Just some silly idea really...

Cheesecan · Post by **Cheesecan** » 18 Mar 2005, 18:51

It's possible, I only use the keyboard in TA to find my commander(CTRL+C), self-destructing things, chatting, holding shift when building units and queuing and scrolling I think.
Think most of those things could be done with a mouse in spring, perhaps even using a mouse gesture system. :)

AF · Post by AF » 18 Mar 2005, 19:44

You do knwo that soem people have fog of war turned off, and you can select multiple units by dragging????

And refer to my previous post here talking about multiple monitors. And how do you not know the 2 players are allied against a 3rd player on another computer somewhere else?

zwzsg · Post by **zwzsg** » 18 Mar 2005, 22:00

I need the keyboard every 10s for at least:
- A
- M
- S
- Ctrl Z
- Ctrl 1,2,3,...
- Alt 1,2,3,.. (+switchalt not working for my foreign keyboard)
- Shift

Yes, you could add buttons and menu for all this action, the thing is, ingame, in tense battle, I can't afford to move the mouse away from the action, make the screen scroll a little by mistake as I pass over the edge, click the button, move the mouse back to center screen. It's much more efficient to keep the mouse pointer over the zone where it's needed and command it by keyboard. And some actions will get extremely tedious without keyboard.

I know split screen won't be used by 2 allied against a far away 3rd player because having split screen mean one the two player using the split screen doesn't have his own PC with spring, (or else he'll play on his own), so is a newb, so can't really put up a fight against the foreign player on the far computer.

PauloMorfeo · Post by **PauloMorfeo** » 18 Mar 2005, 22:15

I don't know about the rest of the players but me and most of my friends live with the hand on top of the shift key when playing TA.

Often we change to Ctrl+Z or to the numbers to control sets of units.

I find useless the use of the A(attack) and M(move) keys.

zwzsg:
You should use the "+switchalt" command. I think that's the one.

It will change the usage of the alt key meaning that to access groups of units, you'll just need the numbers and to access the units menus you will have to use Alt+number instead.

Cheesecan · Post by **Cheesecan** » 18 Mar 2005, 22:56

I think it can be done flexible enough, and we don't know until we've tried right?
Mean i've got 8 buttons on my mouse total, that should be plenty enough for most commands and you could add like a little quick-panel for everything extra you need. It would use simple ui scripts to trigger the same effect as the keyboard button being pressed etc. Lots of ways to implement it well just have to decide which way is the best.

AF · Post by AF » 19 Mar 2005, 00:52

no no no split screen may eb fien but If I wanted split screen it'd be with 2 monitors oen for each player

And what are you moaning about keyboard for? I see no problem just have a second keyboard connected and use the same trick as the second mouse. But honestly split screen on a single monitor would be useful to some but otherwise a headache to everyone else

Cheesecan · Post by **Cheesecan** » 19 Mar 2005, 12:46

If you have a big monitor it's not that big a deal.

zwzsg · Post by **zwzsg** » 19 Mar 2005, 18:12

Yes, I posted that I knew about +switchalt, but because on my foreign keyboard numbers are normally done with shift and punction without, with +switchalt I either need to use the shift key and the number, or the numeric pad, so it's not very convenient.

AF · Post by AF » 19 Mar 2005, 21:22

wtf the q and the A are swapped so are (;:) and M, otherwise ti looks like the same layout as any other keyboard just really old with no power buttons, try changing the regional settings for your keyboard in windows or buy a standard qwerty keyboard, I got a nice USB one all silver and black for ├é┬ú2.60 and I've seen them cheaper

EDIT: On closer examination I see xtra symbols and the W and Z are swapped, I'd still get a standard QWERTY keyboard tho

PauloMorfeo · Post by **PauloMorfeo** » 20 Mar 2005, 01:31

zwzsg wrote:... my foreign keyboard ...

I haven't seen azerty keyboards from the typewriters days... Where are you from, if i may ask?

About the usuall keyboards nowadays, the qwerty ones, if i remember correctly (maybe wrong), the dude that invented it just placed the keys around the board as it felt like it.

Scientifically built keyboards, built with features like having the aeiou close together at the center, allow for much, much faster typing.

Strange how qwerty ones got to become such an established standard...

Post by **ILMTitan** » 20 Mar 2005, 18:25

IIRC, qwerty became the standard because the more sensical keyboards would allow people to type so fast the typewriter heads would get stuck together.

AF · Post by AF » 20 Mar 2005, 18:56

Wonder why they decided to stick with QWERTY for computers considering it was slower? There must have been a heck of a lot of typists back then

diggz2k · Post by **diggz2k** » 20 Mar 2005, 20:05

To wander back on topic, we need to have a joystick option for people on the same PC so one could use a gamepad or joystick so they both have enough buttons. The only use I would use a split screen for it having my buddies use pilot my units, split screen would make communication a lot easier than even being in the same room, just point and say go here.

Spring RTS Engine

Just some silly idea really...