Key Bindings (no seriously)
beyond.wudge
Join Date: 2012-10-19 Member: 162731Members
Join Date: 2012-10-19 Member: 162731Members
<b>TLDR; Free all the keys. Add more options to the menus. Make customising the game easier.</b>
NS2 is a complicated game. It's a game of depth and exploration. It is not a casual game for a console audience.
By casual I refer to a low investment audience, not to a low skill or 'useless' group of people. Many low skill players invest many hours into making NS2 'their game' and are vital parts of the community, making many a server come to life through their presence.
Many modern games have been streamlining their control interfaces. This is because they are becoming increasingly simple, highly engineered, controlled experiences. Indeed even PC only titles like HL2, CS:S and TF2 suffer from this phenomena. It seems that many in gaming scene believe that players are afraid of investing and want to minimise the perceived need for investment. This is wrong. Many players wish to customise their experience and tailor it to their own needs, many players desire a game where they can do this.
From what I can tell several serious issues currently exist including:
<b>- The Mouse wheel cannot be rebound</b>
- There is no LastInv function.
<b>- You can only bind one key to a function through the menu.</b>
- You cannot bind a key to join a team through the menu
- You cannot bind upgrades or sets to upgrades to hotkeys
<b>- Importantly, you cannot rebind commander hotkeys</b>
- Binding keys seems to be needlessly case sensitive.
(If you can think of any others or there are any mistakes above let me know)
Looking back there seems to be a lot of these sorts of issues throughout the game's development. I think it is time that the game was given a proper keybinding overhaul and any and all 'hardcoded' keys are freed for player's customisation. I also think that player investment should be encouraged, not presumed a 'turn off.'
Hide these advanced options through toggles and hidden parts of the menus if you need to but please allow players to functionally make this game 'their game' again.
NS2 is not a simple game. It is not 'casual.' It should not be forcing players to not invest in it.
***
As a side-note, is there a list anywhere of all the console commands? I've been looking around and run a few searches and found nothing solid.
Also, where are a player's binds stored? I've seen a few mentions of the file but knowing that menumod has been strangely disapproved of I wasn't sure if the files mentioned still existed or had been merged into others.
NS2 is a complicated game. It's a game of depth and exploration. It is not a casual game for a console audience.
By casual I refer to a low investment audience, not to a low skill or 'useless' group of people. Many low skill players invest many hours into making NS2 'their game' and are vital parts of the community, making many a server come to life through their presence.
Many modern games have been streamlining their control interfaces. This is because they are becoming increasingly simple, highly engineered, controlled experiences. Indeed even PC only titles like HL2, CS:S and TF2 suffer from this phenomena. It seems that many in gaming scene believe that players are afraid of investing and want to minimise the perceived need for investment. This is wrong. Many players wish to customise their experience and tailor it to their own needs, many players desire a game where they can do this.
From what I can tell several serious issues currently exist including:
<b>- The Mouse wheel cannot be rebound</b>
- There is no LastInv function.
<b>- You can only bind one key to a function through the menu.</b>
- You cannot bind a key to join a team through the menu
- You cannot bind upgrades or sets to upgrades to hotkeys
<b>- Importantly, you cannot rebind commander hotkeys</b>
- Binding keys seems to be needlessly case sensitive.
(If you can think of any others or there are any mistakes above let me know)
Looking back there seems to be a lot of these sorts of issues throughout the game's development. I think it is time that the game was given a proper keybinding overhaul and any and all 'hardcoded' keys are freed for player's customisation. I also think that player investment should be encouraged, not presumed a 'turn off.'
Hide these advanced options through toggles and hidden parts of the menus if you need to but please allow players to functionally make this game 'their game' again.
NS2 is not a simple game. It is not 'casual.' It should not be forcing players to not invest in it.
***
As a side-note, is there a list anywhere of all the console commands? I've been looking around and run a few searches and found nothing solid.
Also, where are a player's binds stored? I've seen a few mentions of the file but knowing that menumod has been strangely disapproved of I wasn't sure if the files mentioned still existed or had been merged into others.
