Re-bind keys?

[Whiplash]

Is there an option to re-bind the movement and other keys? If so, I cannot find it, and if not, I'd like to request it as a future feature.

[sirmarkleofsparkle]

I also really want this.

[Red Dot Games]

No plans for this now - but you can use auto hotkey (someone else mentioned this)

[Whiplash]

I would like to ask respectfully that you reconsider.

Auto-hotkey is an option, but it's not a perfect option. And key rebinding has become a rather common, expected standard in PC games these days. I can assure you that it will put some people off. I've seen it before.

Again, auto-hotkey is ok. But it's not easy to setup for inexperienced people. And there are issues when using it.

For one, searching for parts in the in game part window. When you type, it will remap the keys in there as well. So you can imagine, typing a part that uses W A S D, will instead put in the letter you remapped them to. It's messy. I hope that makes sense? It's pretty much impossible to use the search while keys are remapped like that.

Also the in game hotkey tips still show the default keys on screen, making it confusing. Honestly, it's just not a perfect solution. I hate for any dev to think that auto-hotkey is an easy out for them on this.

Re-bindable hotkeys is very much a PC gaming standard these days.

Again, meant respectfully, as feedback. I've seen other games where there ended up being a backlash over inability to re-bind keys. Just something to think about.

[Jamison]

Originally posted by Whiplash:

I would like to ask respectfully that you reconsider.

Auto-hotkey is an option, but it's not a perfect option. And key rebinding has become a rather common, expected standard in PC games these days. I can assure you that it will put some people off. I've seen it before.

Again, auto-hotkey is ok. But it's not easy to setup for inexperienced people. And there are issues when using it.

For one, searching for parts in the in game part window. When you type, it will remap the keys in there as well. So you can imagine, typing a part that uses W A S D, will instead put in the letter you remapped them to. It's messy. I hope that makes sense? It's pretty much impossible to use the search while keys are remapped like that.

Also the in game hotkey tips still show the default keys on screen, making it confusing. Honestly, it's just not a perfect solution. I hate for any dev to think that auto-hotkey is an easy out for them on this.

Re-bindable hotkeys is very much a PC gaming standard these days.

Again, meant respectfully, as feedback. I've seen other games where there ended up being a backlash over inability to re-bind keys. Just something to think about.

+1

[Red Dot Games]

Originally posted by Whiplash:

For one, searching for parts in the in game part window. When you type, it will remap the keys in there as well. So you can imagine, typing a part that uses W A S D, will instead put in the letter you remapped them to. It's messy. I hope that makes sense? It's pretty much impossible to use the search while keys are remapped like that.

How is that possible? Walking is blocked when you in inventory.

[Whiplash]

Originally posted by Red Dot Games:

Originally posted by Whiplash:

For one, searching for parts in the in game part window. When you type, it will remap the keys in there as well. So you can imagine, typing a part that uses W A S D, will instead put in the letter you remapped them to. It's messy. I hope that makes sense? It's pretty much impossible to use the search while keys are remapped like that.

How is that possible? Walking is blocked when you in inventory.

I'm not speaking about movement. I'm talking about how it changes the letters in your search.

Let me try to explain better.

The default movement keys are WASD. Lets say I remap those to SZXC, which I'm more used to.

This means when I press S, auto-hotkey changes it send a W. When I press Z, auto-hotkey changes it to send an A, and so on.

Now, I can move about using the keys I prefer. However, imagine then that I decide to search for a part. For example "Spark Plug"..

I open the computer to buy parts and go to the search box, and start to type in "Spark".

What will happen is, the letter that first appears in the box will NOT be an S. I've remapped those keys. I press S, but the key that will appear in the box will actually be a W. Because I've remapped my S key to send a "W" signal instead to fit my personal bindings.

So the search window will actually look like "WPARK" instead of "SPARK".

Does this make sense now?

Auto-hotkey doesn't just remap movement only. It completely remaps a key. So if I remap a movement key to something else, when I go to type in any text fields in the game, it will also remap the keys there. Making it nearly impossible to use the search at all, because it will change the letters that you have remapped.

