seems like an odd feature to be un-included when it is clearly possible for many other programs, even relatively small ones such as Voice Attack, to do all of this profile switching natively and invisibly.

This is a great alternative to Windows Speech Macros and I thank the writer for making it. It just needs proper "auto-program-switching" to meet my need.


As a separate (but possibly related?) problem; when relaunching any game, Voice Attack log prints that it cannot find the running program even though it is clearly listed as a running ".EXE" and is selected in Voice Attack. It must be re-selected, (the exact same file in the exact same place in the list!) in order to work. It then works perfectly fine until the game is restarted again. It seems like Voice Attack is not checking to see if the program has been restarted or been addressed differently by Windows.

Thanks and have a nice day.

[Gary L Magenheimer]

I don't find it odd to be, 'un-included'.  It's on the to-do list.  There are just more pressing things to be done.  I get tons more email for other features than just for auto-switching profiles.  Which game utilities are you using that auto switch?  

Gary

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[Luca D]

On Tuesday, February 3, 2015 at 8:58:53 AM UTC+1, Sir Poopsalot wrote:

OK, well I appreciate your tips and instructions and I may try that method. But that doies make me sad to hear. I guess I assumed that Voice Attack did them already.
 But, in general, that seems like an awful lot of trouble to link all of my games to their profile. I hope that in the future the Voice Attack can "direct link between" as actually all of my other game utilities do.

It's a matter of choices and also personal preferences; some software do, some don't, and there are cases when the auto-switching it's really usefull while other times is annoying

For example, my joystick profile softwares do not (the Saitek one, Joy2Key, MotionInJoy and so on...) and that way I can decide, on a case-by-case basis, if i want to have a common layout of buttons active or a specific one... also, they are easier to use for emulated programs, where the actual software is not the same as the executable running (for example think DOSBox, virtual machines, console emulators etc..)

The Logitech software, for my G11 keyboard, on the other hand does have indeed auto-switching but it's mandatory (you need to specify an EXE when saving the profile), and I hate that...for my MMOs for example i always use the G1-G18 macro keys as CTRL+1,CTRL+2,... and the auto-switching forces me to duplicate the same profile over and over just to change the EXE name, when i could only have one for everything

As a separate (but possibly related?) problem; when relaunching any game, Voice Attack log prints that it cannot find the running program even though it is clearly listed as a running ".EXE" and is selected in Voice Attack. It must be re-selected, (the exact same file in the exact same place in the list!) in order to work. It then works perfectly fine until the game is restarted again. It seems like Voice Attack is not checking to see if the program has been restarted or been addressed differently by Windows.

I guess that it because VA compiles that list from the running processes and, while it shows the user simply the name of the EXE, internally it binds the commands to its ProcessID; when you close and restert a program, its ProcessID changes everytime

[Sir Poopsalot]

I hope my response did not seem critical. So, if other people do not see auto-switching as valuable..I guess that's just how it is. To me it is an important one.

There are some applications, such as Saitek's (now owned by Madcatz :[ ) "SSD Smart Technology" that do not feature profile auto switching. But I use this one for very few games; I will go out of my way to eliminate as many not-self-managing external apps from my gaming experience as I can. This is simply because there are so many of them, and some are obviously more useful than others.  So for me right now, when dealing with the launching of or restarting of a game; the only external program that has obligatory management in my flow currently, is Voice Attack.

A few softwares that I use that support auto-switching for profiles are:
TrackIR v5 (head tracking settings)
Logitech Gaming (mouse settings)
Logitech Profiler (steering wheel settings)
Corsair Utility Engine (keyboard settings)
Dell Display Manager (monitor settings)

[Sir Poopsalot]

@Luca D
I understand that having the granular control of self-managing the profile is appealing to some and not so appealing to others. I wish some implementations, such as Logitech's as you mentioned, had made it work both ways. But, if I had to choose one over the other, I would always go with auto-switching. This is simply for the automation it allows in and out of the gaming realm. More on this coming up..

If I was forced to go through each of the above listed and find the game profile in and then enable it; I would probably be ready for a drink before I even started playing :)

This is, of course, not even mentioning going to other settings for general desktop use. As another huge appeal for profile auto-switching is not game-related at all. Being able to Alt-Tab to a browser, then to chat, then to a spreadsheet, and have all of these above listed applications find and assign the correct profile (for Firefox, Chrome, IRC, FTP, etc.) automatically and seamlessly; that kind of automation and user experience improvement demands that the support applications be "smart" about what the user is trying to do. Most of the ones I use are; and I really thank the people who made them for that, even if it seems like a small thing.

[Gary]

I understand how important that feature is to you.  It's on the books to incorporate, but it's not in there right now.

Gary