Comments
The engine limitation rhombus refers to pertains to the amount of commands that can be created (the lastinv part). Due to the way some tables were constructed, it's simply full at the moment and they'll have to redo a part of that before they can add new commands.
It's been on the to-do list for a while, but they had some bigger fish to fry.
As far as I'm aware there's no engine limitations that prevent mousewheel from becoming a bind, but I'm not the expert. My guess is that it's on the same to-do list as the above.
Being a non-qwerty user, commanding requires some getting used too because although the chat uses the right keyboard layout, for commander its supposed to be 2 rows (qwer and asdf). For me 3 of those keys are different and there's no way I can rebind them (autohotkey yes, but then the chat will be fooked in turn.
The only key NS2 failed on was L which i usually bind to 'use'. This was a problem until 236 but i let it off and used ' instead.
...but it's nice to know that it's a known issue and will get worked on at some point. Allowing people to bind whatever they want to wherever they want is important in the long term, although don't fall in to the trap of letting ppl 'assign fire to mouse scroll with no limits on the speed a pistol can be fired' that other games have fallen in to :s
I agree with many of your points, but I needed to fix that statement for you.
It seems very strange that this was not planned for originally. Ideally you'd think that with a game being so full of untapped potential that you'd leave plenty of room for expansion.
Sounds like they did this on purpose. Not maliciously, but ultimately due to some ideological garbage they've picked up so they can say they have "the biggest [ferrari] in the whole room."
"My game design is so great harg harg harg. We control our players and make them have fun whether they want to or not. Harg harg harg."
I hope this isn't some sort of "we don't like the mousewheel being used for jump" sort of rubbish some developers carry on with. I know they like Blizzard heaps but the whole "we patch every interesting thing out of our games to make them 'fair' for the childrenz" policy is not one any FPS developer should pick up.
No. You're wrong. That old logic of 'casual vs competitive' is weaker than mine. I'm writing on a totally different axis.
Read it again. Especially this bit (I will make it clearer):
"By casual I refer to a low investment audience, not to a low skill or 'useless' group of people. Many low skill players [play quite competitively, investing] many hours into making NS2 'their game' and are vital parts of the community, making many a server come to life through their presence."
Sounds like they did this on purpose. Not maliciously, but ultimately due to some ideological garbage they've picked up so they can say they have "the biggest [ferrari] in the whole room."
"My game design is so great harg harg harg. We control our players and make them have fun whether they want to or not. Harg harg harg."
I hope this isn't some sort of "we don't like the mousewheel being used for jump" sort of rubbish some developers carry on with. I know they like Blizzard heaps but the whole "we patch every interesting thing out of our games to make them 'fair' for the childrenz" policy is not one any FPS developer should pick up.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
haha idk about that... i get the feeling that the devs are just too artsy. I wish they would all stop working on the game for like 2 weeks and just play the game. They actually played a scrim the other day and my god they where bad.
At the next GDC everyone has their [rulers] out and are measuring. Since fun is 'subjective' and only the biggest titles get the 'my player count > your player count harg harg harg' card, devs start turning to 'my design principles > your design principles harg harg harg.'
It's the same trend in almost every industry. If you can't win with one's tangible results then you turn to intangibles like philosophy, principles and 'design.' *Thumbs up* ;)
You had to know how to double jump on marines and bunny hop in NS1 if you wanted to do good.
<!--quoteo(post=2061964:date=Jan 17 2013, 01:26 PM:name=DTE)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (DTE @ Jan 17 2013, 01:26 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2061964"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Autohotkey for the mousewheel
Being a non-qwerty user, commanding requires some getting used too because although the chat uses the right keyboard layout, for commander its supposed to be 2 rows (qwer and asdf). For me 3 of those keys are different and there's no way I can rebind them (autohotkey yes, but then the chat will be fooked in turn.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Use +q::suspend to disable hotkeys. THen you can disable it when typing / not commanding on a whim using shift + Q.
You must have a good income ...
YOU TOO?!
I have the added curse of default Quake Inverted mouse, as well.. although mechwarrior and flight sims didnt help either.
On topic: I hate hard coded keys with a passion, and can echo what everyone else has already said. "Its being worked on."