I hope you understand what I mean now. I've used the program before with other games and had this problem, and found it annoying. It's really only a big problem when the game in question has text fields you can type in. They will all be problematic due to remapped keys.

Auto-hotkey is a band aid solution that is far from perfect.

Even if you can just provide some key remapping via config/ini file editing... that would be sufficient, if you don't want to go through the trouble of in game interface for changing keys. Many of us are happy to just edit a file to change them.

I can assure you, the more this game gets exposed to a larger audience, this will come up. Many people will just reject use of auto-hotkey for no other reason than they are lazy and they EXPECT key remapping in a PC game in 2015. Let alone the other issues I raised. It's not easy to setup for a novice, and it causes problems.

It would be highly pragmatic to reconsider your decision. Thanks.

[Red Dot Games]

OK I understand this. One more thing - you want to have keys changed for all ingame keys? Or only for walking? Walking should be very easy to make - but all keys is bigger process.

[Whiplash]

Personally, walking keys is enough to help me out.

I wouldn't mind if I could remap the inventory key, I personally use B instead of I in most games (easier to reach). But if I could at least remap movement keys, that would help considerably.

However, I can see a possible conflict for you with keys in use. For example, I said I prefer SZXC to WASD. But the game uses C as a key to toggle showing damaged parts. So my C key would be assigned to two separate functions. I believe Z and X also have pre-defined functionality?

So .. I dunno, I can see how it would be messy unless you can remap ALL keys. :(

Putting my programming hat on for a second, are the keys hard coded in the source code? Or are they variables? I would assume they are variables, and you could just read the keys in from a config file, and apply them to the variables, and have it work without much difficulty.

(For example, instead of having it do a hard check for the letter W, have it use a variable such as "Key_Forward" which you pre-define to W by default, but is changable by the user. And you could have variables for everything. Key_Inventory, Key_ViewOrder, Key_HideParts, etc).

[Oparator Stalker]

I rather use arrow keys for walking with the look around mouse, gose with the combat settings I use in my fps war games anyway, I never really use all them alphabet keys for walking, too confussing. Confussed already...

[Red Dot Games]

@whiplash : you right - walking keys only would make conflicts on some setups. Only problem is that we need to redo all icons in control sections. Since now they are static images - after remaping we need to make them icons + litter readed from config.

OK I will take a look into it - maybe for now we will add keys inside some externam txt file, and than we will start working on implementing it into game (but if you in rush - you can just change txt file and you ready to go). Right now all is hardcoded.

But next few days we are very busy (free dlc, another car is coming into game) so we can start after 4th of may.

[Whiplash]

Ahh yes, I see, I didn't consider that the onscreen visual displays of the keys would be static images.

Personally I don't mind if they show the wrong key. I've had to deal with that in MANY other games that have lesser key binding options. But it would be a nice polishing touch.

I'll be quite happy with just being able to remap them from a config file!

Thanks very much for your understanding and wanting to help.

[Whiplash]

Just curious if any news or progress on this?

[Red Dot Games]

we will sit onto it next week and see what we can do

[Whiplash]

Thanks very much!

[Whiplash]

Sooo... news? I'm starting to get frustrated about this game being held hostage from me being able to play it. Nearly 2 months since I first posted, and you seemed to realize that this was a legitimate need. You seemed to recognize and understand it.

I tried to play without it, several times, and gave up on simply frustrating myself.

This really bothers me as custom keybinds are considered a STANDARD of PC gaming. Even for early access. Many people depend on them, and really cannot play other ways. And we've established that auto-hotkey is not a valid solution.

So those of us who really can't play the game comfortably with the defaults (more work than fun, constantly making movement mistakes, etc) are effectively held hostage from our game until you actually do this.

I have been patient as I can. How hard is it to just give custom key binds in a damn .ini file already? A substantial percentage of PC games have at least that level of customization now. If the keys are not hardcoded in the source code, it should be trivially easy.

I'm not concerned if the wrong letter is shown on the screen. I can handle that, I've had to in many other games. I just want to move and control the way I *need* it to be.

I'm complaining hard now.. but I've been very patient until now. That has gotten nowhere. You seem content to just ignore it when there is not noise being made about it.