[All] Keyboard interface and keymaps

[roustk]

Originally Posted by Big Al

I could see combining 'z', 'a', 'u' and maybe 'A'...

I would argue against that, because I'm one of those people who use inscriptions (and I often have more than 10 numbered rod/staff/wand/artifacts). For example, my current warrior has a rod of detection @z0, staff of <magic mapping> @u0, and artifact of identify @A0. I also will inscribe scrolls of magic mapping @r0 and potions of enlightenment @q0, when I have them. (I use codes 1-8 for attacks, but 0 and 9 are for informative things.)

As I reflect on this, I realize that I mis-coded my artifact -- at the start of this game I planned to use 9 for identify and 0 for detection. Maybe I'll change it.

Kevin

[Remuz]

When you say "so fast", and you mean "a major release two years after the last one", ...

Really? Where have I been all that time? I wonder. I honestly had not realized.

The issue with inscriptions can be easily solved by leaving the old commands. That way you can continue using the old 'u'se, 'a'im, etc, if you decide to do so. I am not sure this would be a good thing in the long run, but this would be a way to please everyone.

[Big Al]

Good point, roustk.

Another solution (which a lot of modern games seem to do these days) is in the options screen, have a big list of all the commands in the game, and you can individually set each key to a command. So if you wanted all the use, zap, aim, etc commands all on the same key, simply assign them all to the same key. If not, then assign them to different keys. There'd a couple default keymaps to choose from (like the current normal & roguelike keys), or you could make your own eg. if you're used to the Nethack command keyset. Or (as was discussed in another thread recently) you could remap the 'jkluio' keys to movement keys '123456' if you don't have a numpad and move around the open, use, inspect, etc commands to where you want.

Or you could do the reverse and have a list of all the key combos possible and then you can select what action(s) you want associated with that key. Now that I think about it, this way would work better, I think. With this, you could combine the macro system too: for each key, you can pick the action(s) associated with it, as well as optionally other key presses following the command. Maybe I'll take a look at how hard this would be to implement.