View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0004029 | Valley 1 | Gameplay Issue | Sep 26, 2011 9:18 pm | Oct 1, 2011 12:29 pm | |
| Reporter | Cyborg | Assigned To | keith.lamothe | ||
| Status | resolved | Resolution | fixed | ||
| Product Version | 0.500 (First Beta) | ||||
| Fixed in Version | 0.511 | ||||
| Summary | 0004029: control scheme for keyboard needs work, missing abilities, keys not working | ||||
| Description | Wall of text incoming: First, let me express that the intent for a keyboard control scheme is to play without the mouse. Zelda doesn't have a mouse, if that's the inspiration. It's strictly the dpad, and that's what I'm going to describe. Keyboard controls for games like this are extremely desirable because keypresses and timing are all faster than a mouse ever could be. I know we talked about Robotron controls. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5x7naspEhD8 This is accomplished by having four keys, and each key aims up down left and right. Combining any two keys aims diagonally. The system you have now, you still have to use the mouse because there is no way to control the aim. It says that you can use keys to move the reticle, but this doesn't work, and even if it did it would be too slow for a game like this. You need the Robotron control scheme to truly provide a keyboard experience. Precision is accomplished by jumping and moving your character- you don't need the reticle in a keyboard scheme. There needs to be a way to rotate the selected abilities backwards (you already offer a way to move it forwards). AI war allows modifier keys when you create a key for an ability. We could use that here. This would allow you to map multiple control bars as well. People that play or used to play World of Warcraft do this all the time. defect: Sometimes, if I bind my right shift key to the active selected ability and set it to be the controls for mouse 1 Ability, it will not work unless I press my left mouse button at least once. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Major Problem | ||||
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Have you found the target key? TAB? That is the best way to do the aiming with the keyboard. Alternatively, you can turn on a keyboard aiming reticule if you want it. I'm just talking about what is presently there, mind. In terms of the general robotron style controls, it's certainly something I don't mind looking into, but I have to tell you we're swamped right now and it's not the highest priority compared to some of the other items because of the above features. The mouse is definitely the preferred input mechanism that we're emphasizing for most players, and that's not going to change, though we want to support as many possible play layouts as we can for the action bits. Keith is another one that only does the keyboard, for instance. |
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Yea, if I play on the keyboard I use the tab targeting; and often that means jumping to get a good angle for where the game's going to actually aim on a big monster where normally I could just aim from where I'm standing with the mouse. |
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I forgot to add, when you use an ability with a keyboard control scheme only, it should default to straightahead in the direction that your character's facing. |
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You can accomplish that last with an option in the settings window. It's something like Aim Keyboard Controls At Mouse Cursor or something. If you uncheck it, it will do what you want there. |
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Yea, originally it would dumbfire in the direction you were facing, but the mouse-using crowd cornered us keyboard-users in a burning building and the result was a "Aim Keyboard Controls At Mouse Cursor" toggle that defaults to on. But we can secretly turn it off and they'll never know. |
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I did try the auto targeting. I was actually trying to do some long-range attacks using the launch rock ability and wasn't able to properly go after the projectile trajectories that I wanted. Fully aware you have plenty of stuff to do. I know you are not bored. This is a suggestion if you want to untether people from the mouse. I found it kind of unwieldy to be doing the mouse for precision targeting as well as handling all my keys. I may get used to it, but so far I'm forcing through it with just a keyboard. |
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Sure, I gotcha -- and Keith is the same way. This may be something you should take on, actually, Keith, rather than me. It's more in your area of playing than mine, for sure. |
