Keyboard layout mixing settings

[Matter]

I usually use a Dvorak keyboard and either remap the keys in games, switch to regular keyboard, or occasionally games will support alternate layouts. I played this game for ~8 hours when it first came out without a problem using Dvorak.

I picked it up again with Winterhome and see that the game is mixing my keyboard layouts in a strange way. Most of the keys follow the layout of the keyboard setting I choose, but depending which one I choose others don't. For instance, if I have it in regular, WASD works, except S also acts as like a Dvorak O and opens the temperature overlay, so I both move down and get the temp overlay. If I switch to the other, again WAS works, but D doesn't and opens one of the popup menus. I can't change the settings to make it work in only one of the two ways.

There was a similar bug report from mid-August that I found too. I'm going to try and totally customize the keys to do what I want and see what happens.

[Matter]

I tried mapping keys while in standard layout and now it's just putting in random keys. It came in with the Dvorak defaults, which I had added previosuly without success. I then tried to put them back to the standard US version and they wouldn't take. Going into settings, pressing the WASD keys gave me WAS in the Dvorak versions, but the D was an H (which is the opposite of what it should be, in Dvorak the H key is a D not the other way around), and the Q and E gave me X and D. Again, these are the opposite of what they should be, a D in regular is an E in Dvorak, not the other way around.

TL;DR - It's mixing up keyboard layouts in creative ways now, and I can't get it to stop.

[Rok]

Still a problem one year on in 2019.

[★ Brown Floyd]

This bug still needs to be fixed. The game is literally unplayable if you have more than one keyboard layout installed in Windows 10.

It's easy to replicate: just install a Dvorak keyboard layout (included in Windows) and try to play the game. The bug is the same regardless of which keyboard layout you use. This behavior is also not standard among other games; it's a Frostpunk-specific issue that I've never seen anywhere else.

[nch.SilvrDuck]

Hey guys, 2020, still the same issue :/

[Mr. Turner]

Haha, 2021 guys!
Still a problem, exact same setup of a US International keyboard and a Dvorak keyboard layout. However, using windows 8.1.

[sdombrowski9101]

I'm glad I am not the only one having this issue. This is the only game I've encountered that has this problem.

[calzakk]

I've just bought the game, and I literally cannot play it because I use a variant of the Dvorak keyboard layout with Windows 11 and just cannot get the keyboard config set up properly. I am _so_ angry, was looking forward to playing this game, but it's a complete waste of money. I'll never be buying anything from 11bit studios again, that's for sure.

[qoppa]

Same issue here on Windows 10. I also use Dvorak and have the US layout setup alongside and gave up trying to play this game after 10 minutes due to this bug.

[punklet]

I seem to have this working now. It was a bit awkward to set up but it works... except that it seems that the Generator panel can not be accessed if it has been remapped.

I use Dvorak on a QWERTY keyboard and shift the camera controls one step to the right, so WASD is ESDF on the physical keyboard and mapped in Dvorak to be <period>OEU.

I found that when remapping keys, I had to press the key that in Dvorak emits the QWERTY of the key I wanted to remap, but then also the camera control remapping had one fewer redirect and it took some trial and error to figure out what I needed to do.

I have the panels mapped to YIXK, going down the right side of the camera controls. Using Y as an example, on the QWERTY layout that's physically the T key, so I actually needed to make it remap the T key, so I pressed K on the QWERTY keyboard as that's what emits T in Dvorak. This took a lot of trial and error but what are there, twelve-fifteen keys to map? Not onerous (but losing the generator panel is annoying). I seem to recall the camera controls were a bit different but again, trial and error will get you there even if they keymap showing up in the UI is effectively nonsense.

I found on restarting the game the next day that the keys listed in the controls screen show that the camera controls are mapped to the QWERTY version of the keys and everything else shows the Dvorak mapping. Unfortunately I can't easily run through this setup again as it's on a different computer (my current setup has a keyboard that switches so Windows doesn't know about it... I still lost the generator panel though but maybe that's broken in general? I seem to recall it working when I first installed the game but then didn't play for a long time.)

