Hotkeys & More

[Aqo]

Hey guys, I played TASpring some time ago and decided to check it out again. I think overall this project is very cool, but there are many small things on the low level that hurt the success of this thing. Some of those things are not even necessarily "not in Spring", they're there but it's not very obvious for someone who just got Spring, and not everyone has time to search forums that are years old for random information they need (for example, there needs to be some big readme that explains what the L and ; keys do, and an option to auto-enable them every time a game starts, I bet lots of people will use it).

Now, what's bothering me at the moment is the hotkeys. There seem to be hotkeys for the basic commands, but what about hotkeys for buildings? Lets say I want to tell my commander to build a metal refinery in BA, do I really have to move my mouse all the way to the menu, left click it, and then move back to the field? Most mods really require better speed and it's ridicules trying to play without building hotkeys.

So, are there some hidden building hotkeys (ctrl+key or something?) or are there none? And if there are none, does the engine support it? (it probably should seeing as you have basic command hotkeys) and I assume it's mod dependent, so is it up to the people who work on mods to give their stuff hotkeys, and if so, why don't they do it?

===== Part 2 =====

I figured I'd write this here instead of making another thread - one more thing that has really been annoying me in Spring's interface is CTRL groups. If I Ctrl+9 a factory and tell it to produce stuff, then as soon as anything is produced not only the factory is selected when I click 9 but also everything it produced. This is a seriously flawed mechanic from an RTS perspective, and getting around it by resetting my ctrl groups every once in a while it totally impractical with 20 factories that produce a unit every 10 seconds each.

Something should be done to make ctrl groups work normally, so that basically this doesn't happen. If I set a group, it should remain static until I change it.

[CarRepairer]

Playing Spring:

http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Using_Spring

Hotkeys:

http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Command_Reference
http://spring.clan-sy.com/wiki/Using_custom_keys

I agree about the manual. At CA we have a working manual that covers a lot of things you are frustrated about:

http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/Manual

And more information on customizing your keyboard, including Spring-relevant and CA-relevant information:

http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/CustomKeys

[Aqo]

Thanks for the quick response.

I think even a readme.txt file in the spring folder with your post will make a big difference for people downloading the game, and it will really be best if spring.exe had a real interface instead of just three select/return menus. After making a 3D RTS mod, making an interface to it really shouldn't be a problem... if the issue is graphical/GUI design, I'm willing to do the graphics myself.

[Jazcash]

The forums and wiki hold all the information about Spring there is, they cover everything you need and do not need to know.
The problem is being able to find that content and for nubs who don't know where the forums are, how to use them etc.
We need to port all the wiki and important forum topics and documentation into some form of book or group of documents accessible via the clients.

I propose a Spring Bible. I nominate Aegis to be our priest and Swift to be our pope.

[Aqo]

As you already wrote in your post... the problem is that there is a bible to begin with.
Someone who's new to this doesn't want to read a lot head on. There needs to be a very short guide that only explains the most important and common things.

[Jazcash]

Spring is a highly complex fully customizable game. To make it possible for any body to customize it how they want, guides and manuals help.
You can never have enough guides.

[TheMightyOne]

There was also this pic of a keyboard where every single key was described, i can't find it anymore though :/

[Beherith]

http://img108.imagevenue.com/img.php?im ... _972lo.jpg

Thats the keyboard layout.

How to bind buildings to keys: my keybindings

[Google_Frog]

http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/CustomKeys

My keybindings are at the bottom of this page in a readily copyable form( actually it's only the CA part, my complete keybindings are 4x longer).

[Tribulexrenamed]

Pros bind keys to "invquekey" and "luaui awesome"

Well, I do, and I know I am uber good at BA and XTA, and good at CA rampspam.

[Caradhras]

What about integrating some kind of help page in the lobby?

That renders a html site with guides maybe? So noob does not have to search the guides?

[CarRepairer]

Pros bind keys to "invquekey" and "luaui awesome"

Well, I do, and I know I am uber good at BA and XTA, and good at CA rampspam.

QFT

[SwiftSpear]

http://img108.imagevenue.com/img.php?im ... _972lo.jpg

Thats the keyboard layout.

How to bind buildings to keys: my keybindings

Beherith... that is the worst image host have ever seen. It spawned a fullpage add asking me to "continue to your image" and then when I clicked to continue it opened a new window advertising a porn site in conjunction with displaying the image in the original window.

In the future just attach to the forum.

[Beherith]

That image is linked in from the spring wiki btw.
Its not my image, not my host.

Edit: wierd, it doesnt spawn a porn ad when clicked through the wiki...

[Lolsquad_Steven]

F3 is your best friend. Works like spacebar in another popular RTS.

[CarRepairer]

Terrible, terrible idea to map C by default to FPS view. That really drove me nuts when I first started playing. It's so easy to hit C, without knowing that you hit C, and not know how the heck to get out of it midgame.

I suggest it be remapped to alt+ctrl+shift+meta+windowskey+F12