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I'll occasionally switch to mouse targeting if I'm holed up in a single place and not moving and sniping at a boss or whatever, but other than that I'm entirely on keyboard targeting and it's worked fine for me. But suggestions are certainly welcome on making it more complete. I looked at the robotron video and I can see where that method of aiming helps there, what I'm not sure I understand is how that works for both movement and aiming on just 4 buttons... oh, I get it, there is no "moving the reticle", you simply aim in the direction dictated by the movement buttons you're holding at that exact instant, right? And there's only 8 directions, but precision is achieved by positioning like you said. Rotating backwards through abilities - sure, can add that. "AI war allows modifier keys when you create a key for an ability. We could use that here. This would allow you to map multiple control bars as well. People that play or used to play World of Warcraft do this all the time." Yea, I was creating default keybinds with modifiers for a while... then we got to testing and people were constantly running into the old stuck-keys problem where if you alt-tab or if the program loses focus for any reason, etc those keys stay stuck until you press them, etc. It's bad enough in a strategy game, we didn't think it would be at all tolerable here, so we're trying to avoid any use of shift, ctrl, or alt (I still use them a bit in scrolling the strategy/city maps but that will be going away). Hopefully we'll be able to figure out the stuck-keys thing, but until then basically everything has to be a single key. "Sometimes, if I bind my right shift key to the active selected ability and set it to be the controls for mouse 1 Ability, it will not work unless I press my left mouse button at least once." Odd, will have to test that again. |
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I'm attaching a video of the aiming problem. Notice the check boxes that I do not have selected. You are correct about the Robotron scheme. I also wanted to add how advantageous this is against dwarves skelebots; pressing the aim key and then shooting is way too slow for those things! |
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That's very odd with the rock still targeting your mouse cursor; I just tested that exact spell and it's dumbfiring as one would expect. I wonder if maybe your game got too attached to a tab target or something like that; but I don't see a health bar and it's aiming right at your mouse cursor so it's probably not that. Getting late, so will need to get back to this tomorrow, but thanks for the feedback. |
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For 0.502: * Added "Aim Keyboard-Triggered Abilities In Movement Direction" toggle to Game tab of Settings window. ** When this toggle is enabled (by default it is not), and the "Aim Keyboard-Triggered Abilities At Mouse Cursor" toggle is disabled, and the keyboard reticle is disabled or inactive, then all your keyboard-triggered abilities will be aimed in the direction indicated by your movement keys. If you're not holding any direction keys down the default direction is straight ahead according to your facing. ** If you're not clear on what this does, just give it a shot. If you have a suggestion for the name of the toggle that's clearer I'm all ears. I'd have called it "Robotron targeting" but I didn't want to have to defend it in court. |
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Awesome, you captured it precisely. I don't have any fancy names. ActiveKey targeting? SmartMove targeting? Waiting for release. |
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For now I'll call it "Movement-Directed Keyboard Aiming". Also in for 0.502: * Added KeyBind "Switch Active Ability Bar (Reverse)" (Game tab of the Controls window). ** Switches to the previous ability bar. I think that's what you meant since I assume you didn't mean a reverse of switching which slot was bound to the left mouse button. Release should be within an hour or so, I'd guess. I know I'm done for the night ;) |
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Something still isn't right. It's like this screen that determines which control scheme you are going to use is still not obeying.I have attached a video. You can see that the direction I am running and firing with the mouse goes in the direction of a reticle. I have set my mouse alternate keys for mouse 1 to be fire, mouse 2 alternate key to be jump. I am running with my arrow keys. If I press mouse 1, It should fire in the direction of whichever way I am moving according to the control scheme I have chosen. |
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"It's like this screen that determines which control scheme you are going to use is still not obeying." This is pretty much exactly it. Only it's hard to reproduce for some folks like myself because my mouse is apparently way less sensitive and the game only "overrides" the keyboard targeting with the mouse targeting if the mouse has been moving. I've got a fix in my working copy to make it really not try to override the keyboard targeting if that aim-at-mouse-cursor toggle is off, and it seems to be working in my tests. Got a bunch of other stuff in the working copy that I need to tidy up before commit though, so not sure when it will be in. |
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Ok, the mouse-targeting-overriding-keyboard-targeting thing really should be fixed for 0.509, we'll see. |
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0.510 is out now, please let me know how the keyboard controls are doing therein :) |
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Still not working. Interestingly, you can see that the OS mouse checkbox is automatically checking itself even after I uncheck it. All I do is reopen the menu. Even without that, still not working. Does it help to know that I have two mice connected? I am attaching another video. |