My current Controls UI shows this:

Camera Forward E
Camera Backward D
Pan Left S
Pan Right F
Rotate Left R
Rotate Right W
Zoom In A
Zoom Out ;
Toggle World `
Camera Center C
Construction Panel Y
Book Of Laws I
Technology Tree K
Economy Panel J
Tutorial Summary Q
Generator Panel ' (doesn't seem to work)

...but I think for most of those I had to demap them myself for initial entry. Camera controls show QWERTY but I think I had to type the Dvorak key that mapped to that, e.g. the D physical key makes E appear. For the panels I think it was the same problem but with another step, Construction being Y, but that's on the physical T key so I had to figure out what Dvorak key makes T (which is K) and then type the key which actually makes K (which is V).

...anyway I hope that FP2 gets some love in keyboard remapping. I've never found it too hard to program when you do it up front but of course bolting something like this into an existing game is tough due to all of the hard coding that takes place. I'm a little surprised that a European company got this wrong though with what I assume is a proliferation of keyboard maps, language packs, etc. on the development team but the game itself is a triumph and this keyboard stuff is a minor challenge.

I also hope this helps someone. It was a lot of trial and error to pick up this game again after buying it long ago and only now trying to play it on a laptop where I make Windows remap keys for me. (I also wish the touchpad worked better in the game but camera controls on the keyboard are good enough.)

[Alexander]

I've been dealing with this problem for a while too, and had to address it anew on a new gaming laptop recently. I primarily use Dvorak on Windows 11, and I have Qwerty as an alternate layout I use mostly for gaming.

I was able to get to a point where the game was using default mappings (e.g. pressing the physical key labeled "O" on your keyboard to open the Temperature Overlay) and everything was working as expected.

Solution

1. Switch to Dvorak BEFORE starting the game
   
2. Start the game, load up a map
   
3. In Controls settings, restore everything to default
   
4. Remap Camera Center, Construction Panel, Book of Laws, Technology Tree, Economy Panel, Temperature Overlay, Select Next, and Select Previous by pressing the physical keys you want to press to open them

If you want to replicate the default key bindings of a Qwerty keyboard without these issues, your key mappings should look like this in the UI:

• Camera Forward - W
  
• Camera Backward - S
  
• Pan Left - A
  
• Pan Right - D
  
• Rotate Left - Q
  
• Rotate Right - E
  
• Zoom In - Pg Up
  
• Zoom Out - Pg Dn
  
• Toggle World Map - Home
  
• Camera Center - J
  
• Pause - Spacebar
  
• Construction Panel - X
  
• Book Of Laws - N
  
• Technology Tree - Y
  
• Economy Panel - K
  
• Temperature Overlay - R
  
• Tutorial Summary - H
  
• Efficiency Trackers - Left Alt
  
• Select Next - =
  
• Select Previous - /
  
• Generator Construction - I

Now when playing the game, you should be able to press the default keys and get the expected UI elements. (The one exception - you will have to press the "J" key to open Tutorial Summary. This can't be remapped to the "H" key with this workaround.)

Speculation

It seems like there are two problems:

• The camera controls are looking for the physical key you're pressing, and the rest of the controls are looking for the character generated by that key. (This is why, when booting into the game in Dvorak and reverting to the default controls, "S" both moves the camera back and opens the Temperature Overlay.)
  
• Frostpunk is interpreting my default Dvorak layout as Qwerty and trying to make
  adjustments accordingly within the game, so when I try to play the game in a Qwerty layout, it's reverse-mapping the keys. (Example: I press "X" on the keyboard - in Dvorak, the "X" character is generated by the "B" key - the game interprets this as pressing the "X" key and receiving the "B" character.)

It's very wonky, and I hope this isn't a problem in Frostpunk 2. But hopefully the above solution can help some other folks.

[CRHeart]

Hello all,,

Verify the following suggestions:

1) Confirm your keyboard is set to the English language.
Go to Control panel. Click on the "Region and Language" icon.
If the setting appears to be in a foreign language, change it to English/U.S.
Click on Keyboards and Language, verify the keyboard language is set to English.
Click on the Change Keyboard and on the General tab, verify you have the correct language.

2) Check if your number lock key is on. If so, depress the key to disengage it.

3) Run a character key test by using the Microsoft Keyboard Diagnostics (MSKEY) program. While in the MSKEY program, hit several keys to make certain that they are the same keys that are identified in the MSKEY window.
To run the diagnostic MSKEY test, go to Start button. In the start search box, type in mskey and hit enter.
Then start typing the keys that are not typing correctly and see what is returned in the test.

try this it worked for me

[winterneuro]

2024 will be returning the game because this is still unplayable without remapping which I should not have to do.