Mouse and Keyboard Controls Explained

[brettpennings]

** MAGEQUIT NOW SUPPORTS KEYBOARD REBINDINGS **
You can now move with WASD instead of mouse if you want.
You can rebind spell hotkeys.
You can rebind curving hotkeys.
Aiming spells is still always done with the mouse.


Here is how the default control scheme works:

1. The mouse behaves like a joystick, much like many top-down shooters.
2. Your wizard will automatically walk in the direction you are aiming unless you hold spacebar.
3. QWERSDF are mapped to spells and will cast on-press in the direction you are pointing.
4. Holding left-click while casting will curve your spells left and holding right-click will curve them right.

At first glance, this might not seem ideal, but it actually works very well once you are used to it and it allows us to keep mouse&keyboard players in the same player base as controller players because neither scheme has a significant advantage.

In order to allow multiple people to play online on a single PC, we couldn't make the camera static for mouse and keyboard specifically which had been a common request. We also attempted the traditional RTS right-click-to-move/left-click-to-cast that players would be familiar with and it was, as you might expect, pretty terrible. That is our justification for the above solution.

MORE INFO ABOUT WHY THE CONTROLS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE:

Because the camera is dynamic and adjusts itself to fit all players, and a mouse cursor is, by nature, relative to the screen itself, it creates a very difficult design problem. Let's look at the potential solutions.
1. If you let the cursor just exist on the screen as an overlay (aka screen space), even a slight adjustment of the camera relative to your wizard will change your aim without you moving your mouse.
2. If you let the cursor exist in world space, sort of like it is now, but not locked to your wizard, your cursor could end up off screen. I actually attempted this approach early on and it was not a good time.
3. This brings us to the solution we currently have, which is locking a world space cursor to your wizard. You can think of the cursor as being the tip of your aimer and it can't stray too far from your wizard, keeping it on-screen.

Lastly, there's the issue of curving. Allowing a player to just hover over their intended target takes some of the skill out of regular aiming, but how would curving spells be handled? It's either:
A. You hover on your target and miss horribly because you curved the spell and your cursor only determined the starting angle of your spell.
B. The game calculates the curve for you, taking all the skill out of it and creating the need for us to split up KBM and controller players in quickplay because of the extreme advantage created.

[Rinku_Platino]

I pix this post ;)

[fstigma]

Even when you do rebind for keyboard and do not have a controller it still shows everything as the controller button. I struggle with moving past the first screens to even setup a game. Then when I did it was just a zoomed out map with your name in the middle and the inability to do anything but eventually quit.

[brettpennings]

Hi Bipolar Bob,

I'm sorry to hear that the game is giving you issues. Are you referring to being stuck in the tutorial, practice range, couch mode or online? The magequit database shows that you've successfully completed an online game, winning with 15 kills, so maybe you figured it out?

Brett

[Crowterra]

yay now I can play with WASD

[OGC GroZdarKiPiK]

Originally posted by brettpennings:

Hi Bipolar Bob,

I'm sorry to hear that the game is giving you issues. Are you referring to being stuck in the tutorial, practice range, couch mode or online? The magequit database shows that you've successfully completed an online game, winning with 15 kills, so maybe you figured it out?

Brett

Hi sorry I'm a bit late on the topic. I just started playing this game today as an old warlock and spellsworn player. I love what I tested, I have one major problem which is that since I'm lefthanded (and that my keyboard is naturally not in QWERTY but i can fix that, can't fix my left hand :'() well it's rly hard and odd to move and I hardly believe i'm the only one in that case :D . Is there by any way a chance that we'll see the release of a patchnote containing customized movements ?
Sorry for the english, it's not my mothertongue ! Have a nice day

[brettpennings]

Originally posted by OGC GroZdarKiPiK:

Hi sorry I'm a bit late on the topic. I just started playing this game today as an old warlock and spellsworn player. I love what I tested, I have one major problem which is that since I'm lefthanded (and that my keyboard is naturally not in QWERTY but i can fix that, can't fix my left hand :'() well it's rly hard and odd to move and I hardly believe i'm the only one in that case :D . Is there by any way a chance that we'll see the release of a patchnote containing customized movements ?
Sorry for the english, it's not my mothertongue ! Have a nice day

Hi! I'm not sure I fully understand what you are asking -- are you saying you'd like to rebind the WASD movement keys individually?

Thanks!
Brett

[OGC GroZdarKiPiK]

Originally posted by brettpennings:

Originally posted by OGC GroZdarKiPiK:

Hi sorry I'm a bit late on the topic. I just started playing this game today as an old warlock and spellsworn player. I love what I tested, I have one major problem which is that since I'm lefthanded (and that my keyboard is naturally not in QWERTY but i can fix that, can't fix my left hand :'() well it's rly hard and odd to move and I hardly believe i'm the only one in that case :D . Is there by any way a chance that we'll see the release of a patchnote containing customized movements ?
Sorry for the english, it's not my mothertongue ! Have a nice day

Hi! I'm not sure I fully understand what you are asking -- are you saying you'd like to rebind the WASD movement keys individually?

Thanks!
Brett

Hi again, damn it's the first time I use that command on steam, I usually don't type for that kind of stuff and I thought I would get messaged by steam that someone quoted my thing (I'm a noob in that matter, my apologies).

Yes that's exactly what I mean ! Me and my fellow comrades are really enjoying games that are playable with everyone no matter their "video game background" while still not lacking depth and that game really looks like it'd do perfect.
If you were to release a patch note that allows that you'd really make my day ! (and I'd forcefully get my friends to buy it I sweeeeeeear)
I kept the game and didn't refund it because I want to support that kind of game but I haven't quite played it because as I explained it is quite unplayable for me :/

Anyway, have a nice day and for me I'll keep on praying silently now that the message has been sent ^_^


Edit : I'm also pretty positive that not being able to rebind it is a big big downside for the game for anyone that isn't running on a QWERTY keyboard and for all lefthanded people aswell !

[brettpennings]

I replied to the previous post on a different thread already, but remapping the individual WASD keys is now supported as well! Thanks to OGC GroZdarKiPiK for the suggestion :)

[Pauzz85]

is there a way to have rts controls? i like them better, since i am accostumed to LOL

[brettpennings]

Originally posted by Pau_wolf:

is there a way to have rts controls? i like them better, since i am accostumed to LOL

Hi Pau_wolf!

I touched on this briefly in the original post, but maybe I didn't explain it well:

At first glance, this might not seem ideal, but it actually works very well once you are used to it and it allows us to keep mouse&keyboard players in the same player base as controller players because neither scheme has a significant advantage.

In order to allow multiple people to play online on a single PC, we couldn't make the camera static for mouse and keyboard specifically which had been a common request. We also attempted the traditional RTS right-click-to-move/left-click-to-cast that players would be familiar with and it was, as you might expect, pretty terrible. That is our justification for the above solution.

To go into more detail, being able to aim with RTS controls would take the skill out of aiming and would especially take the skill out of curving your spells, which is a big part of MageQuit's skill ceiling. If you could hover on the person you were trying to hit, and apply a curve, the game would have to do the curving calculation for you, giving RTS-scheme players a significant advantage against controller/console players and the existing kbm controls.

Also, since the camera pans in and out to fit all the action, what you'd be hovering on with your mouse would be constantly changing, making RTS controls very frustrating (I did attempt to implement it and it was not a good time). This could be fixed with a static camera, but again, we decided against this in the interest of keeping a unified experience on all platforms.