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I had trouble attaching it due to file size requirements, but I finally got it. I took out the sounds, lowered the bit rate, and cropped it in order to fit. |
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Thanks for the video... it's really strange. I think the two mice thing may be why it's happening to you but I can't reproduce the problem at all. For 0.511: * Made not having the "Aim Keyboard-Triggered Abilities At Mouse Cursor" toggle on more aggressive about interpreting keyboard-triggered abilities as not targetted at the mouse cursor. Previously I hadn't noticed one branch where it was still saying "if input source is not definitely keyboard, and that ability was last triggered by the mouse, interpret as mouse"; now if that toggle is off it will interpret the same case as keyboard. So, sorry I can't confirm that this will work for you as I can't reproduce the problem myself, but I think it's got a reasonable shot. So retest on 0.511 when it hits (presumably tonight, but I don't know Chris's schedule). And if it still fails, if you wouldn't mind retesting with only one mouse connected that might be worthwhile. You could also attach your inputbindings.dat file to this mantis report and I could check to make sure that nothing strange has happened like a rebinding of the mouse-trigger-slot binds to the keyboard or such (that would be really bizarre, but this bug has already crossed into the twilight zone). |
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Oh, wait, just re-read the last line of the original report: "Sometimes, if I bind my right shift key to the active selected ability and set it to be the controls for mouse 1 Ability, it will not work unless I press my left mouse button at least once." So are you using the right-shift key (which is bound to mouse ability 1) to fire these abilities, rather than (for instance) the 1 key (which is by default bound to keyboard ability 1)? If so, then yea, it's going to use mouse aiming because it's a mouse binding. If you're wanting to use the "highlighted ability" (that would normally be fired by left-mouse but can be moved down the row by another key) from the keyboard I can add a separate binding for that, the mouse one is always going to use the mouse aiming. Yea, re-reading one of your more recent notes I see that you were doing that (I think). Sorry for not reading more carefully ;) Will see about that new binding... |
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Can you separate what the mouse buttons activate from the aiming? I thought that the mouse buttons only perform the functions therein, not that it would have anything to do with aiming when you deselect that option. Yes, I am using the right shift button to activate the highlighted ability. "Use mouse ability 1"= right shift/left mouse button |
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Willing to do whatever information gathering you would like me to do from my end. (I have been making videos so you know I'm not yanking your chain and to demonstrate the problem.) |
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Why not just set that as a secondary binding for keyboard 1 ability? The mouse and keyboard abilities specifically cause differences in aiming. Separating those out would be a challenge because for people who actually use the mouse, clicking the mouse button 1 function should make it aim with the mouse. But there are two bindings available for all keyboard controls, so you could use that for both 1 and shift, for instance. If you're cycling the first mouse button index, and that's why you're using mouse 1 bound to the keyboard, then we probably just need to make a "highlighted keyboard ability" button or something like that. That would allow the function you describe without having to get into messing with the mouse side of the controls. |
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...And I should have read Keith's note more carefully. He was clearly thinking the same thing as me. |
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Yea, I think I figured out what's needed :) |
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Ok, for 0.511: * Renamed the "Switch First Mouse Ability Slot" bind to "Switch Highlighted Ability Slot To Next", but did not change its function. * Added new "Switch Highlighted Ability Slot To Previous" bind, it does the same thing as the existing "To Next" bind but moves to the left instead of to the right. ** No default binding. * Added new "Use Highlighted Ability 1" bind: ** Tries to trigger the ability in the highlighted slot of the currently active ability bar. ** With default keybindings this is what would fire if you clicked the left mouse button. The difference is that this binding will not automatically use mouse aiming. ** Added corresponding binds for 2 through 9. ** No default bindings for any of these, just there if you're a play-by-keyboard sort of person and want them. I'm pretty sure that should handle the desired use cases. In theory we could also just have the "Use Mouse Ability 1" etc detect that they've been mapped to the keyboard and not automatically use mouse aiming, but this way they actually fill a third control niche: rotatable (unlike the normal "Use Ability 1" etc which can be mouse-aimed via that toggle but don't care about the highlighted slot) and mouse-aimed. Not sure if anyone does that ;) |
