Easy Build facing & associated mouse/keys in BA 8.08

Easy Build facing & associated mouse/keys in BA 8.08

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very_bad_soldier
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Easy Build facing & associated mouse/keys in BA 8.08

Post by very_bad_soldier »

Easy facing isnt working anymore. I know, middle click, but still no function for me.

(split from http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=32936)
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Silentwings
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Re: BA 8.08 Released!

Post by Silentwings »

Try adding

Code: Select all

Spring.Echo(lmb,mmb,rmb,inDrag)
at http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balates ... =3505#L210. It will spam output at you. http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balates ... format=txt will give you the widget file to put into userland.

Then select a con, select a build order, hold left mouse to place, then hold also middle mouse and move the mouse around. This would (normally) result in the building in the build order rotating. It should output

Code: Select all

true,true,false,true
Does that work?
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very_bad_soldier
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Re: BA 8.08 Released!

Post by very_bad_soldier »

It works when I press left button and middle button at the same time. But that is not the way it is meant to be, right?

But it gives the expected print out.
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Silentwings
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Re: BA 8.08 Released!

Post by Silentwings »

very bad soldier wrote:It works when I press left button and middle button at the same time. But that is not the way it is meant to be, right?
That is what I meant to happen. What were you expecting? (A single click of the middle mouse to activate/de-activate maybe?)
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very_bad_soldier
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Re: BA 8.08 Released!

Post by very_bad_soldier »

Well, I was expecting the same behavior as before just with swapped meta and middle. I cant remember that I had to press middle and left at the same time before in any program ^^ It feels super weird.
But nevermind, I can just revert back to he old version. But its poor usability in my opinion.
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Silentwings
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Re: BA 8.08 Released!

Post by Silentwings »

I thought it was the best of bad options. Unfortunately there are no spare key modifers in the context and the only spare mouse button is the middle mouse so afaics it has to be that. It requires middle+left mouse together because just pressing middle mouse alone will interfere with the camera panning. So it could use middle mouse as an on/off switch (which I think is closer to what a direct meta/mmb swap would achieve), but then middle mouse has to be pressed twice and this seemed more awkward to me than a single press & hold.

(Since changing facing is not frequently needed and there are already keys to change build facing - although they are too far to reach on most keyboards with key modifers also pressed - I decided that Build Split should get the use of meta.)

For those who just want to know keys, I keep http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=30173 up to date.
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very_bad_soldier
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Re: BA 8.08 Released!

Post by very_bad_soldier »

Left+Middle is a no-go imo until I grow another hand.

Lots of keybindings are unusable on non-english keyboard layouts. At least on my german keyboard its quite bad. I am unable to find out how to rotate buildings with keys :(
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Silentwings
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Re: BA 8.08 Released!

Post by Silentwings »

I am unable to find out how to rotate buildings with keys
Did you try reading http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=30173 ? I am fairly sure your keyboard has an "o" key.

I don't have a German keyboard, if you can make a seperate thread explaining the issues with them that would be useful.
Left+Middle is a no-go imo until I grow another hand.
Do you have a better idea? (I don't.)
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qray
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Re: BA 8.08 Released!

Post by qray »

very_bad_soldier wrote:I am unable to find out how to rotate buildings with keys :(
You could use:

Code: Select all

bind            numpad2         buildfacing south
bind            numpad4         buildfacing west
bind            numpad6         buildfacing east
bind            numpad8         buildfacing north
in uikeys.txt to use the num pad keys for building rotation.
I have configured this some years ago on my system and never had problems with it.
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very_bad_soldier
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Re: BA 8.08 Released!

Post by very_bad_soldier »

Silentwings wrote:
I am unable to find out how to rotate buildings with keys
Did you try reading http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=30173 ? I am fairly sure your keyboard has an "o" key.
:D While it is true that even my keyboard has an "o"-key, none of them is working for me to rotate buildings. Tried "o" and "," and ".". "[" and "]" is Alt+8 and Alt+9 on a german keyboard.
Do you have a better idea? (I don't.)
Wouldnt it work to keep previous behavior and just change meta to middle? So when pressing middle the cursor gets locked and you can rotate to the desired direction. Then you stop pressing middle and move the building to the position and then click left?

