Is there a guide anywhere to help change keybinds?

[Kaiji]

I got the complete pack in the sale yesterday and I'm really impressed with the game, but no ingame option to rebind keys in an RTS seems like a seriously insane design decision.

I understand I need to edit a file to change the keybinds. Is there an indepth guide out there that will walk me through it, and can I change the modifier key from ctrl to alt? (I assign control groups using alt+1,2,3 etc in Starcraft 2 and don't really want to go back to using ctrl).

[sherlock]

Well, the shortcuts are hardcoded and can't be edited. However there are a couple of ways how coh players help themselves. In your case I sugeest downloading the program "autohotkey". It allows you to rebind any key you want on your keyboard.

You might want to browse in this thread for an idea how it works: http://www.autohotkey.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=75953
Or just google a bit. You can download autohotkey under: www.autohotkey.com
The program works with any game or program, so I also use it in age of empires online.

Hope this helps

[Kaiji]

Nah, I don't want to use Autohotkey. I hear it sometimes crashes which I wouldn't be happy about in the middle of an online skirmish. I do greatly appreciate the advice though.

There's definitely a file you can edit. Someone made a grid layout here... http://www.gamereplays.org/community/index.php?showtopic=733549&st=0

I just can't find anything about how to edit the file. When I open it in notepad it's just a garbled mess. :\

Gonna be pretty irritated if I can't play what seems like a great game because rebinding the keys is way more messing around than I can deal with. I really can't figure out how game designers can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars making a AAA RTS game without bothering to allow you to rebind the keys ingame. Just seems surreal.

[sherlock]

I do share your frustration about not beeing able to rebind keys ;). But don't miss out on this game just because of a minor issue like that, would be a shame.

I've used autohotkey for more than 2 years for coh and never had any problems. I know about gridkeys but I'm not sure if he did edit the file per se. I never quite liked the way it worked since I want to move the camera with w-a-s-d, so can't say I know a lot about what he did in detail.

Might be best if you just write the creator of gridkeys in the forums or send him a pm on GR if he's still active.

[Kaiji]

OK well if it won't crash I guess Autohotkey is back on the table as a solution.

My main concern is that if I tell it to change a bunch of keys ("K" to "S" for example), won't that mean i can't chat to my teammates in text because most letters on my keyboard are now different?

[sherlock]

well, not really you just add a break key. I used enter to pause the skript, so everytime I open the chat, the skript stops.

My code looks a bit like this:


#IfWinActive, Company Of Heroes
w::up
a::left
s::down
d::right

.... more code for throwing granades and other things....

~Enter::Suspend
+~Enter::Suspend
Return


So if you leave coh, the program will suspend and if you press enter it will suspend. There are more sophisticated skripts on the GR forums if you need them.

By the way, most of the really good players, the ones that stream, all use autohotkey, so can't be that bad because they're all playing it competitively and it's quite a bit more annoying if it stops during a ranked game ;)

[Kaiji]

"#IfWinActive, Company Of Heroes"

Oh so you can actually have it only work in a particular application? I thought I'd have to manually switch it on and off when I started the game. Now I'm really interested. LOL.

Massive thanks for this, man. Hugely appreciate it!

[sherlock]

With #IfWinActive it will only run for the application you want it to ;). Just make sure you install and run autohotkey in admin mode if you're on win7/8 if you don't want to spend days trying to find out why it's not working like me.

Glad I could help.

Have fun.