Is two action buttons necessary?

[leojona]

Okay, I am going to preface this by saying that I am not a seasoned keyboard player. I play on controller or if on keyboard, I generally like my hands on a certain spot (wasd or alt-shift-numbers, resting on the very left side of the keyboard) and then we don't move but I haven't found that spot in this game, yet. Like, I don't know how to put my hands on the keyboard here because I haven't found the comfy middle between keyboard and mouse. I need to move my fingers in weird ways all the time. Like, I'm trying to be comfy with wasd and mouse but then I don't know how to access stuff with mouse and the necessary buttons seem to far away? If anyone has any tips on that, I would be grateful.

And one of the biggest questions marks I have is: why does E works as action button to some things (react to environmental cues action afaik) while F is an action button for other things, like tools? And it could be clear cut, use E for only this and F for only this, but you press E to use the broom to clean specific dirts while F makes you generally wave the broom around. And to be honest, I'm not smart enough to remember what is what. I get enough keyboard shortcuts to remember right from the beginning so I feel lost with these kinda "double duty" action buttons. So it is really necessary to be two different buttons?

[leojona]

Okay so many hours in, I've found a somewhat functioning way to do things. I still need to move my arrow keys hand to do stuff with mouse, but moving between arrow keys and mouse is okay. And also, I was wrong in my op, it wasn't just E and F you use as actions, it's also Q. I just got to know more of that when I got into brewing and taps.

But anyways, I have fingers on Q, E, and F keys. It's not the most intuitive, since E is the one you use the most and it's where my middle finger lays most comfortably. But from this spot I can reach R (to put a drink back on the tap) and also B for decoration mode + space for confirming stuff.

Now the issue is, Esc aka close or cancel is super hard to reach because I don't know about you but my pinky wasn't built that way. It is like the most farthest away button possible and I don't even see any way to remap it to another key because I don't know which of the option in the Controls setting is the one that says "nope, I changed my mind, I don't actually want to buy these things, lemme out of here."

And yes I know I can just click on with mouse but how do I do it without?

[brian_va]

you can remap the keys, i just tested and you can set whatever action F is set to to use the E key. i didn't test it, so no idea if it will impact gameplay or not. i didn't see anything about rebinding the escape key, so might just have to make it work. my pinky probably wouldn't be an ideal option to hit it either, but moving my wrist to hit escape and come back has become muscle memory at this point. maybe put a bit of practice into it and see if it works for you

granted i have decades of pc gaming experience, but sliding my hand up to hit escape and back down to have my finger land back on the f key so i can feel the marker has become muscle memory at this point.

the game appears to have controller support, have you tried to just do that if thats what works for you.

[lexluthorkingjr]

Not sure if this is helpful but my favorite bindings (besides controller) are WASD to move and the directional pad on the right. Down arrow is the primary action button (E) and the left arrow is secondary (F). This is very intuitive for me to keep both hands stationary so I set those bindings in the settings.

[leojona]

Originally posted by brian_va:

you can remap the keys, i just tested and you can set whatever action F is set to to use the E key. i didn't test it, so no idea if it will impact gameplay or not. i didn't see anything about rebinding the escape key, so might just have to make it work. my pinky probably wouldn't be an ideal option to hit it either, but moving my wrist to hit escape and come back has become muscle memory at this point. maybe put a bit of practice into it and see if it works for you

granted i have decades of pc gaming experience, but sliding my hand up to hit escape and back down to have my finger land back on the f key so i can feel the marker has become muscle memory at this point.

the game appears to have controller support, have you tried to just do that if thats what works for you.

Thank you for the suggestion. I was already kinda thinking about remapping the keys but then, I've already played over 20 hours like this and I'm super slow to getting used to things so I thought it might cause confusion. But I might, just to make my dominant finger the one I press the most because I'm not getting much better.

I'm also a decades of PC gaming person but I have always had 3D nausea so my experience is mostly on ARPG type of isometric games where my hands are on alt, tab, space, number keys and F-keys. I'm not good at moving them a lot and it has become even more limited with age haha It's part of the issue I have with the cancel too, since my near-vision is going worse and it's too small for me on the screen so I would prefer a button.

BUT, I actually noticed soon after posting that you don't need to close any windows with cancel, you can just walk and they close themselves! So that is one huge problem solved right there!

I was actually playing on a laptop initinially and at the time of posting since I wasn't home. But now I'm home and I have my gamepad so I will try that. I've been playing some other games that aren't fully controller supported as a mix of controller and keyboard and somehow that has been working so far.

Originally posted by lexluthorkingjr:

Not sure if this is helpful but my favorite bindings (besides controller) are WASD to move and the directional pad on the right. Down arrow is the primary action button (E) and the left arrow is secondary (F). This is very intuitive for me to keep both hands stationary so I set those bindings in the settings.

I was thinking of WASD and mouse originally but my left hand got tired fast since I'm not super used to WASD moving. But that does sound like a good idea, just to get all the action keys bunched together more clearly! I'm especially prone to just accidentally moving my hand one key off all the time if I need to move my fingers too much.

[brian_va]

Devs seem fairly active and somewhat adjustable, maybe make a post in the suggestions thread or on their discord if you use it and ask if the cancel or close action can be put in as an option to rebind.

[leojona]

Originally posted by brian_va:

Devs seem fairly active and somewhat adjustable, maybe make a post in the suggestions thread or on their discord if you use it and ask if the cancel or close action can be put in as an option to rebind.

Thanks to having some comments on this that made me think more about it and finding out what my actual issue is, I just might, thank you!