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Okay, I tried it out this morning. Looking good. I don't understand how to use the highlighted ability setting. you have them listed 1-10, but I only want to activate the ability that is highlighted (it might change). |
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Glad it actually worked ;) " I don't understand how to use the highlighted ability setting. you have them listed 1-10, but I only want to activate the ability that is highlighted (it might change). " Yea, it's a bit overkill to have all 10 but that makes it consistent with the mouse set of keybinds. The "2" one just uses the ability one slot to the right of the highlighted ability (wrapping around if necessary), and so on. Probably not many people will use it, but it's there. Anyway, I think that's all the issues in the original report so I'm going to mark this one resolved. Feel free to open another if there's something I missed. Thanks! |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 26, 2011 9:18 pm | Cyborg | New Issue | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:22 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0013757 | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:23 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0013758 | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:25 pm | Cyborg | Note Added: 0013759 | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:26 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0013760 | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:29 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0013762 | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:30 pm | Cyborg | Note Added: 0013763 | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:33 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0013765 | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:41 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0013767 | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:41 pm | keith.lamothe | Assigned To | => keith.lamothe |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:41 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | new => assigned |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:47 pm | Cyborg | Note Added: 0013769 | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:48 pm | Cyborg | File Added: aiming.avi | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:49 pm | Cyborg | Note Edited: 0013769 | |
| Sep 26, 2011 9:56 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0013771 | |
| Sep 27, 2011 7:32 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0014053 | |
| Sep 27, 2011 9:00 pm | Cyborg | Note Added: 0014069 | |
| Sep 27, 2011 10:25 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0014108 | |
| Sep 28, 2011 8:17 pm | Cyborg | File Added: aimingisstillnotright.Avi | |
| Sep 28, 2011 8:20 pm | Cyborg | Note Added: 0014505 | |
| Sep 29, 2011 1:30 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0014694 | |
| Sep 29, 2011 5:11 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0014733 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 12:55 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0014943 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 12:55 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | assigned => feedback |
| Sep 30, 2011 12:55 pm | keith.lamothe | Internal Weight | => Major Problem |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:59 pm | Cyborg | Note Added: 0015066 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 7:59 pm | Cyborg | Status | feedback => assigned |
| Sep 30, 2011 8:07 pm | Cyborg | File Added: stillnotworking.avi | |
| Sep 30, 2011 8:08 pm | Cyborg | Note Added: 0015068 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 8:28 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015073 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 9:49 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | assigned => feedback |
| Sep 30, 2011 9:53 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015087 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 9:54 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Edited: 0015087 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 10:11 pm | Cyborg | Note Added: 0015091 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 10:11 pm | Cyborg | Status | feedback => assigned |
| Sep 30, 2011 10:13 pm | Cyborg | Note Added: 0015092 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 10:21 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0015093 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 10:22 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0015094 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 10:23 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015095 | |
| Sep 30, 2011 10:33 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015096 | |
| Oct 1, 2011 10:40 am | keith.lamothe | Status | assigned => feedback |
| Oct 1, 2011 12:20 pm | Cyborg | Note Added: 0015182 | |
| Oct 1, 2011 12:20 pm | Cyborg | Status | feedback => assigned |
| Oct 1, 2011 12:29 pm | keith.lamothe | Note Added: 0015184 | |
| Oct 1, 2011 12:29 pm | keith.lamothe | Status | assigned => resolved |
| Oct 1, 2011 12:29 pm | keith.lamothe | Fixed in Version | => 0.511 |
| Oct 1, 2011 12:29 pm | keith.lamothe | Resolution | open => fixed |
| Apr 14, 2014 9:28 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Category | Gameplay - General Complaint => Gameplay Issue |
