Gridkeys Please...
Bridger15
Join Date: 2009-09-16 Member: 68797Members
Join Date: 2009-09-16 Member: 68797Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Commander Interface should use the best RTS has to offer</div>So i have a very simple suggestion. Please set gridkeys as the default hotkeys for the commander interface. If you do not know what gridkeys are, i will explain:
<img src="http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/7537/qwerik5.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
This is a cropped picture depicting the bottom right portion of the interface in Company of Heroes (red letters added in photoshop), the recent RTS from Relic Entertainment. As you can see it is a fairly standard grid with the different abilities you can perform for selected unit/building. So here you have your build menus and your different unit abilities etc.
Now since we have a nice 4x3 grid here (not including the left hand column) it fits very nicely on the left side of a keyboard! Gridkeys simply means that you make sure your grid of buttons overlays with the keys on the keyboard. So no matter what unit/building you select in the game, the button to activate the menu/ability in the upper left hand corner will ALWAYS be Q. The one next to that will ALWAYS be W, etc.
This is infinitely easier to use/learn than a system which uses a different button for each ability based on the first letter, unless it's already taken in which case it might be the first letter of the second word in the ability name, unless you can't use that in which case...you get my drift. In addition keeping all the keys on the left side of the keyboard makes it much easier for a touch-typist to hit the keys. I wanted to strangle the guy who thought it would be a good idea to use P as the key to build some units in CoH....
So please PLEASE, if you are not going to have keys remappable, provide grid keys as an option or the default. And even if you are going to allow remappable keys, i suggest gridkeys.
<img src="http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/7537/qwerik5.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
This is a cropped picture depicting the bottom right portion of the interface in Company of Heroes (red letters added in photoshop), the recent RTS from Relic Entertainment. As you can see it is a fairly standard grid with the different abilities you can perform for selected unit/building. So here you have your build menus and your different unit abilities etc.
Now since we have a nice 4x3 grid here (not including the left hand column) it fits very nicely on the left side of a keyboard! Gridkeys simply means that you make sure your grid of buttons overlays with the keys on the keyboard. So no matter what unit/building you select in the game, the button to activate the menu/ability in the upper left hand corner will ALWAYS be Q. The one next to that will ALWAYS be W, etc.
This is infinitely easier to use/learn than a system which uses a different button for each ability based on the first letter, unless it's already taken in which case it might be the first letter of the second word in the ability name, unless you can't use that in which case...you get my drift. In addition keeping all the keys on the left side of the keyboard makes it much easier for a touch-typist to hit the keys. I wanted to strangle the guy who thought it would be a good idea to use P as the key to build some units in CoH....
So please PLEASE, if you are not going to have keys remappable, provide grid keys as an option or the default. And even if you are going to allow remappable keys, i suggest gridkeys.
Comments
Ya.... This stuff is already in NS1.
Sorry guys :P
menu1A | menu1B | menu1C | menu1D
menu2A | menu2B | menu2C | menu2D
menu3A | menu3B | menu3C | menu3D
menu4A | menu4B | menu4C | menu4D
Considering meds and ammo are dropped about 1000x more than anything else I would have dedicated a single key to selecting meds and ammo. I imagine every commander has the E+S combo imprinted into their mind. I probably would have gone farther and bound a single key to: alias med "goto_med_request; menu1C; menu2B"
This was hopefully just an oversight in NS1 anyways.
This is all assuming UWE still gives us access to a "console" interface and readable config files for NS2.
Do you have some kind of a weird lefty setup? Most people put their keyboards next to their mice so they'd have to sit in an unnatural half-turned position while commanding. I can't see it being better than QWER in any way.
(it's 3x4 and you could certainly map to non-number function keys)
(it's 3x4 and you could certainly map to non-number function keys)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Maybe he is left handed? ::shrug::
I find it rather weird that most games and developers make <b>not</b> use of the numpad as most functions would be more easy.
It's not like you place buildings and drops with your keyboard, you use the mouse for it after all. I can't grasp it in words, but for me its more logical to use the numpad to select the stuff to drop.
When NS2 is finaly out I will show you what I mean as I hope I can redesign the mCom Interface at least a bit if it doesnt support the numpad already.