A lot of people eventually ask if they can bind keys to buildings, so they can play faster/better.

Usually they get pointed to my old keybindings, which I think are nice, but of course I may be biased from years of using them.

i think people can change the keybinds manually?, Not against the idea, but leave as default for me it is better, im used to fps on c and if u change the actual keybinds in my case will need change the keybinds back cuz then i will be lost

Naturally you can change the bindings back, its not going to be hard-coded.

I think the proposed bindings should be included by default. It doesn't means that people can't use their own.

I use them because I took the time to search on the forums (and it really helps me), but many players even don't know they exist (especially new players).

As you said it helps players play faster/better, and if players who are already used to another keybindings can still keep their own keybindings, I dont see how it could be a bad idea.

Yours seem fine and easy.

I use some old bindings from 2007 i guess:

// Metal Extractors

bind Shift+Meta+e buildunit_armmoho // Moho Mine
bind Shift+Meta+e buildunit_cormoho // Moho Mine
bind Shift+Meta+e buildunit_armmex // Metal Extractor
bind Shift+Meta+e buildunit_cormex // Metal Extractor
bind Shift+Meta+e buildunit_cormexp // Moho Exploiter
bind Shift+Meta+e buildunit_armuwmex // Underwater Metal Extractor
bind Shift+Meta+e buildunit_coruwmex // Underwater Metal Extractor
bind Shift+Meta+e buildunit_armuwmme // Underwater Moho Mine
bind Shift+Meta+e buildunit_coruwmme // Underwater Moho Mine
bind Shift+Meta+e buildunit_armamex // Twilight
bind Shift+Meta+e buildunit_corexp // Exploiter

It'd be nice if the keybindings were shown/more intuitive, there isn't much point in adding fancy default keybindings if noone can figure out what they are, or easily remember which ones are which building sequences and in what order.

I was thinking of putting them on a load screen - just got to figure out how to make them context sensitive: it would be nice to have them switch from mex to sea mex automatically when the cursor is underwater.

If I recall correctly, the tooltip displays binds if you mouseover the build menu item.

You could add more structures. I use some similar cycling with Ctrl that covers most of them.

Ctrl+Q - Ground attack turrets
Ctrl+W - Area mex and mexes
Ctrl+S - Nano turrets and other misc things that I often use
Ctrl+E - Air attack turrets
Ctrl+R - Radar, sonar, jammers, shields
Ctrl+F - Energy Economy

This fits to the standard ctrl selectkeys and hotkeys and you would have a bit of trouble adding them without a modifier.

speaking as someone who cannot play without these bindings, i have to say i feel they work well together (and are easy to remember or just cycle through if you forgot) and the only annoyance is indeed the sea part.

Dunno if those are the best binds for default, but at the very least they're miles better than none. They're a relatively small (easy to learn) change to existing keys for people who are used to the old defaults without modification, so that makes them a bit better than more radically modified alternatives.

Myself I use mostly those and gotten used to it, with a few modifications.
Fpsmode has gone to J, which opens up Q for capture/resurrect/beamer/hlt/anti/nuke.
And C doesn't have flakker, but t2 radar and jammer have been added.
Oh and ctrl-Q is used to select all the units of the selected types that are on screen. So same as ctrl-Z but on the limited area (or exactly same as doubleclick, if there's just 1 unittype selected).
And now that I look at my keyboard, the < key should probably be used for something...

So would this be a widget, that if turned on overrides your uikeys.txt or how would the exact execution work? As you said the binds are shown when you hover over the commands icon, but that's a . Better than showing all the binds during loadscreen, I think would be to have a key (are all the f-keys in use atm for example?) to open up a listing of them, and during loadscreen there could be a hint of what that key is. Then you could list also stuff like ctrl-z, ctrl-x, etc. displayed that's not really told of anywhere atm.

Its for help noobs? so in any case i vote yes then

Completly agree.



Oh nice, how do you do this? What is the keybind code?

My selectkeys.txt:

Control_A AllMap++_ClearSelection_SelectAll+
Control_B AllMap+_Builder_Idle+_ClearSelection_SelectOne+
Control_C AllMap+_Commander+_ClearSelection_SelectOne+
Control_Q Visible+_InPrevSel+_ClearSelection_SelectAll+
Control_R AllMap+_Radar+_ClearSelection_SelectAll+
Control_V AllMap+_Not_Builder_Not_Commander_InPrevSel_Not_InHotkeyGroup+_SelectAll+
Control_W AllMap+_Not_Aircraft_Weapons+_ClearSelection_SelectAll+
Control_X AllMap+_InPrevSel_Not_InHotkeyGroup+_SelectAll+
Control_Z AllMap+_InPrevSel+_ClearSelection_SelectAll+

Iirc rest of those are standard included stuff (and half of them useless). Made with the selectionkeys editor program. I imagine you could lines with this syntax into uikeys.txt also for similar effect but not sure about that.

I think the best method is custom uikeys.txt deployed by the BA installer. This only affects users once, after that they can change their uikeys without the kind of interference a widget would cause.

mine:

Control_A select all units
Control_N select next idle builder
Control_C select next commander
Control_R select all radar/jammers
Control_W select all mobile land battle units, no commander
Control_X select all mobile land battle units on screen, no commander
(I want to exclude AA units from the above two, but not sure how)
Control_V select all air units, no builder, no transport
Control_B select all air units on screen, no builder, no transport


What I cant get to work (tried with name and category to no avail, input appreciated):

select all fighters
select all fighters on screen


Also since version 0.85 I get "unknown token in filter commander" message for Control_W, Control_X why is that?

So will the keybindings be added by default?

Yes, the keybindings will be added by default. I would like to request anyone to make a load screen depicting these new binds, if anyone has the time and inclination to make one, please do so :D

Quite happily. Although, I'd rather save my efforts for BAR when it's released. Supposing it has the same keybinds as your original post here.

Alternatively, if there's Lua in loadscreens yet, it would be more sensible to print the binds over the loadscreen image. That way if any binds are modified or added, it won't require the original loadscreen artist.

f8 or f10 to show the binds ingame would be a useful widget also.

Would it actually make more sense to have the full binds view both via a key like that ingame and in loadscreen, or only ingame and loadscreen would have text "press f8 to view key layout"?

Chili has a complete ingame keybind editor.