@qray:
Thanks, idea is good but I think I will just stick with previous easy facing.
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Silentwings
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Re: Easy Build facing & associated mouse/keys in BA 8.08

Post by Silentwings »

Wouldnt it work to keep previous behavior and just change meta to middle? So when pressing middle the cursor gets locked and you can rotate to the desired direction.
No - the middle mouse (on its own) is already in use here as a lock/unlock for panning the camera.
Alt+8 and Alt+9 on a german keyboard
I think its a general principle that (due to sdl2 stuff which I haven't read into) Spring doesn't understand Alt+XXX as a stand-in for what it thinks are "normal" keys. This is why "q" is now bound to drawing and "o" is a fall back for rotating buildings.
While it is true that even my keyboard has an "o"-key, none of them is working for me to rotate buildings
Hmm, well it is set here http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balates ... s.lua#L137 and it works on all my machines (which are all laptops with some US/UK keyboard variants). I can only think of using /keydebug and so on to try and figure out whats stopping it working for you.
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very_bad_soldier
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Re: Easy Build facing & associated mouse/keys in BA 8.08

Post by very_bad_soldier »

Oh, "o" comes from that widget? No wonder it doesnt work for me then since I had to deactivate that thing long ago for different reasons.

Besides just affecting shortcuts for buildings it also binds and unbinds several other hotkeys ignoring any existing configuration which is not very nice tbh. Also on a german keyboard "y" and "z" are interchanged so it does not go along well with that widget.

Since I always thought CTRL-C for selecting commander is too complicated I configured "q" to select commander.
Drawing is on TAB for me since '`' is a "Dead-Key" on german keyboards: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_key
So '`' is not usable with chatting afterwards but its fine to toggle map overview. So, basically I interchanged TAB and '`'.
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Silentwings
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Re: Easy Build facing & associated mouse/keys in BA 8.08

Post by Silentwings »

Unfortunately its not possible to detect keyboard layout within lua, and there are so many that I wouldn't be able to handle all cases anyway. We have to rely on sdl2 for this afaics. In practice this means BA doesn't use special keys whenever it can be avoided.

It might be worth trying to fix that y-z issue though, I suspect quite a few people are affected by that.

It would be very complicated for Building Hotkeys &suchlike to take care of all possible pre-defined keybinds, I think trying to do it would create more problems for me than it would solve. Instead I always assume that only the engines default keybinds are present, but I'm happy for people who want to go their own way on keybinds to deactive Building Hotkeys (and the other less important keybinds widgets listed on http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=30173, if necessary). Of course at that point I am not much help fixing issues with configs I've not set up.

Side note for the interested: In the same way, I always assume no user widgets are present, but I am happy for people to add and maintain their own, I just can't help much with debugging their issues.
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very_bad_soldier
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Re: Easy Build facing & associated mouse/keys in BA 8.08

Post by very_bad_soldier »

Yeah sure, I understand its hard to take all possible keyboards/hotkeys into account. Maybe its not the best approach to handle a hardcoded set of hotkeys in Lua while I dont have a better idea either.
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Silentwings
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Re: Easy Build facing & associated mouse/keys in BA 8.08

Post by Silentwings »

on a german keyboard "y" and "z" are interchanged
The next BA version will contain a widget to do it: http://imolarpg.dyndns.org/trac/balatest/changeset/3626
ismo
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Re: BA 8.08 Released!

Post by ismo »

very_bad_soldier wrote:Left+Middle is a no-go imo until I grow another hand.

Lots of keybindings are unusable on non-english keyboard layouts. At least on my german keyboard its quite bad. I am unable to find out how to rotate buildings with keys :(
Also same in Finnish keyboard, but that is the reason why I always nowadays just attack south, lol :)
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Silentwings
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Re: Easy Build facing & associated mouse/keys in BA 8.08

Post by Silentwings »

As long as your keyboard has an "o" key, you should be able to rotate buildings ([ ] , . are also bound to it but less reliable on non-QWERTY). See viewtopic.php?f=44&t=30173.

Are there any other keybinds that are problematic on AZERTY?
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