Way to change keyboard controls?

[pewterpiranha]

Hey, I'm sorry if this is a dumb question. Because I'm right-handed and used to using the arrow keys to control, I am loving the game but having a terrible time using the WASD control scheme. Is there any way to change it? I could not find a way on the options screen. Or will I definitely need a controller if I want to play this without the WASD scheme? Thanks if you can help.

[Urthman]

Every game should have robust support for re-mapping the controls. But because so many don't, every PC gamer should have AutoHotKey installed. It's a very simple but very powerful freeware utility that can do pretty much anything you want to customize input for games (or anything else).

https://autohotkey.com/

Once it's installed, to re-map controls for Poi, all you'd have to do is make a text file called poi.ahk with a list of keys you want to change. Like this.

(example text file starts after this line)

up::w
down::s
left::a
right::d

Pause::Suspend

(example text file ends before this line)

Save the file. Double-click on poi.ahk before you start the game (or Alt-Tab and do it after the game is running if you forget) to start the script. When the script is running, every time you press the up arrow, your computer will think it's a "w". Down arrow will be "s" and so forth.

Or if you'd rather use IJKL instead of arrow keys for WASD, you could make a script like this:

(example text file starts after this line)

i::w
k::s
j::a
l::d

Pause::Suspend

(example text file ends before this line)

The last line with "Pause::Suspend" is optional. The "Suspend" command pauses the script so the keyboard will go back to normal. I like to bind the Pause button to suspend the script so you can easily turn it on and off if you need to type something. You could bind F4 to Suspend (F4::Suspend) instead or just leave it out and turn the script on and off with the icon in your system tray.

Here's a list of "special" keys in case you want to re-bind mouse buttons or stuff on the NumPad.

https://autohotkey.com/docs/KeyList.htm

AutoHotKey is super-simple. Just type a few lines in a text file listing the keys you want to rebind, double-click to launch the script, and you're good. (And you can re-use the same script for other games if you consistently want to rebind WASD to something else.) It's often easier/quicker than using an in-game menu to re-bind the keys.

But it also supports very complicated scripts. If you want the game to simulate rapidly pressing the 'E' key when you click the middle mouse button and keep going until you press it again, so you don't have to button-mash during a QuickTimeEvent, it can do that. If you're playing Magicka and want to type QFQFQFAS to cast the steam beam by pressing a single key, you can do that. If you want to press F8 to bring up a chat window and type "im in ur base killin ur d00dz!!1!" it can do that. It can do a bunch of stuff so advanced I have no idea what it is.

AutoHotKey can usually be used safely to rebind keys in online games as long as you aren't trying to use macros to cheat. If you write a script that sends a whole string of commands faster than a human could enter them, it might trigger anti-cheating detection. But if you're just rebinding keys so that pressing 'g' is 'r' or switching the right and left mouse buttons or whatever, you should be fine.

[pewterpiranha]

Thank you so much for typing all of that out for me! Truly, that's so incredibly nice of you. Unfortunately, i do have a Mac, so I can't use AutoHotkey ): I will try to look into other rebinding applications for Mac, and hopefully I can figure one out. Again, thank you so much for your post.

[batmanwillprevail]

i tried this and it didnt work, im trying to change the controls for hylics 1 and its really frustrating me lol, I swear i typed everything exact so im not really sure what i did

[batmanwillprevail]

ah, now even the original controls dont work

[Urthman]

When you're using AutoHotKey, there should be a green H icon in your system tray. If you right-click that you can turn it off completely.

[Urthman]

If you want to post what you put in the AutoHotKey file you wrote for hylics 1 controls, I might be able to help you troubleshoot the problem.